This year sees the release of the last film to feature the much missed Philip Seymour Hoffman, A Most Wanted Man. The tense, rather brooding and rather thoughtful thriller is based on an acclaimed novel by John le Carré, and is one of many recent and upcoming adaptations of his work. Why? Because le Carré is simply unparalleled at what he does.
To trace the origins of this intriguing character, we must go back 1931, to the brief lull of the inter-war years, when a boy by the name of David Cornwell was born to humble beginnings in Poole. Abandoned by his mother at age five and brought up mainly by his father, a confidence man and career fraudster known to associate with the infamous Kray twins, he nonetheless found himself in two reputable private schools before going on to the University of Bern to study modern languages. Whilst the influence of his father and his chaotic existence are recorded in the heavily autobiographical work A Perfect Spy and doubtless helped foster his interest in secrets and trickery early on, Cornwell’s formal education would shape his future career far more than he might have guessed.
Some years later, after teaching at Eton college and graduating first class from Oxford, Cornwell began working with MI5 (the Security Service), his activities ranging from staff management – or “running agents”, as they like to say on screen – to first-hand interrogations and even break-ins and property searches. It was during this time that he collected all the necessary know-how to write Call for the Dead, the first novel featuring his legendary hero George Smiley. His second novel was penned during a stint in Berlin, during which Cornwell interrogated attempted communist defectors in their native German on behalf of MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service, nicknamed The Circus in his books thanks to their altered home base), before his career was ended by the Kim Philby scandal. This may have been blessing in disguise, allowing Cornwell to set out as a full-time novelist – under the name John le Carré, since FCO officers are not permitted to publish under their own names – without having to make the choice, as well as providing invaluable material for his later work.
What characterises Le Carré’s work the most and sets it apart from other spy fiction is its focus not on action but on the moral ambiguity and existential pitfalls of counter-intelligence and ideological warfare. In addressing these Le Carré has kept up with the world – whilst Bond arguably has not, having been desperately transformed multiple times – moving from the Cold War to the shadowy business dealings of post-Soviet Russia, near-unidentifiable terrorist threats in the Middle East and the unscrupulous behaviour of British diplomats and Africa and beyond.
Perhaps strangely, considering his tremendous degree of success, there is no one in the contemporary spy genre who writes, speaks or thinks in Le Carré’s trademark style. Those who haven’t read him are missing out – perhaps Hoffman’s swan song role in 2014’s A Most Wanted Man will convince them to give it a go.