John le Carre

Born in Poole, a maritime town in the county of Dorset, on October 19, 1931, David John Moore Cornwell – his real name – studied at the universities of Bern and Oxford. He began working for the British secret services when he was studying German in Switzerland in the late 1940s. While teaching at the elite private Eton College, he recruited her to the British Foreign Service. From a small office of MI5 (the internal intelligence agency) in Curzon Street (London), he dedicated himself to instructing spies from the other side of the iron curtain attracted to the West. During this stage, he began to write, under the pseudonym John le Carré .

His first novel, Llamada para un muerto , from 1961, introduced George Smiley, his most characteristic character. He would reappear in “Quality Murder” (1962), “The Mole” (1974), “The Honorable Schoolboy” (1977) and “Smiley’s People” (1979). As a secondary he appears in three others, “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” (1963), “The Mirror of Spies” (1965), and “The Secret Pilgrim” (1990). After the end of the Cold War, Le Carré’s work focuses on topics such as the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, Islamic terrorism, or the pharmaceutical conspiracies. Following his autobiography “Circle Flying,” he published his latest novel, “A Decent Man,” in 2019.

John le Carré ‘s work  has given a lot of play in film and television. It got off to a good start, when Martin Ritt turned  The Spy Who Came In From The Cold into a feature film , starring Richard Burton in a successful role that earned him his fourth Oscar nomination, Alec Leame, a British agent who accepts a mission to make believe the Soviets who have defected. Here, Rupert Davies stepped into the shoes of Smiley. James Mason ,  Simone Signoret ,  Maximilian Schell  starred in the successful  Call for a Dead Man , by  Sidney Lumet, where Smiley’s name had to be changed to Charles Dobbs, because Paramount, which produced the previous film, had the rights to the character.

After the less interesting  Mirror of Spies , the stupendous seven-part British miniseries  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy , which featured the best Smiley, none other than  Alec Guinness , was well received internationally . He repeated it in  Smiley’s People , which he also swept away. Diane Keaton  starred  in George Roy Hill ‘s Drum Girl , in  which she played an American actress infiltrating a Palestinian terrorist group.

In 1990,  Sean Connery  and  Michelle Pfeiffer , starred in  The Russian House . Barley Blair is an English editor who travels to Russia on orders from the CIA, to find out about an important scientific manuscript. In Moscow, she will have to establish relations with Katya Orlova, a beautiful Russian distributor, and check and learn about these confidential documents that have global relevance. The successful The Tailor of Panama narrates the arrival in Panama of the “post-recovery-of-the-canal” era of Andy ( Pierce Brosnan ), a spy who works for his own benefit and only, as a possible unwanted side effect, for that of his country, the UK. 

In  The Constant Gardener ,  Fernando Meirelles  ( City of God ) weaves the story of Justin, a British diplomat investigating the suspicious death of his wife, an activist, in a desolate area of ​​northern Kenya. Strong work from  Ralph Fiennes  and  Rachel Weisz , who won the Oscar for Best Supporting. The Swede  Tomas Alfredson  signs one of the most successful versions,  El topo , with an impeccable  Gary Oldman  in the shoes of Smiley. The Most Wanted Man was  one of the last works of the always masterful  Philip Seymour Hoffman .

Ewan McGregor  led the cast of the acceptable  A Traitor Like Ourselves , although in recent years two worthwhile television forays into the universe of  John le Carré have stood out . Susanne Bier  directed  The Infiltrator , a six-part miniseries, and  Park Chan-wook  did the same with  The Drummer Girl .