Latest news with #LeCarré
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
My spat with John le Carré over spy novels got ‘physical', says ex-MI6 chief
A former MI6 chief has told how he 'physically' argued with John le Carré for making 'betrayal the currency of espionage' in his spy novels. Sir Richard Dearlove says he thinks 'trust and integrity' is actually 'the stronger currency'. Le Carré, the pen name of David Cornwell, was best known for his Cold War thrillers featuring the spy boss George Smiley, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. His novels regularly featured double agents and 'moles', and he took a dim view of the activities of the British intelligence agencies after his own cover was blown six years into his MI5 and MI6 service. Sir Richard – who was the head of MI6 between 1999 and 2004 – was asked on his One Decision podcast whether it was true that spying was 'sinister' and 'shady'. The 89-year-old replied: 'I think in reality it isn't a reflection of character, it's a reflection maybe of circumstance and that there are occasions that are unavoidable in this profession where the circumstances become sinister and individuals are forced to act in a way which is disconcerting. 'I'm always trying to defend its integrity. For example, the big argument I had with Le Carré, and I did actually physically have it with him, was that he had made betrayal the currency of espionage. 'Of course it is sometimes but the stronger currency of espionage is trust and integrity, because if you're making a betrayal, particularly of an evil empire, the people helping you to make that have got to behave with absolute integrity and trust.' The pair had a public argument in 2019, with Sir Richard hitting out at Le Carré at a literary festival. He called the author a 'counter-intelligence nihilist' and claimed most MI6 officers were 'pretty angry' with him. Le Carré responded by suggesting the spymaster was still angry about the author's opposition to the Iraq war. He said his 'cynicism', as Sir Richard called it, came from the betrayals of double agents George Blake and Kim Philby who between them had caused the deaths, imprisonments or disappearances of thousands of agents. Following Le Carré's death from pneumonia aged 89 in December 2020, Sir Richard once again criticised the writer. He called his novels a 'stain' on the intelligence service and said he had 'tarred the moral reputation of his colleagues'. This was in contrast to high-profile tributes from other intelligence officers, including Richard Moore, the current head of MI6, who called Le Carré a 'giant of literature'. Sir Richard rose through the ranks of MI6 to become the head of the intelligence service, known as C, between 1999 and 2004. His time in charge was marred by controversy over unreliable intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Le Carré became an MI5 officer in 1958, running agents and tapping telephone lines, before moving to MI6 in 1960. His intelligence career came to an end in 1964 when it was discovered that his identity had been exposed by Philby, a member of the Cambridge Five. The ring of spies passed information from the UK to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War after being recruited while at the University of Cambridge. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
04-04-2025
- Telegraph
I ‘physically' argued with John le Carre over spy novels, says ex-MI6 chief
Sir Richard, the head of MI6 between 1999 and 2004, was asked on his One Decision podcast whether it was true that spying was 'sinister' and 'shady'. The 89-year-old replied: 'I think in reality it isn't a reflection of character, it's a reflection maybe of circumstance and that there are occasions that are unavoidable in this profession where the circumstances become sinister and individuals are forced to act in a way which is disconcerting. 'I'm always trying to defend its integrity. For example, the big argument I had with Le Carré, and I did actually physically have it with him, was that he had made betrayal the currency of espionage. 'Of course it is sometimes but the stronger currency of espionage is trust and integrity, because if you're making a betrayal, particularly of an evil empire, the people helping you to make that have got to behave with absolute integrity and trust.' The pair had a public argument in 2019, with Sir Richard hitting out at Le Carré at a literary festival. He called the author a 'counter-intelligence nihilist' and claimed most MI6 officers were 'pretty angry' with him. Le Carré responded by suggesting that the spymaster was still angry about the author's opposition to the Iraq war. He said that his 'cynicism', as Sir Richard called it, came from the betrayals of the double agents George Blake and Kim Philby who between them had caused the deaths, imprisonments or disappearances of thousands of agents.
Telegraph
31-03-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
WH Smith has lost its way, but I remember the glory days of the ‘win a pony' competition
It's hard to explain to my children what high street shopping was like in a small market town in Britain fifty years ago. Ok, it may not have been Soviet Russia, but it's fair to say choice was limited. If you wanted to whittle away your pocket money, there was basically a choice between Woolworths and WH Smith – the latter was indisputably the classier option. For a start, Smith's was a proper bookseller in those days where you'd dash to get the latest Roald Dahl or Le Carré. On top of that, for a young person, it was a temple to glorify stationery, pens, pencils and general artistic endeavour. I still have a beautiful set of Caran d'Ache coloured pencils I bought there 50 years ago. So, when I heard that WH Smith's high street shops had been sold to Modella Capital and will be rebranded as TG Jones (personally, I would have gone for TGI Jones), my sentimental old heart lurched. I know that the chain's been on a downward spiral for years, to the point entering my local Cambridge branch often feels like stepping aboard the Marie Celeste – but there's still, lost in the mists of time, a small Rowan standing in the big Bromley branch, a train-ride away from Sevenoaks, clutching her Christmas haul of WH Smith tokens. Dear lord, the sweet agony of having to decide between a new Parker ink pen, the tape cassette of Grease, or the latest pony books by the Pullein-Thompson sisters. Tens of thousands of women my age associate WH Smith with ponies. Not because of the equine literature, but because – hard to believe in these cash-strapped times – Smith's used to run an annual 'Win a Pony!' competition in the 1970s, complete with a year's livery maintenance. The months dragged slowly until I could once again fill in a dozen of the forms (available with a purchase from WH Smith) with ardent pleas detailing all the ways in which I'd be a worthy custodian for a four-hooved friend. The supporting advertisement featured a girl posting an entry and the post-box whinnying back at her. No ad campaign since has proved so fiendishly seductive to the horsier of the species. If you're a 50-something bloke, it's probable this entire scenario passed you by, while you daydreamed of owning a Raleigh Chopper. But girls were transfixed to the point there are many threads across Facebook and social media devoted to the topic, of which my favourite is the one on Horse and Hound's forum. I've rarely encountered so many wistful middle-aged women outside of a Nick Cave concert. One mournful soul recalled, 'I used to lie in bed and imagine someone coming to the door to say I'd won.' Another remembered a friend who'd won the runner-up award of a new bike: 'Never seen anyone so upset to win a prize!' My favourite was the frustrated reader who wrote, 'I was banned from entering the competition as my mother told me in no uncertain terms that even if I did win a pony, we could not afford to keep it', adding for good measure: 'I always scribbled over the faces of the lucky winners every year too.' She wasn't the only one brimming with resentment. One woman remembered looking at a photo of the winner 'of a lovely grey' who took him swimming in the sea dressed only in a bikini: 'I was horrified and sure she didn't deserve the pony if she would ride without a hat.' Years later, in the 1990s, I had another brush with Smith's when my publisher and I tried to sweettalk them into stocking our new, saucy magazine, the Erotic Review. We explained it was a literary journal, sold to well-heeled and home counties' types and came enclosed in a cellophane wrapper. Even so, their head office wrote a letter back saying stiffly, 'It is not the sort of thing our readers would like'. For a year or, so we used that majestic statement, fully attributed, as our strapline run in small print over the title. The seal of disapproval from an august newsagent, founded in 1792 by Henry Walton Smith, felt almost as grand as a royal coat of arms. But the store's heyday is long past, high street outlets lack any sense of purpose outside flogging water and Cadbury's Dairy Milk, and someone needs to give it the retail equivalent of a shot of Viagra. Let's hope Modella are the people to effect the transformation. If they want to woo back countless menopausal women, they could do worse than offer us a chance to win a horse.
The Independent
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Succession star Matthew Macfadyen to play George Smiley in fresh John le Carré adaptation
Matthew Macfadyen has been cast as George Smiley in a new TV series based on the works of spy novelist John Le Carré that will be produced by the late author's sons. The Succession star, 50, will play Carré's most famous intelligence officer in the new show called Legacy of Spies, which will draw plot lines from novels including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, and The Honourable Schoolboy, per Variety and Deadline. Le Carré, who died aged 89 in 2020, was one of the most highly acclaimed espionage writers of our time, drawing on his own experiences in the intelligence sphere in the 1950s and 60s. Alongside his novels, some of Le Carré's unpublished work will be used as material for Legacy of Spies, Variety reports. Macfadyen will join a long line of notable stars who've taken on the role of George Smiley. Gary Oldman, Rupert Davis, Alec Guinness and Denholm Elliott have all previously played the British secret service agent who operated during the cold war. The celebrated actor, who starred in BBC series Spooks, has won two Emmys and two BAFTA awards for his role of Shiv Roy's husband, Tom Wambsgans, on Succession. He's also known for his role as Mr Darcy in the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which he recently admitted he thought he'd been miscast for as he wasn't 'dishy enough'. However, in Le Carrés first novel, Call for the Dead, Smiley is described as anything but dishy, with the author writing: 'Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.' Call For The Dead was published in 1961, while A Murder Of Quality was published the following year. News of the new series comes after Oldman's manager Douglas Urbanski revealed to Radio Times in September that Le Carré's sons had blocked a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy sequel starring the actor as Smiley. 'We've reached out … to le Carré's sons and – the damnedest thing – they have no interest in Gary playing Smiley again. I don't know why,' he said at the time. Urbanski's confusion may be solved with news of the new series, which will be executive produced by Silo creator Graham Yost and has already been pitched to multiple interested buyers in the UK and US, Variety reports. Smiley's real breakthrough came in 1963 with The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, which told the story of Alec Leamas, an aging British intelligence agent forced to carry out one last operation in Berlin. Writing in The Guardian on the novel's 50th anniversary, Cornwell said: "I wrote The Spy Who Came In From The Cold at the age of 30 under intense, unshared, personal stress, and in extreme privacy. "As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Bonn, I was a secret to my colleagues, and much of the time to myself." Leamas was played in a 1965 film version by Richard Burton.
