John le Carré: Difference between revisions

{{tropecreator}}

Real name David John Moore Cornwell, he'''John le Carré''' was a real-life member of [[MI 5]] and the [[Secret Intelligence Service]] until he was blown by [[Cambridge Five|Kim Philby]] to the KGB. While he was in the service, he started writing novels and carried on once he'd left.

Has added several espionage [[Stock Phrases]] (and popularised existing ones), both among the public and, apparently, [[DefictionalizationDefictionalisation|real spies]].

* ''[[The Spy Who Came in Fromfrom Thethe Cold]]'' (1963): adapted into a film and considered a classic.

* ''[[The Quest for Karla]]'' trilogy: ''Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'', ''The Honourable Schoolboy'' and ''Smiley's People''. The first and third were dramatised by [[The BBC]] (two, considering its setting--mid 1970s SE Asia--is a bit harder to do, but a radio adaptation exists) and starred Alec Guinness as George Smiley. [[Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Filmfilm)|A feature film]] of ''Tinker'' was released in 2011, starring [[Gary Oldman]] as George Smiley.

* [[Anti -Villain]]: The first novel in particular. {{spoiler|Two Jews who survived the Nazis, one in a concentration camp}} wind up as spies because {{spoiler|they fear another Holocaust}}.

* [[Based Onon a True Story]] (most of his books have at least a grain of true events in there; Smiley is thought by some to be based on SIS chief Sir Maurice Oldfield, although Le Carré himself identified author and [[MI 5]] officer John Bingham, 7th Baron Clanmorris, as Smiley's model)

* [[De FictionalisationDefictionalization]] (Some spy-speak that le Carre just made up, such as "tradecraft", is now actually used by [[MI 5MI5]] and [[MI 6MI6]] agents in [[Real Life]])

* [[May -December Romance]] : VERY common in the books, with romances by Jaded spies and confused beautiful Twenty-Something women showing up in eight of his books. George Smiley himself marries a woman twenty years his junior.

* [[Ripped Fromfrom the Headlines]] : Several of his books have come out in advance of the headlines from which they were ripped. A few months after ''Single & Single'' was released, there was a minor scandal involving Citibank laundering money for Russian Mobsters. Le Carré's submitted his manuscript for ''Our Game'', a book about a civil war breaking out in the Caucasus, about three months before the rekindling of war in Chechnya. And ''The Constant Gardiner'' came out just as the New York Times published a series on the misdeeds of pharmaceutical companies in Africa.

[[Category:John Lele CarreCarré]]