John Le Carré

David Cornwell was born into an unhappy home. His mother abandoned the family when he was five, and his father associated with organized criminals and was jailed for insurance fraud. After being educated in England and Switzerland, Cornwell joined the M15, the British domestic security service. In this job, he tried to learn about Soviet connections to far left-wing groups in England. In 1960, he joined the M16, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, operating out of the British embassy in Bonn, West Germany and Hamburg. Bored with this work and unhappy in his marriage, Cornwell began writing, and published under the name John Le Carré. His first two books, Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality were mystery novels, although both featured characters like Hans-Dietrich Mundt and George Smiley who would reappear in his later spy fiction. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was his first espionage novel. It was approved for publication by the M16, after they carefully vetted it for classified information and found none. The novel was a colossal success, and Cornwell went on to quit the M16 to work full-time as a novelist. Many of his books have been turned into acclaimed movies and television shows. In 2017, Le Carré will publish a new book that focuses on the character Peter Guillam, a character from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It will be the ninth book in the “George Smiley” series.