The lying life of John le Carré
It wasn't only in his pseudonymous spy fiction that the late novelist practised the art of invention – from childhood, David Cornwell's life was defined by deception.
How do you assess the life of a liar? Someone who, by their own admission, was “Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practiced in it as a novelist”. John le Carré, who died on 12 December at the age of 89, hadn’t worked as a spy since leaving British intelligence in 1964. But as a writer, as “a maker of fictions”, he once wrote that “I invent versions of myself, never the real thing, if it exists”.