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How Smiley’s people conquered Britain John le Carré was never an Englishman's writer

Sex for the gods (Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images)

Sex for the gods (Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images)


October 10, 2022   6 mins

John le Carré, real name David Cornwell, was a spy, an absurdly successful English novelist and, we now learn from two new books about him, something of a shit. He is also an author whose work spoke to a particular generation of readers — but for reasons that have nothing to do with anything he ever wrote about espionage.

The first of the books, The Secret Heart, is written by le Carré’s former mistress who goes by her own rather splendid nom de plume, Suleika Dawson. It’s a brisk read, filled with gossip and acute observations about her subject, who seemingly alternated between insecurity and arrogance, kindness and selfishness — like most humans, but especially most writers.

It’s also a book with a fair amount of sex bits, which are generally boring, as sex bits almost always are in books (unless you’re in the first flush of puberty on holiday in Greece and have stumbled across a Jackie Collins paperback in the beach house your dad has rented, in which case they are thrilling and then, eventually, exhausting). But, given what she says, I seriously doubt le Carré would have complained:

“This was sex as I had never encountered it before, the sex I had determinedly pursued all my adult life, the sex I truly believed I had always been enjoying, until then. But this was different from anything before, by an order of magnitude. This was sex that only the hero and heroine can have; sex for the cameras, sex for the Olympics, sex for the gods.”

Crumbs. As well as sex there is also a fair bit of lying, which is inescapable given le Carré was a married man. He treats having a mistress like being back in MI6. Money for their holidays is taken from a slush fund (known as the “reptile fund”, as in his novels). The travel agents he uses to book their sojourns are the same “discreet” ones he used back in the day; he buys a flat for their trysts that he christens their “safe house” and so on. All of which is, in of itself, slightly sad, reeking of a middle-aged man living out the fictional life of so many of his characters. And all to deceive, not Moscow Station, but his wife Jane who, let’s face it, must have known.

What is interesting here is the compulsive need for deceit — or more narrowly, the need for some kind of double life. Doubles: agents and crosses and so forth are obviously integral to spy fiction. But they are also integral to le Carré’s life, which is what both books are about, because you cannot understand le Carré or his work without understanding his father, Ronnie Cornwell, a conman of unimpeachable dishonesty, who created both David Cornwell the spy (literally) and John le Carré the author.

The study of Ronnie has become so prevalent when discussing le Carré that it has become a cliché. Public school: tick. Class and empire: double tick. Ronnie: tick, tick, tick. But these subjects are inescapable, both to le Carré’s life, and more importantly, to his work.

Like so many flamboyant conmen, Ronnie was a relentless social climber. He sent his son to boarding school (Sherborne) to make him a gentleman and thereby breach the world from which Ronnie, despite his bogus Old Etonian tie and Ascot box, was forever barred. But Ronnie’s life of extravagant windfalls combined with periods of near-destitution meant that fees often went unpaid, while Ronnie’s school visits, often with relatives of varying but unyielding coarseness, mortified the young le Carré, who always claimed he lived uneasily among his peers.

Ronnie sundered his son’s life. Early in the other new book, A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré 1945-2020, we read of the “tension between le Carré’s home life, the high-wire existence of ‘Ronnie’s Court’, and the Anglican orthodoxy of [his teacher Mr] Thompson’s Sherborne”. Eventually the young le Carré couldn’t take it anymore and, when he was 16, fled. Years later, Mr Thompson, who appears to have been a colossal old bore, wrote that his escape “was all the result of an unsatisfactory home background working unhappily on a very sensitive mind… The boy found a disturbing contrast between his very material home background and what he experienced at school. He was afraid that he would “lose” his family, which he did not want to do.”

But even if he couldn’t stand it, Sherborne would leave a lasting imprint on le Carré. There, he was, for the first time, inside a traditional English institution, but not of it. And so was the pattern of a lifetime — and a body of work — set.

This, as they say, is the rub. If sex in books is often boring so is, for the most part, espionage. There are only so many dead drops and code words you can read about without the prose descending to uniform banality. But in the hands of a skilful novelist, what spying says about society is interesting. Good spy novels, like good crime novels, are always moral barometers of their settings. Every murder is an implicit statement on the value of human life; every betrayal is a judgement on the person or country or cause being betrayed. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories are pastoral idylls in which a prelapsarian England is contaminated by a serpent whom she must cast out to restore Eden. The Sherlock Holmes mysteries are 19th-century paeans to empiricism exemplified in the image of the magnifying glass that Holmes never actually used.

Le Carré’s Circus (MI6) is the inner sanctum of the British Establishment, the locus and custodian of its secrets. But the circus is also, by contrast, a world of foreigners (the Hungarian Toby Esterhase), misanthropes (its boss, Control) and outright weirdos (the donnish Connie Sachs). Even his most famous character, the irretrievably English George Smiley, is a cuckold and, by the standards of his world, an outsider from the Establishment due to his “minor” public school and unfashionable Oxford college. These are le Carré’s (and thus Smiley’s) people: products of worlds shattered by revolutions and dictators and war.

It was reading le Carré and not, say, Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl (whom I also revered before I discovered his thoughts on People Like Me) that I discovered an England that was avowedly mine. Even beyond my luminously foreign surname and Jihadi-like appearance, my world was cleaved by Events. Geopolitics sent my parents spinning across continents; mine was an England soaked in ambivalence, and it created ambivalence in me: a Greek who can’t bear shouting or fuss; a Jew who can recite the Lord’s Prayer and Anglican hymns from memory. 

In the end, with le Carré we always return to our beginnings, in his case to the need for some kind of double life. Earlyish in her book, Dawson recounts an anecdote where he has sent a love letter to the wrong address:

“That he encoded my address to keep it secret in his own home, hiding it out of a lifetime’s habit of secrecy whereby he instinctively treated his domestic environment as enemy territory. That he mangled the deciphering of his own code because he had been too long out of the field, away from the real world of secrets, even though the compulsion to create secrecy was as strong as it ever had been.”

It is in these secret, almost half-formed spaces that le Carré’s art emerged. People always make the same mistake with le Carré. They think he is a writer of Englishman’s Englishness, but he is not: he’s a writer of immigrants’ Englishness. As the books make clear, he always argued that this is because he came to the establishment as an outsider, like immigrants do, and because of Ronnie.

Now, le Carré might be regarded as a consummate insider and any idea to the contrary viewed as insulting to those who genuinely were outsiders, unable to catch a break. Viewed in a certain light, le Carré’s life was nothing but a succession of breaks. But the fact is he believed this idea, and this belief exercised huge influence on his work. You only have to look at his greatest novel, A Perfect Spy, to see Ronnie’s influence on him, or perhaps more correctly, on his artistic imagination.

Taken together: Sherborne, Ronnie, the Cold War — with its cast of exiles and misfits — created, to paraphrase Harold Macmillan, a writer who tackled both Eton and Estonia. But it is in his study of the latter that his lasting value lies. The MI6 of le Carré’s novels was, in this sense, a trailblazer. The first institution to allow this new breed — people that as a child I recognised as being like me and so many of my friends — to run Britain’s secret service.

Now, as I look around me — from the Cabinet to the media to the universities and banks, that is to say, the institutions — I see British men and women of the type he wrote about so well, and whom I recognise as so familiar, finally emerging from what were once marginal spaces. I have gone from seeing myself reflected in the people who ran the circus, to the people who now run the Treasury. What began in the Sixties has reached its conclusion. Smiley’s people — his half-breeds and exiles — have entered the mainstream, to play their part in reshaping our country, not covertly or in secret, but in the full glare of public life.


David Patrikarakos is UnHerd‘s foreign correspondent. His latest book is War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. (Hachette)

dpatrikarakos

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Patrick Heren
Patrick Heren
2 years ago

Britain has always been open to enterprising outsiders. Disraeli, for instance, or the Sassoons, or my own family, who were 19th century Germans. They needed to learn the code – how to speak, write, dress and to some extent think, but they were quickly accepted. There is a good joke told by the late Milton Shulman.
Goldberg is strolling down Piccadilly when he runs into an orthodox rabbi of his acquaintance. After exchanging pleasantries, the rabbi gives Goldberg an appraising look.
“Tell me Goldberg, how do you manage to look so English? I would like to look like an Englishman too.”
“It is very simple, rabbi, you just have to shave off your beard, stop wearing that long coat and the old black suit. Then it is just a matter of wearing the right clothes.”
“But where do I find these clothes?”
“You just have to go to the right shops: you buy your shoes at Lobb, your hats at Locks, you get your shirts and ties at Turnbull & Asser, your suits at Huntsman and your wallet and signet ring at Aspreys.”
The rabbi notes all this down, thanks Goldberg and goes on his way.
Six months later Goldberg runs into the rabbi in Berkeley Square. The transformation is total: the rabbi is clean-shaven and wearing a beautifully cut tweed suit and soft trilby, carrying a tightly furled umbrella. Goldberg congratulates him.
“It was all thanks to you Goldberg, you showed me how to do it,” he said mournfully.
“But rabbi, why are you so sad?”
“I am sad, Goldberg, because we have lost India.”

Aaron James
Aaron James
2 years ago
Reply to  Patrick Heren

fantastic

James Kirk
James Kirk
2 years ago

Writers write about what they know, see and imagine. Ian Fleming’s Bond, Aston Martins, Riviera lifestyle and fast women cheered up the grey austere world of the 20th Century and did more for national pride than anything, much envied still around the World. That Le Carré painted a more realistic picture struck some balance. Spies lie and murder and damage governments. Loose lips sink ships, the role of journalists these days.

Aaron James
Aaron James
2 years ago
Reply to  James Kirk

”the role of journalists these days.”

Are there such people now days? All I hear are opinion and agenda. The sacred and impartial ‘5W1H is shorthand for “Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.”.’ of the journalism trade are now long gone.

Brett H
Brett H
2 years ago

Stretching things a bit in this article. Nice try but doesn’t really work.
“the circus is also, by contrast, a world of foreigners (the Hungarian Toby Esterhase), misanthropes (its boss, Control) and outright weirdos (the donnish Connie Sachs). Even his most famous character, the irretrievably English George Smiley, is a cuckold and, by the standards of his world, an outsider from the Establishment due to his “minor” public school and unfashionable Oxford college.”
Foreign is different. But misanthropes,, weirdos and cuckolds, they’re just the others in town? Nothing different in that.

Last edited 2 years ago by Brett H
David Kingsworthy
David Kingsworthy
2 years ago
Reply to  Brett H

Indeed, the misanthropes, weirdos and cuckolds are irretrievably English, just like George.
As an American my understanding of Englishness was, is still, limited in breadth and depth. But the Smiley books seemed to capture its essence.
That Cornwall was really Smiley comes as no surprise.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
2 years ago

The thing it made me realize – once again – is that I’m generally better off not knowing much about the background of writers, because – like actors – it taints their work ever after. I really enjoyed reading “Tinker, Tailor…” and “Smiley’s People” many years ago. I doubt I would have had I known some of this background.
It shouldn’t be that way – I know. But it’s the same with actors. There are a collection of actors whose public behavior (particularly when they get extremely political) makes it virtually impossible for me to watch movies they are in afterward. I’m not boycotting them. I find it impossible when I’m watching them act to separate in my head my knowledge of who they are as people. It’s my loss – some of them are good actors. I just can’t separate the two domains.
No human being can live a life without doing and saying stupid things they regret (or should regret). If one is going to make a living that requires public acclaim, it seems foolish to do and say things which will alienate a large percentage of your potential customers. Now LeCarre didn’t probably do this – in fact he seems to have attempted to keep his private life private. Good for him. To bad his mistress didn’t do likewise. But then she seems to have nothing to lose and everything to gain by it.
I guess there is a lesson for me in that – once again – I fabricated a phony backstory of a non-existent personality. We all need people to look up to, I guess. And when they don’t exist we make them up.

John Dee
John Dee
2 years ago

Of course, if we didn’t read writers who act like complete shits, we’d have a rather thinner choice of literature to explore

Erik Hildinger
Erik Hildinger
2 years ago

I’ve always considered Le Carre a remarkable stylist– really a writer who transcended his genre. His literary technique is worth studying, I think. The repetition of his basic themes (lying, betrayal and immoral government) can be seen in his early economical Looking Glass War which, I think, contains all of the themes you find in his later books. His themes are repeated across his other works of course, but that seems quite usual for artists.
erikhildinger.com

John Dee
John Dee
2 years ago
Reply to  Erik Hildinger

For me, after the Smiley books, he just wrote the same thing with different names. I read on, hoping for some leavening of approach, but reward came there none.

Bromley Man
Bromley Man
2 years ago

Last para doesn’t make sense. It’s the spivs not Smiley who have taken over – Ronnie’s world.

Aaron James
Aaron James
2 years ago
Reply to  Bromley Man

well said

Aaron James
Aaron James
2 years ago
Reply to  Aaron James

Although with today’s hiring quotas god knows who will be running it in the future.

Mark epperson
Mark epperson
2 years ago

Not bad. Unfortunately, the mistress really can’t be believed as she has every reason to make it up. Not saying it didn’t happen the way she says it did, but I certainly discount her story, as well as her virtue.
That being said, le Carre was, by far, the best of his genre, and right up there with the best as one other commenter mentioned. The author despised the upper echelons of the British Government, and rightly so.
Just because the current ruling class is less “British” certainly doesn’t mean that are any better, and one can argue, they are worse. I would imagine le Carre would despise the current crop as much as he did the ones of the last 60 years. That is why I love his writing.

Andrew Vigar
Andrew Vigar
2 years ago

“Crumbs.” Day. Made.

Aaron James
Aaron James
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Vigar

A lovely bit of classic British writing….one perfect word, I noticed that too….

Justin Clark
Justin Clark
2 years ago

good article thanks
bio recommended – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22535415-john-le-carr

Christian LeBlanc
Christian LeBlanc
2 years ago

Vaguely related, the third paragraph reminded me of this Dream Academy lyric:
She shared a house with her sister and mother
It belonged to a painter who rented out for the summer
Her father had already gone home
The days were quiet and we were both alone

andy young
andy young
2 years ago

“All of which is, in of itself, slightly sad, reeking of a middle-aged man living out the fictional life of so many of his characters.”
His resultant sex life didn’t seem too sad. I suppose he might say the ends justified the means.

Jim Petts
Jim Petts
2 years ago

What a totally ruthless swine Smiley was: he threw Alec under a bus without a backward glance, and got his executioner to plug Jerry.

Fred Paul
Fred Paul
2 years ago
Reply to  Jim Petts

Have you ever met Trump. And that was real life!

MI6 UK
MI6 UK
2 years ago

The revelations about David Cornwell’s sex life are not the sort of posthumous applause most would seek! Nevertheless I am glad to see John le Carré’s Night Manager is back in fashion in India and his private letters et al in A Private Spy have entered the public domain. In his lifetime, every time John le Carré published a new thriller most of his contemporary authors deemed it yet another masterpiece but John le Carré doesn’t have a record of being enamoured by his fellow authors let alone journalists.
 
Le Carré, Ian Fleming and Len Deighton did meet one another from time to time but apparently their meetings ended in near nuclear arguments about who was best equipped to write realistic espionage novels. It’s a shame all three focused on fiction but of course not one of them had first-hand experience of being a secret agent notwithstanding Fleming’s experiences in the Admiralty and le Carré’s in Five and Six until Kim Philby outed all le Carré’s agents operating in Europe. Of course, Philby and Oleg Gordievsky both knew Col Alan Pemberton CVO MBE aka Mac, Bill Fairclough’s true life MI6 handler in The Burlington Files which is a must read for all espionage cognoscenti.
 
Bill Fairclough, MI6 codename JJ, aka Edward Burlington, was the protagonist in The Burlington Files series of fact based spy novels and did have real life experience of being a secret agent albeit not focused so much on the USSR in the Cold War. Critics have likened Fairclough to a “posh or sophisticated Harry Palmer” which probably didn’t appeal to le Carré. We do know that Fairclough once contacted le Carré in 2014 to do a collaboration. Le Carré responded along the lines of “Why should I? I’ve got by so far without collaboration so why bother now?” A realistic response from a famous expert in fiction who lost his MI6 job after being deceived by Philby!
 
Do look up the authors or books mentioned on Amazon, Google The Burlington Files or visit https://theburlingtonfiles.org and https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang

Malcolm Webb
Malcolm Webb
2 years ago

I recommend The Pigeon Tunnel ( 2016) for an unreliable part autobiography/ part reflections on the world . His family life clearly was very painful. Not only Ronnie but also the unloving mother Olive. He seemed keen to demonstrate his wealth, his love of Germany and his enjoyment of deception. I didn’t find it an easy read but it might improve on a second read, which I may give it.

Fred Paul
Fred Paul
2 years ago

How I miss the rhythm, a skilled writer can impose artfully manipulating your heartbeat on a piece. This isn’t one. But, nice read.  More on the subject here… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_le_Carr%C3%A9

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
2 years ago

The 1980 TV version and the 2011 version of TTSS are fantastic. I reckon the 2011 version is better casted than the 1980 version. I’d be Smiley or Jim Prideaux. I’d be very smug when I took over; much smugger than either Guinness or Oldman.

Last edited 2 years ago by Tony Taylor
Alex Swift
Alex Swift
2 years ago
Reply to  Tony Taylor

Sorry, but the 1980 tv series was the gold standard for J leC novels. The grainyness of the images, the slow pace and the location backgrounds epitomise the Cold War Context beautifully. The movie seemed to be aimed at mid west pop corn guzzlers.

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  Alex Swift

Thanks – I enjoyed them both but the BBC series is the far better version.

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
2 years ago
Reply to  Tony Taylor

Okay, so I went back to watch the 1980 version, and even though I’ve seen it before, it pulled me right in right away. It’s still fantastic, but I stand by my observation that the 2011 cast is fabulous.