David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 1931 – 12 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré, was a British author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works.
Following
the success of this novel, he left MI6 to become a full-time author. His books
include The Looking Glass War (1965), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974),
Smiley's People (1979), The
Little Drummer Girl (1983), The Night Manager (1993), The Tailor
of Panama (1996), The Constant Gardener (2001), A Most Wanted Man
(2008), and Our Kind of Traitor (2010), all of which have been
adapted for film or television.
Le
Carré's first two novels, Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of
Quality (1962), are mystery fiction. Each features a retired spy, George
Smiley, investigating a death; in the first book, the apparent suicide of a
suspected communist, and in second the second volume, a murder at a boy's public
school. Although Call for the Dead evolves into an espionage story,
Smiley's motives are more personal than political. Le Carré's third novel, The
Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller
and remains one of his best-known works; following its publication, he left MI6
to become a full-time writer. Although le Carré had intended The Spy
Who Came in from the Cold as an indictment of espionage as morally
compromised, audiences widely viewed its protagonist, Alec Leamas, as a tragic
hero. In response, le Carré's next book, The Looking Glass War, was a
satire about an increasingly deadly espionage mission which ultimately proves
pointless.
Most
of le Carré's books are spy stories set during the Cold War (1945–91) and
portray British Intelligence agents as unheroic political functionaries aware
of the moral ambiguity of their work and engaged more in psychological than
physical drama. The novels emphasise the fallibility of Western democracy and
of the secret services protecting it, often implying the possibility of
east–west moral equivalence. They experience little of the violence typically
encountered in action thrillers and have very little recourse to gadgets. Much
of the conflict is internal, rather than external and visible. The recurring
character George Smiley, who plays a central role in five novels and appears as
a supporting character in four more, was written as an "antidote" to James
Bond, a character le Carré called "an international gangster"
rather than a spy and whom he felt should be excluded from the canon of
espionage literature. In contrast, he intended Smiley, who is an overweight, bespectacled
bureaucrat who uses cunning and manipulation to achieve his ends, as an
accurate depiction of a spy.
Le
Carré lived in St Buryan, Cornwall, for more than 40 years; he owned a
mile of cliff near Land's End. Le Carré
died from pneumonia at Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro, on 12 December 2020, at
age 89.
George Smiley and Related Novels
·
Call for the Dead
(1961), OCLC 751303381
·
A Murder of Quality (1962), OCLC 777015390
·
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
(1963), OCLC 561198531
·
The Looking Glass War (1965), OCLC 752987890
·
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), ISBN 0-143-12093-X
·
The Honourable Schoolboy (1977), ISBN 0-143-11973-7
·
Smiley's People
(1979), ISBN 0-340-99439-8
·
The Russia House
(1989), ISBN 0-743-46466-4
·
The Secret Pilgrim (1990), ISBN 0-345-50442-9
·
A Legacy of
Spies (2017), ISBN 978-0-735-22511-4
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