John le Carré

About John le Carré

Who is it?: Writer, Producer, Actor
Birth Day: October 19, 1931
Birth Place:  Poole, Dorset, England, United Kingdom
Occupation: Novelist Former intelligence officer
Language: English
Education: Sherborne School University of Bern
Alma mater: Lincoln College, Oxford
Genre: Spy fiction
Notable works: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy The Honourable Schoolboy Smiley's People A Perfect Spy The Night Manager The Constant Gardener
Spouse: Alison Sharp (m. 1954; div. 1971) Valerie Eustace (m. 1972)
Children: 4

John le Carré

John le Carré was born on October 19, 1931 in  Poole, Dorset, England, United Kingdom, is Writer, Producer, Actor. He was born in Poole, Dorset in England on October 19th, 1931. He went to Sherborne School and, later, studied German literature for one year at University of Bern. Later, he went to Lincoln College, Oxford and graduated in Modern Languages. From 1956 to 1958, he taught at Eton and from 1959 to 1964, he was a member of the British Foreign Service as second secretary at British Embassy in Bonn, and then, as Politician Consul in Hamburg. His first novel was written in 1961, and, since then, he's published 18 titles. His books took many prizes and some of them became movies.
John le Carré is a member of Writer

Does John le Carré Dead or Alive?

As per our current Database, John le Carré is still alive (as per Wikipedia, Last update: May 10, 2020).

🎂 John le Carré - Age, Bio, Faces and Birthday

Currently, John le Carré is 93 years, 1 months and 2 days old. John le Carré will celebrate 94rd birthday on a Sunday 19th of October 2025. Below we countdown to John le Carré upcoming birthday.

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Popular As John le Carré
Occupation Writer
Age 93 years old
Zodiac Sign Scorpio
Born October 19, 1931 ( Poole, Dorset, England, United Kingdom)
Birthday October 19
Town/City  Poole, Dorset, England, United Kingdom
Nationality United Kingdom

🌙 Zodiac

John le Carré’s zodiac sign is Scorpio. According to astrologers, Scorpio-born are passionate and assertive people. They are determined and decisive, and will research until they find out the truth. Scorpio is a great leader, always aware of the situation and also features prominently in resourcefulness. Scorpio is a Water sign and lives to experience and express emotions. Although emotions are very important for Scorpio, they manifest them differently than other water signs. In any case, you can be sure that the Scorpio will keep your secrets, whatever they may be.

🌙 Chinese Zodiac Signs

John le Carré was born in the Year of the Goat. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Goat enjoy being alone in their thoughts. They’re creative, thinkers, wanderers, unorganized, high-strung and insecure, and can be anxiety-ridden. They need lots of love, support and reassurance. Appearance is important too. Compatible with Pig or Rabbit.

Some John le Carré images

Awards and nominations:

In 1998, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) from the University of Bath. In 2012, he was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by Oxford University.

In 1964, le Carré won the Somerset Maugham Award (established to enable British writers younger than 35 to enrich their writing by spending time abroad).

In 2008, The Times ranked him 22nd on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

In 2011, he won the Goethe Medal, a yearly prize given by the Goethe Institute.

Biography/Timeline

1931

David Cornwell was born on 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England. His father was Ronald Thomas Archibald (Ronnie) Cornwell (1906–75), and his mother was Olive (Glassy) Cornwell. He has an older brother, Tony, two years his elder, now a retired advertising executive. His younger half-sister is the Actress Charlotte Cornwell. His younger half-brother, Rupert Cornwell, is a former Washington bureau chief for the newspaper The Independent. Cornwell said he did not know his mother, who abandoned him when he was five years old, until their re-acquaintance when he was 21 years old. His father had been jailed for insurance fraud, was an associate of the Kray twins, and was continually in debt. Their father/son relationship was difficult. A biographer reports, "His father, Ronnie, made and lost his fortune a number of times due to elaborate confidence tricks and schemes which landed him in prison on at least one occasion. This was one of the factors that led to le Carré's fascination with secrets."

1945

Most of le Carré's novels are spy stories set during the Cold War (1945–91) and feature Circus agents as unheroic political functionaries aware of the moral ambiguity of their work and engaged more in psychological than physical drama. le Carré's books emphasise the fallibility of Western democracy and of the secret services protecting it, often implying the possibility of East-West moral equivalence. Moreover, they experience little of the violence typically encountered in action thrillers and have very little recourse to gadgets. Much of the conflict is internal, rather than external and visible. The recurring character George Smiley- who plays a central role in five novels and appears as a supporting character in four more- was written as an "antidote" to James Bond, a character le Carre called "an international gangster" rather than a spy and whom he felt should be excluded from the canon of espionage literature. In contrast he intended Smiley- an overweight, bespectacled bureaucrat who uses cunning and manipulation to achieve his ends- as an accurate depiction of a spy.

1948

From 1948 to 1949, he studied foreign languages at the University of Bern in Switzerland. In 1950, he joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army garrisoned in Austria, working as a German language interrogator of people who crossed the Iron Curtain to the West. In 1952, he returned to England to study at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he worked covertly for the British Security Service, MI5, spying on far-left groups for information about possible Soviet agents.

1954

In 1954, Cornwell married Alison Ann Veronica Sharp; they had three sons—Simon, Stephen and Timothy—and divorced in 1971. In 1972, Cornwell married Valérie Jane Eustace, a book Editor with Hodder & Stoughton; they have one son, Nicholas, who writes as Nick Harkaway.

1960

In 1960, Cornwell transferred to MI6, the foreign-intelligence Service, and worked under the cover of Second Secretary at the British Embassy at Bonn; he later was transferred to Hamburg as a political consul. There, he wrote the detective story A Murder of Quality (1962) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), as "John le Carré" (le Carré is French for "the square")—a pseudonym required because Foreign Office officers were forbidden to publish in their own names.

1961

Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962), le Carré's first two novels, are mystery fiction, in which retired spy George Smiley investigates a pair of deaths- first the apparent suicide of a suspected communist, and then a murder at a disreputable public school. Although Call for the Dead evolves into an espionage story, Smiley's motives are more personal than political. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works; following its publication, he left MI6 to become a full time Writer. Although le Carré intended Spy as an indictment of espionage as morally compromised, audiences widely viewed its protagonist, the alcoholic spy Alec Leamas, as a tragic hero; in response, le Carré's next book, The Looking Glass War, was a satire about an increasingly deadly espionage mission which ultimately proves pointless.

1964

In 1964, le Carré won the Somerset Maugham Award (established to enable British Writers younger than 35 to enrich their writing by spending time abroad).

1975

The scheming con-man character, Rick Pym, Magnus Pym's father in A Perfect Spy, was based on Ronnie. When his father died in 1975, Cornwell paid for a memorial funeral Service but did not attend it.

1983

A departure from the use of the Cold War as a backdrop in this era is the spy novel The Little Drummer Girl (1983), which is set against the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

1986

A Perfect Spy (1986), which chronicles the boyhood moral education of Magnus Pym and how it leads to his becoming a spy, is the author's most autobiographical espionage novel, reflecting the boy's very close relationship with his con-man father. Biographer Lynndianne Beene describes the novelist's own father, Ronnie Cornwell, as "an epic con man of little education, immense charm, extravagant tastes, but no social values". Le Carré reflected that "writing A Perfect Spy is probably what a very wise shrink would have advised". Le Carré's only non-genre novel, The Naïve and Sentimental Lover (1971), is the story of a man's postmarital existential crisis.

1989

With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, le Carré's writing shifted to portrayal of the new multilateral world. His first completely post-Cold War novel, The Night Manager (1993), deals with drug and arms smuggling in the murky world of Latin America drug lords, shady Caribbean banking entities, and western officials who look the other way.

1991

As a Journalist, le Carré wrote The Unbearable Peace (1991), a nonfiction account of Brigadier Jean-Louis Jeanmaire (1911–92), the Swiss Army officer who spied for the Soviet Union from 1962 until 1975.

1998

In 1998, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) from the University of Bath. In 2012, he was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by Oxford University.

1999

In February 1999, le Carré was the guest in an episode of BBC Radio 4's Bookclub broadcast with presenter James Naughtie and an audience in Penzance.

2003

In January 2003, The Times published le Carré's essay "The United States Has Gone Mad". Le Carré contributed it to a volume of political essays titled Not One More Death (2006). Other contributors include Richard Dawkins, Brian Eno, Michel Faber, Harold Pinter, and Haifa Zangana.

2008

In October 2008, a television interview on BBC Four was broadcast, in which Mark Lawson asked him to name a "Best of le Carré" list of books; the Novelist answered: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Tailor of Panama and The Constant Gardener.

2009

In 2009, he donated the short story "The King Who Never Spoke" to the Oxfam "Ox-Tales" project, which included it in the project's Fire volume.

2010

In 2010, le Carré donated his literary archive to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The initial 85 boxes of material deposited included handwritten drafts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Constant Gardener. The library hosted a public display of these and other items to mark World Book Day in March 2011.

2011

Credited by his pen name, le Carré appeared as an extra in the 2011 film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, among the guests at the Christmas party in several flashback scenes.

2013

Le Carré was interviewed at the Hay on Wye festival on 26 May 2013. The video of the event is offered for sale by le Carré to raise money to keep Hay Library open.

2014

A week after this appearance, le Carré was interviewed for the TV show Democracy Now! in the United States. He told the interviewer, Amy Goodman, "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."

2017

In 2017, le Carré stated: "These stages that Trump is going through in the United States and the stirring of racial hatred ... these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it’s contagious, it’s infectious. Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There’s an encouragement about."

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