JOHN LE CARRE
The intrigue that surrounds the life of author John le Carre is as interesting and full of mystery as the novels he creates. His unorthodox childhood has tremendously influenced not only his career as an author, but his personal life as well.
John Le Carre was born David John Moore Cornwell in 1931 to Olive and Ronnie Cornwell in Poole, Dorset. Olive abandoned the family when Cornwell was five. Of his mother’s disappearance in the middle of the night, Cornwell says: “Presumably she came in and kissed us. I simply don’t know.” Throughout his life, his father consistently made and lost fortunes due to elaborate confidence tricks and schemes, some of which landed him in prison for fraud. This planted the seed of Cornwell's fascination for secrets and deception, a budding curiosity that defined his entire life's work.
Cornwell's school life was very unhappy, and after struggling with his father's constant defaulting on school fees, he dropped out and was employed with the British Intelligence, interrogating people who had crossed the Iron Curtain into the West. He eventually became a full-time MI5 officer, running interrogations and coordinating agents. It was then he published his first novel under the nom de plume John le Carre.
Since then, he has written many highly acclaimed novels, such as A Perfect Spy, The Constant Gardener, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, The Honourable Schoolboy and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In 1954, he married Alison Sharp and had three children, but allegedly had many affairs. He later divorced and remarried Jane Eustace the following year. He often felt himself trapped, an effect of his unorthodox childhood - "I come from bolting stock. My mother bolted in order to marry my father, bolted again when I was five... My father bolted from his orthodox but repressive upbringing and kept bolting of necessity for most of his life... These things are catching, I myself bolted from an English public school at 16; from the burdens of bachelorhood at 23; from the twilight world of British intelligence at 33; and from a first marriage at 36." Cornwell now lives in seclusion, continuing to write obsessively at the age of 83.
Le Carre is an author whose works are reflected from the fogged mirrors and rippled reflections that formed the foundations of his life. His inherent fascination with deception and corruption and his insights into the real world of spying gives his novels a sense of morbidly acute reality. In an interview with journalist George Plimpton, he said “If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.” His stories explore the moral complexities of a society in conflict, and the sometimes shabbily stitched line that forms that ambiguous axis between 'who is good and who is evil'. Le Carre's novels delve into the masquerade ball that is the international game of espionage, peeling back the disguises and revealing the emotionally deprived society he grew up in. His true genius lies within his ability to transpose his own blurred identity into a fictional world that highlights fundamental downfalls of humanity, fulfilling his need to "use the metaphysical secret world to describe some realities of the overt world."
The complex and intriguing characters he creates are what truly allow his novels to be classified as masterpieces. As society is built upon the people that inhabit it, so do le Carre's books. Emotionally complex, cynical, skeptic or romantic; his skillful characterisation is another element that transcends the mantle of fiction and gives his books a haunting sense of reality, one that you can detect, as a reader, comes from his own traumatic childhood experiences of betrayal, fraud and abandon. He even admits, in an interview with Dean Fischer from Time magazine, that his characters "are written from an internal viewpoint; all are refractions of autobiography."
A concoction of a mysterious upbringing and a depressing viewpoint of the world have combined to create one of the greatest authors of our time. Selling worldwide, his dark insights into the realities of espionage have guaranteed his ironically illusory name to be upheld for a long time as a truly exceptional author.
John Le Carre was born David John Moore Cornwell in 1931 to Olive and Ronnie Cornwell in Poole, Dorset. Olive abandoned the family when Cornwell was five. Of his mother’s disappearance in the middle of the night, Cornwell says: “Presumably she came in and kissed us. I simply don’t know.” Throughout his life, his father consistently made and lost fortunes due to elaborate confidence tricks and schemes, some of which landed him in prison for fraud. This planted the seed of Cornwell's fascination for secrets and deception, a budding curiosity that defined his entire life's work.
Cornwell's school life was very unhappy, and after struggling with his father's constant defaulting on school fees, he dropped out and was employed with the British Intelligence, interrogating people who had crossed the Iron Curtain into the West. He eventually became a full-time MI5 officer, running interrogations and coordinating agents. It was then he published his first novel under the nom de plume John le Carre.
Since then, he has written many highly acclaimed novels, such as A Perfect Spy, The Constant Gardener, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, The Honourable Schoolboy and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In 1954, he married Alison Sharp and had three children, but allegedly had many affairs. He later divorced and remarried Jane Eustace the following year. He often felt himself trapped, an effect of his unorthodox childhood - "I come from bolting stock. My mother bolted in order to marry my father, bolted again when I was five... My father bolted from his orthodox but repressive upbringing and kept bolting of necessity for most of his life... These things are catching, I myself bolted from an English public school at 16; from the burdens of bachelorhood at 23; from the twilight world of British intelligence at 33; and from a first marriage at 36." Cornwell now lives in seclusion, continuing to write obsessively at the age of 83.
Le Carre is an author whose works are reflected from the fogged mirrors and rippled reflections that formed the foundations of his life. His inherent fascination with deception and corruption and his insights into the real world of spying gives his novels a sense of morbidly acute reality. In an interview with journalist George Plimpton, he said “If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.” His stories explore the moral complexities of a society in conflict, and the sometimes shabbily stitched line that forms that ambiguous axis between 'who is good and who is evil'. Le Carre's novels delve into the masquerade ball that is the international game of espionage, peeling back the disguises and revealing the emotionally deprived society he grew up in. His true genius lies within his ability to transpose his own blurred identity into a fictional world that highlights fundamental downfalls of humanity, fulfilling his need to "use the metaphysical secret world to describe some realities of the overt world."
The complex and intriguing characters he creates are what truly allow his novels to be classified as masterpieces. As society is built upon the people that inhabit it, so do le Carre's books. Emotionally complex, cynical, skeptic or romantic; his skillful characterisation is another element that transcends the mantle of fiction and gives his books a haunting sense of reality, one that you can detect, as a reader, comes from his own traumatic childhood experiences of betrayal, fraud and abandon. He even admits, in an interview with Dean Fischer from Time magazine, that his characters "are written from an internal viewpoint; all are refractions of autobiography."
A concoction of a mysterious upbringing and a depressing viewpoint of the world have combined to create one of the greatest authors of our time. Selling worldwide, his dark insights into the realities of espionage have guaranteed his ironically illusory name to be upheld for a long time as a truly exceptional author.