Spy author John le Carre dies of pneumonia, aged 89

Former member of MI6, who wrote The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, has been hailed as a literary giant

Spy author John le Carre dies of pneumonia, aged 89

Spy author John le Carre dies of pneumonia, aged 89

British spy author John le Carre, writer of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Night Manager, has died aged 89, his family and literary agent said late on Sunday.

Le Carre, a former British intelligence officer whose real name was David Cornwell, turned his love for the double cross and the surprise twist into more than 20 books over six decades.

He also brought a degree of accuracy to the spy stories and, as his books were adapted for film and TV, characters such as George Smiley became loved, even with their shortcomings.

Le Carre died on Saturday evening in Cornwall, where he lived, said his agent Jonny Geller of the Curtis Brown Group.

His wife of nearly 50 years, Jane, and sons Nicholas, Timothy, Stephen and Simon, said in a statement that he died on Saturday night after a short battle with pneumonia.

"We all grieve deeply his passing," they said, thanking staff at the hospital in Cornwall, south-west England, for their care. "We know they share our sadness," they added.

He shot to fame during the chilly depths of the Cold War as master of the spy thriller, before evolving to become a scathing chronicler of the moral costs of globalisation.

Age did not wither the writer's anger at the establishment, with Brexit breathing new life into his espionage oeuvre.

In 2019, he urged Britons to "join the resistance" as they prepared to vote in a general election.

He opposed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and his anger at the US was evident in his later novels, which sold well and were turned into popular films but did not match the mastery of his Cold War bestsellers.

Fellow writers, actors and fans from around the world have paid tribute.

Gary Oldman, who starred in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, released a statement, saying: “For me, John le Carre was many things. He was, of course, a very great author, the true ‘owner’ of the serious, adult, complicated, spy novel – he actually owned the genre … He was generous with his creativity and always a true gentleman.”

American author Stephen King paid tribute by revealing that The Little Drummer Girl was "one of the best novels I've ever read", while calling le Carre a "literary giant and a humanitarian spirit".

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  John le Carre shown on dark rainy street in Hamburg in 1964. Getty Images

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  John le Carre at home with his wife Alison and their three sons, Stephen, Simon and baby Timothy in 1964. Getty Images

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  John le Carre see in 1965. Getty Images

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  John Le Carre lighting his pipe in 1980. Getty Images

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  A window display promoting the upcoming serialisation of the John Le Carre spy novel 'The Looking Glass War' in the Daily Express newspaper at the Daily Express Building in Fleet Street, 1965. Getty Images

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  John le Carre shark fishing in 1974. Getty Images

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  A portrait of John le Carre in 1980. Getty Images

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  British writer John le Carre at home in Cornwall in February 1983. Getty Images

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  Gary Oldman and John Le Carre arriving for the UK Premiere of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, in London in 2011. Getty Images

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  John Le Carre attends the 'The Night Manager' premiere during the Berlinale International Film Festival Berlin in 2016. Getty Images

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  Florence Pugh, Michael Shannon, Park Chan-wook, John le Carre and Alexander Skarsgard attend the World Premiere of "The Little Drummer Girl" at the 62nd BFI London Film Festival in 2018. Getty Images

The New York Times called him "the pre-eminent spy writer of the 20th century".

American writer Philip Roth called A Perfect Spy "the best English novel since the war", and author Graham Greene said his 1963 breakthrough work, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, was "the best spy story I ever read".

Richard Moore, chief of the UK Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), said le Carre had left his mark on the service through his novels.

Le Carre's characters chronicled the amoral methods used by western and Communist-bloc intelligence services to expose double agents during the Cold War.

The author, who made espionage terms such as “mole” and “honey trap” popular, adapted his plots after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, giving them more contemporary settings.

Le Carre's works produced for cinema and TV include the 1965 film The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, starring Richard Burton, The Russia House with Sean Connery, and A Most Wanted Man, with Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Alec Guinness starred as Smiley in the BBC's seven-part TV adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in 1979, and Smiley's People three years later.

John le Carre was a nom de plume adopted while he was working in diplomatic postings for the British government, which prohibited him from publishing under his own name.

“In the old days, it was convenient to bill me as a spy turned writer,” Le Carre once wrote on his website.

“I was nothing of the kind. I am a writer who, when I was very young, spent a few ineffectual but extremely formative years in British intelligence.”

David John Moore Cornwell was born October 19, 1931, in Poole, in the southern English county of Dorset.

His mother, Olive, abandoned the family when he was 5 and they didn’t meet again until he was 21, when he tracked her down after his father had told him she was dead.

His father, Ronnie, mixed in London's criminal circles, according to a 2011 article in The Telegraph newspaper.

He and his older brother, Tony, were forced to help his father elude the law, sparking the future author’s interest in secrets and deception.