Novelist, Spy and Gentleman

My first brush with John Le Carre happened when, as a kid, I discovered “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” and “The Looking Glass War”, among the books that my grandfather had left behind. Although I read those books many, many years later, somehow the names have stayed on in my memory and I still remember the red cover page of “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold”

John Le Carre was born, David John Morre Cornwell. His mother left them when he was 5 (he tracked her later- but could not mend the relationship) and his father Ronnie was a notorious conman, who would use David and his elder brother in all his schemes and also beat them up regularly. David never went to a proper school and grew up without love or books. This disturbing childhood left a deep scar (“Until I die the father-son relationship will obsess me”) and would be a recurrent theme in his books in some shade; especially so in the 1996 semi-autobiographical novel ‘A Perfect Spy’.

David had to adopt a pen name as he was a spy himself and worked with MI5 and MI6 and started writing his books while in service. His first book was 'Call of the Dead' in 1961. But it was the ‘The spy who came in from the cold' that turned the limelight on John Le Carre and he resigned from the service (probably asked to leave) and became a full-time writer. His writing was dark and realistic compared to the flamboyant and glamorous world created by the other British spy novelist Ian Fleming (who was also a British intelligence officer). The characters they created were also starkly contrasting; George Smiley and James Bond respectively. Smiley, is a lonely, brooding, (sometimes bumbling) and pudgy (often, he is referred to as a ‘toad’) character who, nevertheless, is a brilliant spy who is devoted to his country and profession.

Among this many books, I especially love the Smiley series but my favorite Le Carre has to be Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (also made into a successful movie in which a shapeshifting Gary Oldman plays a wonderful Smiley version). In this maze  of a story, Smiley goes about to find the Russian mole inside the agency and becomes the head of the crumbling MI6 the Intelligence agency known internally as the Circus and starts to rebuild it (Le Carre created a delightful set of spy jargons like Circus). The 6 part BBC mini-series “Smiley’s People” where Alex Guinness plays Smiley is riveting too – this is available on YouTube. But that is just me; if you have to read just one of his novels or looking for a book to start, then “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” is the place to start. This gripping story would raise many moral questions and will question the assumption that West was morally superior (during the cold war era).

Le Carre’s plots are complex and covered by many layers of intrigue; he brought a seriousness to the genre by creating a dark and treacherous world driven by the political interest that was morally ambiguous, especially during and post-cold war era. After the end of the espionage era; Le Carre takes up new villains in the form of corrupt businessmen, arms dealers, terrorists, and even big pharma and continued to write in everlasting righteousness and integrity till the ripe old age of 88 (his last book Agent Running in the Field (2019) is written with Brexit as the backdrop). For all his formidable writing, he notoriously shied away from recognition; he turned down an OBE; withdrew from the Booker nomination, and gave away the Olof Palme prize money to Doctors without Borders. With his passing, a giant who wrote serious fiction, and who wrote that, better than many serious non-fiction writers passed away. Writers come and go; but someone like Le Carre, who creates a genre, rules it for nearly 60 years, and thus influencing a whole generation of authors and creators, they don’t come very often. 

John Le Carre passed away on the 12th of December 2020.