Such a bleak portrayal of the Cold War shaped popular Western perceptions of the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States that dominated the second half of the 20th century until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. No one knows where the lines are,” Sachs says in the final novel of Le Carre’s Karla trilogy. That’s the trouble,” Connie Sachs, British intelligence’s resident alcoholic expert on Soviet spies, tells spy catcher George Smiley in the 1979 novel “Smiley’s People”. “It’s not a shooting war anymore, George.
Unlike the glamour of Ian Fleming’s unquestioning James Bond, le Carre’s heroes were trapped in the wilderness of mirrors inside British intelligence which was reeling from the betrayal of Kim Philby, who fled to Moscow in 1963. “A giant of literature who left his mark on MI6 through his evocative and brilliant novels.”īy exploring treachery at the heart of British intelligence in spy novels, le Carre challenged Western assumptions about the Cold War by defining for millions the moral ambiguities of the battle between the Soviet Union and the West. “Very sad to hear the news about John le Carre,” said Richard Moore, the chief of Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence agency. The family said in a brief statement he died of pneumonia.
He is survived by his wife, Jane, and four sons. David Cornwell, known to the world as John le Carre, died after a short illness in Cornwall, southwestern England, on Saturday evening.
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