John le Carré

John le Carré
John le Carré in Hamburg (10 November 2008)
John le Carré in Hamburg (10 November 2008)
Born David John Moore Cornwell
19 October 1931 (1931-10-19) (age 78)
Poole, Dorset, England
Occupation Novelist
Nationality British
Genres Spy fiction
Notable work(s) The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

John le Carré, the pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell (born 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England), is an English author of espionage novels. Le Carré has resided in St Buryan, Cornwall, Great Britain, for more than forty years where he owns a mile of cliff close to Land's End. As he himself says of his lifestyle in an interview with Melvyn Bragg:

“ He moves as the mood takes him, from Cornwall to his house near Hampstead Heath in London, to Switzerland, to goofing around abroad. His domestic life is stiffened by four sons; his wife, Jane, who used to work in publishing; two dogs; good friends, and books, the carefully eclectic list of a well-aimed mind.[1] ”

Contents

Early life and career

The son of Richard Thomas Archibald (Ronnie) Cornwell (1906–1975) and Olive (Gassy) Cornwell, John le Carré was born on 19 October 1931. The actress Charlotte Cornwell is his sister and he has a brother Tony, a retired advertising executive, who is 2 years older. Le Carré had a difficult relationship with his father, who had been jailed for insurance fraud and was constantly in debt. According to le Carré:

“ His father, Ronnie, made and lost his fortune a number of times due to elaborate confidence tricks and schemes which landed him in prison on at least one occasion. This was one of the factors that led to his fascination with secrets. His father was also the inspiration for the lead character in 'The Honourable Schoolboy' (1977).[2] ”

He states he did not know his mother, who abandoned him at the age of five, until he became reacquainted with her again when he was 21.

He began his formal schooling at St. Andrew's preparatory school near Pangbourne, Berkshire, and continued at Sherborne School but he was unhappy here with the harsh regime of an English public school at that time and dropped out. He also disliked his housemaster, Thomas, who was a strong disciplinarian. From 1948–49, he studied foreign languages at the University of Berne, then studied at Lincoln College, Oxford. He had to leave in 1954 when his father went bankrupt and acquired a teaching position at a boy's prep school. However, he was able to return to Oxford a year later and graduated with First Class Honours degree B.A. in 1956. He then taught French and German at Eton College for two years.

Le Carré left Eton in 1959 to spend the next five years working for the British Foreign Service. He initially served as the Second Secretary in the British Embassy in Bonn, but eventually was transferred to Hamburg for service as a political consul before being ultimately recruited into MI6. He started his first novel, 'Call For The Dead', while employed in the operational section of MI5. He was encouraged in this endeavor by Lord Clanmorris (who wrote crime novels under the pen-name of John Bingham). Lord Clanmorris was one of the two men - Vivian H. H. Green being the other - - who inspired le Carré's most famous character, George Smiley. Green first met Cornwell as a schoolboy when he was the Chaplain and Assistant Master, Sherborne School (1942–1951), and then later as Rector at Lincoln's College.

Le Carré moved from M15 to M16 and was posted in Berlin at the time the Wall was erected. Call for the Dead was finally published in 1961 and was lauded by Graham Greene who said it was the best spy story he had ever read. It also introduced the character of George Smiley. Cornwell wrote under his pseudonym of John le Carré because it was not acceptable for members of the Foreign Office to publish under their own names.

Le Carré's career as a secret agent was destroyed by Kim Philby, a British double agent, who blew the cover of dozens of British agents to the KGB, David Cornwell being among them. Years later, Le Carré carefully depicted and analysed Philby's weakness and deceit in the guise of "Gerald," the mole hunted by George Smiley in the central novel of le Carré's work, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Then followed the revelation that fictional spymaster George Smiley was modelled on Vivian H. H. Green.

In 1954, he married Alison Ann Veronica Sharp; they had three sons, Simon, Stephen and Timothy. They divorced in 1971. In 1972, he married Valérie Jane Eustace, a book editor with Hodder & Stoughton; this marriage produced one son, Nicholas, who writes as Nick Harkaway.

In 1964 he won the Somerset Maugham Award, an award established by Maugham to enable British authors under the age of 35 to enrich their writing by spending time abroad.

As an author

Nearly all of his novels fall in the spy-thriller genre, with a particular emphasis on the Cold War. A notable exception is The Naïve and Sentimental Lover. This novel has autobiographical elements as it is based on the author's relationship with James and Susan Kennaway following the breakdown of his first marriage.

Le Carré's first two novels, Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, closely follow the mystery fiction approach, where the emphasis is on a complex riddle that hero George Smiley must solve. In later, longer works, such as The Honourable Schoolboy and The Night Manager, Le Carré approaches his material more as novelist and less as a mystery writer, focusing on the in-depth development of his characters.

Le Carré's work is in many ways a critical and reasoned response to the lurid sensationalism of the James Bond genre of spy writing. His heroes are three-dimensional, their engagement with the world more realistic, and their circumstances markedly unglamorous. There is little of the 'action thriller' in his stories, no high-tech gadgetry and only a limited degree of violence; the drama comes primarily in the intensive mental activity of his protagonists. In some novels, such as A Small Town in Germany, almost the entire story unfolds in the form of dialogue between the major characters. Le Carré is widely hailed as writing some of the most literary and philosophically significant genre fiction of the 20th century.

His works also differ from the Bond books in that they are morally complex; there are constant reminders of the fallibility of western espionage systems and western countries in general, often with the implication that the Soviet bloc and the NATO bloc are essentially two sides of the same coin. The simplicity of the good-versus-SMERSH or SPECTRE world of Ian Fleming has no place in Le Carré's work, where the spies seem to serve espionage more than any ideology. Le Carré is more interested in the uncertainty inherent in spycraft—the most unimpeachable information from the enemy might always prove to be bait or a trap, a logic that tends to render the information obtained far less useful. In short, his books leave behind an unmistakable air of scepticism.

A Perfect Spy, Le Carré's most autobiographical novel, deals with the author's peculiar relationship with his father. Lynndianne Beene, the author of a biography of le Carré, describes Richard Cornwell as "an epic con man of little education, immense charm, extravagant tastes, but no social values". Beene quotes Le Carré's reflection on the novel that "writing A Perfect Spy is probably what a very wise shrink would have advised".

Le Carre is also the author of The Unbearable Peace, a lengthy non-fiction account of Jean-Louis Jeanmaire. [1]

Film and television

In 1965, Martin Ritt directed the first film adaptation of a John le Carré novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, featuring Richard Burton as "Alec Leamas", the novel's protagonist. In 1966, Sidney Lumet directed The Deadly Affair, a film of the novel Call for the Dead (for some reason, George Smiley was renamed Charles Dobbs, played by James Mason). In 1969, Frank Pierson directed the film of The Looking Glass War.

In 1979, the BBC adapted the first novel in the Quest for Karla trilogy, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, into a television miniseries with Alec Guinness leading an all-star cast as "George Smiley." In 1981, Guinness reprised "Smiley" in the BBC adaptation of Smiley's People, the trilogy's last novel.

The trilogy's middle novel, The Honourable Schoolboy, a story about Jerry Westerby (Joss Ackland in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), was not adapted as the BBC thought a production in South East Asia would be prohibitively expensive.

In 1984, Diane Keaton was The Little Drummer Girl. In 1987, A Perfect Spy was adapted into a television miniseries starring Peter Egan and Ray McAnally. In 1990, Sean Connery was "Barley Blair" in Fred Schepisi's film of The Russia House. In 1991, A Murder of Quality was adapted by Gavin Millar for television. In 2001, another former cinema James Bond Pierce Brosnan was the spy in The Tailor of Panama.

In 2005, the film of The Constant Gardener was released, based on the novel of the same name set in slums in Kibera and Loiyangalani, Kenya. The poverty so affected the film crew that they set up the Constant Gardener Trust to provide basic education to those villages. John le Carré is a patron of the charity.

Politics and honours

Le Carré published an essay entitled "The United States has gone mad" in The Times in January 2003, protesting against the war in Iraq, saying:

“ How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. ”

He has turned down a number of awards, including a knighthood. He is the author of a testimonial in The Future of the NHS (2006) (ISBN 1858113695) edited by Dr. Michelle Tempest.

Feud with Rushdie

He has had a long-running feud with the author Salman Rushdie, arguing that the publication of Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, as an affront to Muslim sensibilities, predictably put Rushdie and other people connected with the publication in danger. Rushdie in turn accused le Carré of misunderstanding his work and siding with those who imposed a fatwa on him, forcing him into hiding.

"Best of le Carré"

In an interview with Mark Lawson broadcast on 5 October 2008 on BBC 4 le Carré was asked what works he might put in a hypothetical "Best of le Carré". His answer was:

Bibliography

Novels

Non-fiction

Short stories

Omnibus

Screenplays

Executive producer

Actor

Sources

See also

Further reading

External links

Persondata
NAME Carré, John le
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cornwell, David John Moore
SHORT DESCRIPTION Writer
DATE OF BIRTH 19 October 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Poole, Dorset, England
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH