John le Carré

About John le Carre

David John Moore Cornwell famed as John le Carre was a popular British author of espionage novels who worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) during the 1950s and 1960s. His first two novels, Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962), are mystery fiction. 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 its publication, he left MI6 to become a full-time writer. 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. Most of his books are spy stories set during the Cold War (1945-1991) 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. He records a number of incidents from his period as a diplomat in his autobiographical work, "The Pigeon Tunnel. Stories from My Life" (2016), which include escorting six visiting German parliamentarians to a  London brothel and translating at a meeting between a senior German politician and Harold Macmillan. In the year 2019, he wrote, "I think my own ties to England were hugely loosened over the last few years. And it’s a kind of liberation if a sad kind."

John le Carre's Cause of Death

John le Carre died from pneumonia at Royal Cornwall Hospital on 12 December 2020, at age 89. The author of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy died from pneumonia on Saturday (12th December 2020). "David is survived by his beloved wife of almost 50 years, Jane, and his sons Nicholas, Timothy, Stephen, and Simon. "We all grieve deeply his passing. Our thanks go to the wonderful NHS team at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro for the care and compassion that he was shown throughout his stay. We know they share our sadness." The statement said his death was not Covid-19 related. Several of le Carré's 25 works were turned into films including The Constant Gardener, The Tailor of Panama and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, while the Night Manager became a successful BBC television series. His most famous character, George Smiley, who first appeared in Call for the Dead, has been played by actors including Rupert Davies, Alec Guinness, and Gary Oldman. Author Margaret Atwood tweeted that the Smiley novels were the "key to understanding the mid-20th century". 

Source: @deadline

John le Carre's Early Life

John le Carre was famous for being an author of espionage novels. He was best recognized for his work on Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). He is best known for publishing his third novel, "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (1963), which became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works. 

John le Carre was born with the birthname of David John Moore Cornwell on 19th October 1931 in Poole, England, the UK. His hometown was in Dorset. He held British-Irish nationality and his ethnic background was British-White. His race was White. Libra was his Zodiac sign and his religion was Christian. He lastly celebrated his 89th birthday.  He was born to his parents; Ronald Thomas Archibald (Ronnie) Cornwell (1906-75) (father), and Olive Moore Cornwell (née Glassey, b. 1906) (mother). He also had siblings; an older brother named Tony (1929-2017) who was an advertising executive and county cricketer (for Dorset), younger half-sister, Charlotte Cornwell (actress), younger half-brother, Rupert Cornwell (former Washington Bureau Chief for the newspaper 'The Independent'. He said he did not know his mother, who abandoned him when he was five years old. His father had been jailed for insurance fraud, was an associate of the Kray twins, and was continually in debt. 

Concerning his education, he started his education at St Andrew's Preparatory School and then continued at Sherborne School. He studied foreign languages at the University of Bern in Switzerland from the year 1948 to 1949. After that, he joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army garrisoned in Allied-occupied Austria, working as a German language interrogator of people who crossed the Iron Curtain to the West in the year 1950. During his studies, he was a member of a dining society known as "The Goblin Club". When his father was declared bankrupt in 1954, he left Oxford to teach at Millfield Preparatory School. He then taught French and German at Eton College for two years, becoming an MI5 officer in 1958. He also agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephone lines, and effected break-ins. He was later transferred to MI6, the foreign-intelligence service, and worked under the cover of Second Secretary at the British Embassy at Bonn in the year 1960. His career as an intelligence officer came to an end as the result of the betrayal of British agents' covers to the KGB by Kim Philby, the infamous British double agent in the year 1964. 

John le Carre was a handsome man with an average body build. He had a perfect height matching his body weight. He had chubby cheeks and he wore glass as well. His hair color is white and his eye color is light brown. He left this world on 12th December 2020 due to pneumonia. 

John le Carre's Career

• In the year 1961, John le Carre wrote his very first novel "Call for the Dead".
• He wrote the detective story "A Murder of Quality" (1962) and "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (1963). 
• His book "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works; following its publication. 
• His next book, "The Looking Glass War", was a satire about an increasingly deadly espionage mission that ultimately proves pointless. 
• After that, he wrote, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "The Honourable Schoolboy", and "Smiley's People" (The Karla trilogy). 
• Later, he brought the novel named "The Secret Pilgrim" and "A Legacy of Spies".
• His next novel was "A Perfect Spy" which was published in the year 1986. 
• He later wrote a semi-autobiographical work, "The Naive and Sentimental Lover" (1971), as the story of a man's midlife existential crisis.
• His first completely post-Cold War novel, The Night Manager (1993), deals with drug and arms smuggling in the murky world of Latin American drug lords, shady Caribbean banking entities, and western officials who look the other way. 
• He also wrote "The Unbearable Peace" (1991) as a journalist. 
• He donated the short story "The King Who Never Spoke" to the Oxfam "Ox-Tales" project in the year 2009. 
• Later, he then made his appearance as an extra in the 2011 film version of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy".
• He records a number of incidents from his period as a diplomat in his autobiographical work, "The Pigeon Tunnel. Stories from My Life" (2016). 
• Moving towards his political career, he feuded with Salman Rushdie over "The Satanic Verses" in January 2003. 
• He also contributed it to a volume of political essays titled "Not One More Death" (2006). 
• He expressed concerns over the future of liberal democracy, saying "I think of all things that were happening across Europe in the 1930s, in Spain, in Japan, obviously in Germany. To me, these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it's contagious, it's infectious. Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There's encouragement about" in the year 2017. 
• He also opposed both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, arguing that their desire to seek or maintain their countries' superpower status caused an impulse "for oligarchy, the dismissal of the truth, the contempt, actually, for the electorate and for the democratic system". 
• In his final novel Agent Running in the Field, he wrote that Putin was a "fifth-rate spy" who "interpreted all life in terms of konspiratsia" and ruled Russia with a "gang of unrepentant Stalinists." 
• He was an outspoken advocate of European integration and was sharply critical of Brexit.

Source: @vulture

• In the year 2019, he wrote, "I think my own ties to England were hugely loosened over the last few years. And it's a kind of liberation, if a sad kind".
• Besides this, he was the guest in an episode of BBC Radio 4's Bookclub broadcast with presenter James Naughtie and an audience in Penzance in February 1999. 
• He was interviewed at his house in Cornwall by the journalist Jon Snow for Channel 4 News in September 2010. 
• He was interviewed for the TV show Democracy Now! in the United State where he told the interviewer, Amy Goodman, "This is the last book about which I intend to give interviews. That isn't because I'm in any sense retiring. I've found that, actually, I've said everything I really want to say, outside my books. I would just like-I'm in wonderful shape. I'm entering my eightieth year. I just want to devote myself entirely to writing and not to this particular art form of conversation."
• He was interviewed at the Hay on Wye festival on 26th May 2013. 
• He also appeared on "60 Minutes" with Steve Kroft in September 2017. 
• When interviewed by Marian Finucane on RTE Radio 1 on 26th October 2019, he stated that he had taken an Irish passport; qualifying through his grandmother Olive Wolfe who was born in Rosscarbery. 
• His sons, Simon and Stephen, founded the production company The Ink Factory in 2010. The Ink Factory has produced the films A Most Wanted Man and Our Kind of Traitor, and the TV series The Night Manager and The Little Drummer Girl.
• He had also donated his literary archive to the Bodleian Library, Oxford in 2010. The library hosted a public display of these and other items to mark World Book Day in March 2011.

John le Carre's Wife

John le Carre was a married woman. He was married to her beautiful wife, Alison Ann Veronica Sharp in the year 1954. Their married produced three kids; Simon, Stephen and Timothy. Later, due to some misunderstanding, their marriage turned to divorce. After that, he married Valarie Jane Eustace in the year 1972. The couple was blessed with a son named Nicholas. He was living in St Buryan, Cornwall, for more than 40 years; he owned a mile of a cliff near Land's End. Prior to his death, the duo was enjoying their life a lot without any disturbances. His sexual orientation was straight and he was not gay. 

Source: @newsupdatedaily

John le Carre's Net Worth 2020

John le Carre was a British author of espionage novels which is based on his real-life experiences working for the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service during the 1950s and 1960s. He had published many novels, books, and more. His most popular novel is The Spy Who Came in from the Cold which was published in 1963 and was an international best-seller. As of 2020, the net worth of John is estimated to have $100 Million as per the source. Whereas the exact salary and his career earnings John have not been revealed yet but there is no doubt in the mind of his followers that he was making a good amount of money from his career. His source of wealth was from his book career.  

Awards and Achievements of John le Carre

John le Carre was an award-winning author. He was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) from the University of Bath in the year 1998. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern in the year 2008. He was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by the University of Oxford in the year 2012. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in the year 1964. He won the Goethe Medal, a yearly prize given by the Goethe Institute in 2011. He won the Olof Palme Prize in 2020 and donated the US$100,000 winnings to Medecins Sans Frontieres. His other awards and honors are:

• 1963, British Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• 1964, Somerset Maugham Award for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• 1965, Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold 
• 1977, British Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for The Honourable Schoolboy
• 1977, James Tait Black Memorial Prize Fiction Award for The Honourable Schoolboy
• 1983, Japan Adventure Fiction Association Prize for The Little Drummer Girl
• 1984, Honorary Fellow Lincoln College, Oxford
• 1984, Mystery Writers of America Edgar Grand Master
• 1988, Crime Writers Association Diamond Dagger Lifetime Achievement Award
• 1988, The Malaparte Prize, Italy
• 1990, Honorary degree, University of Exeter
• 1990, Helmerich Award of the Tulsa Library Trust
• 1996, Honorary degree, University of St. Andrews
• 1997, Honorary degree, University of Southampton
• 1998, Honorary degree, University of Bath
• 2005, Crime Writers Association Dagger of Daggers for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• 2005, Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, France
• 2008, honorary doctorate, University of Bern
• 2011, Goethe Medal of the Goethe Institute
• 2012, Honorary doctorate, University of Oxford
• 2019, Olof Palme Prize

Source: @texasnewstoday

John Le Carre's Novels

• George Smiley and related novels 
• Call for the Dead (1961)
• A Murder of Quality (1962)
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)
• The Looking Glass War (1965)
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974)
• The Honourable Schoolboy (1977)
• Smiley's People (1979)
• The Russia House (1989)
• The Secret Pilgrim (1990)
• A Legacy of Spies (2017)

George Smiley collections

• The Incongruous Spy (1964), containing Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality
• The Quest for Karla (1982), containing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People (republished in 1995 as Smiley Versus Karla in the UK; and John Le Carré: Three Complete Novels in the U.S.)

Semi-autobiographical

• The Naïve and Sentimental Lover (1971)
• A Perfect Spy (1986)

Standalone

• A Small Town in Germany (1968)
• The Little Drummer Girl (1983)
• The Night Manager (1993)
• Our Game (1995)
• The Tailor of Panama (1996)
• Single & Single (1999)
• The Constant Gardener (2001)
• Absolute Friends (2003)
• The Mission Song (2006)
• A Most Wanted Man (2008)
• Our Kind of Traitor (2010)
• A Delicate Truth (2013)
• Agent Running in the Field (2019)

Short stories

• "Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn?" (1967), in Saturday Evening Post, 28 January 1967
• "What Ritual is Being Observed Tonight?" (1968), in Saturday Evening Post, 2 November 1968
• "A Writer and A Gentleman" (1968), in The Savile Club Centenary Magazine and later in The Argosy and The Saturday Review under the same title
• "The King Who Never Spoke" (2009), in Ox-Tales: Fire, 2 July 2009

Non-fiction

The Good Soldier (1991), collected in Granta 35: The Unbearable Peace

The United States Has Gone Mad (2003), collected in Not One More Death (2006)

Afterword (2014), an essay on Kim Philby, published in A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life (2016)

Screenplays

• End of the Line (1970)
• A Murder of Quality (1991)
• The Tailor of Panama (2001), with John Boorman and Andrew Davies

Executive producer

• The Tailor of Panama (2001)
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
• A Most Wanted Man (2014)
• The Night Manager (2016)
• Our Kind of Traitor (2016)
• The Little Drummer Girl (2018)

Actor

• The Little Drummer Girl (1984), as David Cornwell
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), as John le Carré
• The Night Manager (2016), as David Cornwell
• The Little Drummer Girl (2018)

Film

• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), directed by Martin Ritt, with Richard Burton as the protagonist, Alec Leamas
• The Deadly Affair (1967), an adaptation of Call for the Dead, directed by Sidney Lumet, with James Mason as Charles Dobbs (George Smiley in the novel)
• The Looking Glass War (1970), directed by Frank Pierson, with Anthony Hopkins as Avery, Christopher Jones as Leiser, and Sir Ralph Richardson as LeClerc
• The Little Drummer Girl (1984), directed by George Roy Hill, with Diane Keaton as Charlie
• The Russia House (1990), directed by Fred Schepisi, with Sean Connery as Barley Blair
• The Tailor of Panama (2001), directed by John Boorman, with Pierce Brosnan as Andy Osnard, a disgraced spy, and Geoffrey Rush as the emigre English tailor Harry Pendel
• The Constant Gardener (2005), directed by Fernando Meirelles, with Ralph Fiennes as Justin Quayle, set in the slums in Kibera and Loiyangalani, Kenya; the poverty so affected the film crew that they established the Constant Gardener Trust to provide basic education to those areas (John le Carré is a patron of the charity)
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), directed by Tomas Alfredson and starring Gary Oldman as George Smiley
• A Most Wanted Man (2014), directed by Anton Corbijn and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman
• Our Kind of Traitor (2016), directed by Susanna White and starring Ewan McGregor

Radio

• The Russia House (1994), BBC Radio 4, featuring Tom Baker as Barley Blair
• The Complete Smiley (2009-2010) BBC Radio 4, an eight-part radio-play series, based on the novels featuring George Smiley, commencing with Call for the Dead, broadcast on 23 May 2009, with Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley, and concluding with The Secret Pilgrim in June 2010
• A Delicate Truth (May 2013), BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, recorded by Damian Lewis
• Abridged excerpts from The Pigeon Tunnel, broadcast as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, commencing on 12 September 2016 

Television

• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979), BBC seven-part television series, with Alec Guinness as George Smiley
• Smiley's People (1982), BBC television series, with Alec Guinness as George Smiley
• A Perfect Spy (1987), BBC television adaptation directed by Peter Smith, with Peter Egan as Magnus Pym and Ray McAnally as Rick
• A Murder of Quality (1991), Thames Television adaptation directed by Gavin Millar, with Denholm Elliott as George Smiley and Joss Ackland as Terence Fielding
• The Night Manager (2016), BBC and AMC series, adapted by screenwriter David Farr and directed by Susanne Bier, with Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine and Hugh Laurie as Richard Onslow Roper
• The Little Drummer Girl (2018), BBC and AMC series, directed by Park Chan-wook, with Michael Shannon as Martin Kurtz, Alexander Skarsgard as Gadi Becker and Florence Pugh as Charlie Ross