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Biography

David Cornwell is Notable.

David was born in Poole, Dorset, England on 19 October 1931. His parents were Ronald Thomas Archibald Cornwall (1906 - 1975) and Olive Moore Glassey (1913 - 1983),^[1][2] although his mother abandoned him when he was five, and his father was frequently in prison.

After a brief and unhappy attendance at Sherborne School, he attended the University of Bern from 1948 to 1949, where he studied foreign languages ^[3]

In 1950, Cornwell joined the British Army's Intelligence Corps as a German language translator. By 1952 he was working for MI5, spying on far-left groups for information about potential Soviet agents.

Cornwell married in 1954, and divorced in 1971. The couple had three sons.^[1] In 1972 he married again. The marriage produced one son.^[1]

Also in 1954, Cornwell joined the teaching staff at Millfield School, an independent school in Somerset. Two years later, however, he graduated from the University of Oxford with a first class degree in modern languages. ^[3] Cornwell then taught French and German at Eton College. ^[3]

In 1960, Cornwell began working for MI6 (foreign intelligence) undercover as a Secretary at the British Embassy in Bonn. ^[3] It was then that he began writing under his pen name of "John le Carré".

Cornwell had to stop working for MI6 in 1964 due to the betrayal by double agent Kim Philby, who gave up British spies and their covers to the Soviets before defecting. "John le Carré" then began writing full-time. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1964 (established for writers under 35 to travel abroad).

His books became international best-sellers (see Bibliography section below and freespace page connected to this profile), and he won many awards and honorary university degrees. He had a low opinion of the character James Bond, calling him an 'international gangster' and not worthy of being included in espionage literature. Further details of le Carré's writing and his vocal political views are discussed on his Wikipedia page.

In a 2010 radio interview, le Carré stated:

"This is the last book about which I intend to give interviews. That isn't because I'm in any sense retiring. I've found that, actually, I've said everything I really want to say, outside my books. I would just like—I'm in wonderful shape. I'm entering my eightieth year. I just want to devote myself entirely to writing and not to this particular art form of conversation."

John le Carré received the Olof Palme prize in 2020 for outstanding achievement and gave all the prize money to Médecins Sans Frontières.

He died at the Royal Cornwall Hospital at Truro on 12 December 2020 from complications of pneumonia. ^[4]

Bibliography

For complete bibliography, please see freespace page

• George Smiley and related novels
  • Call for the Dead (1961)
  • A Murder of Quality (1962)
  • The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)
  • The Looking Glass War (1965)
  • Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974)
  • The Honourable Schoolboy (1977)
  • Smiley's People (1979)
  • The Russia House (1989)
  • The Secret Pilgrim (1990)
  • A Legacy of Spies (2017)

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Wikipedia entry for John le Carré.
2. ↑ Birth Register. Poole, Dorset. December Quarter 1931. Volume 5a, Page 326. Image: Ancestry.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3} The International Who's Who of Authors and Writers 2004 Psychology Press, Europa Publications, 2003, pp. 116 - 117
4. ↑ John le Carre obituary in The Guardian Newspaper (London, England) online edition 13 December 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/13/john-le-carre-author-of-tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-dies-aged-89

See Also:

• https://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm?author_number=266