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Explained: John Le Carré, whose George Smiley made James Bond look like an ‘international gangster’
John Le Carré created a murky moral universe of British secret service operations that was far from the prevalent notion of spying as an act of glamorous daredevilry in the service of the nation. Written by Paromita Chakrabarti , Edited by Explained Desk | New Delhi | Updated: December 18, 2020 3:13:00 pm
In this Aug. 28, 2008 file photo Author John Le Carre poses for a photo at his home in London. (AP)
British writer John Le Carré, 89, whose Cold-War tales redefined spy novels, passed away on Saturday in the UK’s Cornwall.
LondonL Kim Philby, the notorious Soviet mole who burrowed into the upper echelons of Britain’s Cold War-era intelligence services, was a subject of fear-driven fascination for novelist John le Carré. The two men, Le Carré felt, had far too much in common as upper-class-hating sons of dissolute fathers “so oversized that your only resort as a child was to subterfuge and deceit.”
For Le Carré, Philby’s traitorous life could have been his own.
“I knew, if you like, that Philby had taken a road that was dangerously open to myself, though I had resisted it,” Le Carré wrote in the introduction to a 1991 edition of his “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” novel of deceit, double agents, and moral ambiguity. “I knew that he represented one of the thank God, unrealised possibilities of my nature.”