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rehe British writer John le Carré died on Saturday at the age of 89 in Cornwall. This was announced by his agent Jonny Geller on Sunday night. “Our hearts go out to his four children, their families and his loving wife, Jane,” Geller said. “For more than six decades, John le Carré dominated the bestseller lists and literary criticism with his impressive work.”
Born David Cornwell, Le Carré worked as an agent for the British MI6 secret service before beginning his writing career. The spy novel became his profession. In 1961 he began to write his third novel, “The spy who came out of the cold”, which was a major international breakthrough. John le Carré has published a total of 25 novels, all of which made the international bestseller lists.
John le Carré was born on October 19, 1931 in Poole / Dorset. At sixteen, he left school to study modern languages in Bern. He completed his language studies at Oxford in 1956. For the next two years he worked as a professor at Eton College. His secret service career began in 1958. Le Carré had done his military service in the British Army intelligence service in Vienna. Now he became an agent and remained so until 1964, first for the British domestic secret service (MI5), then for the foreign secret service (MI6). Officially he was second secretary to the British embassy in Bonn from 1960 to 1963, after which he was briefly employed as a British vice consul in Hamburg.
Le Carré’s first novel came out during his stay in Bonn. “The shadow of yesterday”. In 1966, the book was made into a movie with the title “A Deadly Affair”. Le Carré introduced here his famous MI6 agent, George Smiley. In 1962 the second book “First Class Murder” appeared, the following year the novel “The Spy Who Came from the Cold”, which was also made into a film, with Richard Burton in the main role. The book was such a success that le Carré was able to put down and concentrate entirely on writing.
“Once a spy, always a spy”
From then on, he avoided the world of secret services, as he said in an interview with “Spiegel,” but he stayed connected with his mindset: “Once a spy, always a spy, I think that’s absolutely correct. And I don’t know if I’m a writer who became a spy or a spy who eventually became a writer. “
Le Carré moved with his family to Vienna, then to Crete and returned to England. In 1974 his book “Dame, König, Ace, Spion” was published, which was based on the life of British double agent Kim Philby. The BBC turned this novel into a television series. The lead character of the sensitive and brooding secret service man Smiley, whom Carré claims to have modeled in addition to his Oxford teacher, the Reverend Vivian Greene, as well as John Bingham, a former MI5 secret service agent and later writer, As well as himself, he played Alec Guinness. The character of George Smiley remained linked to him Carré, in 1991 he released the thriller “The Secret Companion”. According to the FAZ critic, the book reads like “an ironic pilgrimage through an imaginary Cold War museum” and aims to “take away the reader’s enthusiasm for the victory of the West and the fall of the Iron Curtain.”
