John le Carré

by Adam Sisman

  Around the time that The Spy who Came in from the Cold was published, David was posted to the Consulate-General in Hamburg. Within MI6 it has been claimed that he was willing in principle to leave the Foreign Office once the book had proved a success, but had asked to be kept on for tax reasons. David emphatically denies this story, which has the stink of disinformation. In any case his overt role, of trying to win German support for the British application to join the Common Market, had become redundant in January, when the French had vetoed the British bid. There are hints that the Foreign Office disapproved of The Spy who Came in from the Cold. Tony Duff likened writing to a dog returning to its vomit. David wrote to the Margetsons that he would have dedicated the book to the two of them, ‘if Aunty FO didn’t have such a stern look’.

  The Cornwells moved into a house on the outskirts of Hamburg. They took walks along the nearby Upper Alster, and picked apples from trees in the garden to make juice. David’s restlessness was obvious in a letter to Vivian Green, written in November 1963. He seemed to be contemplating returning to England to teach, ‘as I am tired of the FO and tired of abroad. I don’t really need to earn very much but we would like to buy a pleasant house almost anywhere rural and beautiful, and do something a bit useful …’

  I had in mind one of the new universities, and wondered if you know anything about them … Almost anything considered really, provided it enables me to settle Ann and the children in a decent, permanent home not too far from where I work, and let off political steam without offending anyone – that is, anyone who employs me. I would of course need time to write.16

  Hale Crosse again warned him against coming back to England too soon: the very idea, he wrote, ‘gives me cold shivers!!’17

  Around this time Green’s views of David were solicited for a fresh security check. The most likely explanation is that his security was being reassessed, prior to his becoming established in the Service after three years of probation. His unconsummated love affair in Bonn had come to the attention of SIS colleagues; perhaps this stimulated concern. David was no happier in his marriage, and spent much of his time away from home. Since the woman he loved had left Bonn, he was rarely able to see her, though they would keep up a passionate correspondence for the next two and a half years.

  Around this time John Shakespeare ran into David in St James’s Park. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. David explained that he was back from Hamburg, and busy writing his next book. ‘How do you find the time?’ asked Shakespeare. David explained that he worked through his lunch hours, and rarely went out in the evening. He was in England for a Gollancz publicity tour – ‘a disgraceful flop’, he wrote gloomily to Ann. He would not be the last author to find none of his books in the shops when he arrived after a long journey, and to be dismayed by interviews with ignorant journalists. He told her that he was ‘quite flaked’ and warned that ‘there’s going to be a row’. At the end of the letter he referred to the assassination of President Kennedy the previous day. ‘I can’t write any more after the Kennedy thing: it’s just too dreadful.’18

  Gollancz was impatient for another book like The Spy who Came in from the Cold. He told Peter Watt that he was ‘exceedingly anxious’ to have a long talk with David. ‘After all, I have run The Spy who Came in from the Cold on a terrific scale – heaven knows how much I have spent on advertising! – and I am extremely anxious to confer about his future.’ He held out the prospect that, ‘provided we can establish the right kind of co-operation here, we may have a permanent best-selling author …’19

  But David was not at his ease with Gollancz, who was forty years his senior. High-minded and energetic, Gollancz was either lovable, indeed saintly, or insufferably self-regarding, depending on your point of view. At Christmas he sent David a copy of a book he had recently published, E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class – perhaps an odd choice to give to an author who had just hit the big time. David invited Gollancz to join him for lunch to celebrate the success of The Spy who Came in from the Cold. It was unusual for an author to entertain a publisher, but David wanted to make a handsome gesture to show his appreciation, and he reserved a table at the Savoy Grill, unaware that his publisher lunched there almost every day. As they entered the restaurant the maître d’hôtel came forward. ‘Good morning, Mr Gollancz. Your usual table by the window?’ In vain David protested that he was the host, that he had made a reservation. They were led through the tables to one overlooking the river. As soon as they were seated, a waiter presented the menu. ‘I’ll have my usual,’ said Gollancz, waving it away. And so the meal progressed. David felt afterwards that the occasion had not lived up to his expectations.20

  David’s response to the sudden acclaim had been to question his own talent. A number of critics had hinted that The Spy who Came in from the Cold had been a fluke. It was in this mood of self-doubt that David began writing the follow-up. Moreover he had come to perceive the intelligence community, on its knees after a succession of disasters, as a measure of the hapless state of the country. The Looking-Glass War is a story of incompetence and self-delusion. A washed-up unit of military intelligence, sustained only by the memory of wartime heroics,* decides to mount an operation: an ill-equipped agent is sent into East Germany to investigate insubstantial rumours of missile deployment. The agent, Leiser, is sacrificed to feed the fantasies of the ageing men in control of ‘the Department’. The narrative of the final part of the book, ‘Leiser’s Run’, bears some resemblance to ‘Freedom’, a short story David had written while in Bonn, about a Czech who tries to escape across the frontier into the West.†

  David’s misery in his marriage was high in his thoughts as he began planning the book. The protagonist, Avery – like David, a man in his mid-thirties – becomes alienated from his wife Sarah, who repeatedly questions the value of his work; his response is to suppress his own doubts. Ann came to believe that he had based the character of Sarah on her. ‘There was a tension in her expression, an anxiety, and incipient discontent, as if tomorrow would only be worse,’ he wrote of Sarah; ‘somehow marriage had made her childish.’ At one point Sarah snaps at her husband, ‘don’t try to run me like one of your wretched agents’.21 Avery’s middle-aged colleague, Woodford, is similarly undermined by his wife, who is both bitter and sarcastic in her disdain.

  Rubinstein’s replacement at Gollancz was James MacGibbon, co-founder with Robert Kee in 1948 of a lively publishing house, which had recently been sold and broken up. Once he joined Gollancz as the next heir apparent, MacGibbon strove to woo their bestselling author. During a visit to America early in 1964, he wrote to David referring to ‘the great sensation The Spy is creating in New York – I got reflected glory from being the English publisher’.22 When David complained that he had heard reports of books being unavailable and bookshops saying that The Spy was out of print, MacGibbon wrote two letters of reassurance.23 But David had private reservations about MacGibbon, a former member of the Communist Party who had worked in senior positions in military intelligence during the war. He knew that MacGibbon had passed secret information to a Soviet handler.24

  David’s discontent with Gollancz caused him to contemplate switching publishers. This was a delicate business, as the ‘option clause’ of the contract for The Spy who Came in from the Cold required David to give Gollancz the first offer of his next novel. Through Peter Watt he made a discreet approach to Charles Pick, managing director of Heinemann since its purchase by the conglomerate Tilling in 1962. Pick was a suave figure with a reputation for wiliness, known affectionately as ‘Big Daddy’. He had begun his career in publishing at the age of sixteen as one of Gollancz’s sales representatives, after his father’s bankruptcy had left the family destitute. He and David met on a very foggy afternoon at a flat in Lowndes Square. David said he would like to join Heinemann, they shook hands, and he disappeared into the fog. Pick would hear nothing more from him for almost a year.

  The success of The Spy who Came in from the
Cold led to speculation about the author’s identity – even from Graham Greene. ‘I’m so glad that The Spy who Came in from the Cold has proved a winner,’ he wrote to Victor Gollancz, soon after the book was published: ‘it certainly deserved it.’ He then asked about the book’s author. ‘I suppose it’s asking too much of you to tell me even in confidence what his real name is? My only possible guess is that Blake has taken to writing novels during his first year sentence!’25

  Perhaps it was inevitable that the press would uncover the real John le Carré sooner or later, especially as David had not concealed his identity from the Observer’s Bonn correspondent Neal Ascherson, and perhaps not from other members of the local press corps either. Early in the new year 1964 David was at his desk at the Hamburg Consulate when he received a telephone call from Nicholas Tomalin of the Sunday Times, who had been tipped off by the paper’s Bonn correspondent, Anthony Terry. David felt forced into a half-truth: he readily admitted to being John le Carré, but protested that he was no spy. ‘Any expertise I have on espionage is just a gimmick,’ he claimed. ‘If you sit in Government offices you pick up experience which can be translated to other spheres.’ He conceded that his diplomatic work had given him ‘great knowledge of the political situation in Germany’. Asked if he planned to leave the Foreign Service, he said that he had no such intention at present, though if he ever made a lot of money from his writing he might think about it. He denied that the Foreign Office was worried about his book. ‘I won’t say that they approved it, but I sent it to them first and they passed it, so they didn’t disapprove.’ The reason for keeping his name hidden was ‘the usual Civil Service one’, he told Tomalin. The Sunday Times printed an account of the telephone conversation in its ‘Atticus’ column, accompanied by a recent passport photograph of the author.26

  David’s ‘outing’ as John le Carré stimulated a fresh burst of attention from the press and renewed speculation that the book was based on real experience. The more that he denied this, the more the conviction grew. The timing of the revelation was propitious, only two days after his book had been published in America. The New York Times ran a story on him. Time magazine sent a photographer, who snapped David pressing against a wall and crouching self-consciously behind a bush in his garden as he pretended to play hide-and-seek with Ann and the boys; while the celebrated Life photographer Ralph ‘Rudy’ Crane shot pictures of a moody David standing outside a shop window in a dark backstreet, and a purposeful David striding out across some tracks against the background of the Hamburg docks. Press harassment increased to the point that the Cornwells were forced to flee their home, taking refuge with the Consul-General and his wife, while most of their possessions went into store. The switchboard at the Hamburg Consulate was kept busy with unwelcome enquiries. Such publicity was incompatible with the anonymity required of an SIS officer.

  In an interview with the Chief back in London, he was told that he could no longer continue as a diplomat, but might carry on with some other form of cover, for example as a journalist or an academic. Apparently White told him that he was highly thought of within the Service, and even that he might be a candidate for ‘the top job’ in due course. David declined the offer of a role as a travelling interrogator.

  White would deplore the impression of the Service left by The Spy who Came in from the Cold. ‘John le Carré hasn’t done us any good,’ he is said to have told his American opposite number during a dinner in the 1960s. ‘He makes all intelligence officers look like philanderers and drunks. He’s presenting a service without trust or loyalty, where agents are sacrificed and deceived without compunction.’ Le Carré’s portrayal of cynicism, betrayal, defeatism and lack of conviction, he added, suggested that sacrifice for the good fight was not worthwhile. ‘He’s getting his revenge on the old-school ties in British intelligence,’ White continued. ‘He wants to show them who’s on top.’27

  In subsequent years David would often say that his resignation from SIS had been prompted by a cable from his accountant. He had given Hale Crosse instructions to inform him when his net worth reached £20,000; and when a cable had arrived confirming that his earnings had reached this target, he handed in his resignation.

  Watt relayed a message from Jack Geoghegan that things were going very well across the Atlantic: an offer had come in from the Book of the Month Club. This was significant in itself, as the Club had more than a million members; but it also carried prestige, suggesting that the chosen book was a potential bestseller. Income was accumulating from the sale of book-club rights, condensed-book rights, serial rights, talking-book rights and omnibus editions, and from sales of foreign rights. The agency had now sold foreign-language rights in ten countries, with more offers coming in all the time; eventually the novel would be published in such comparatively obscure languages as Icelandic and Afrikaans. Many of the publishers bought rights in David’s earlier books also. ‘It seems as though The Spy is scooping the entire pool,’ wrote Watt.28

  A few weeks later David gave power of attorney to Hale Crosse, including the power to buy and sell investments in his name. He used his newfound wealth to provide for his relatives, many of whom had of course been cheated by his father: buying a flat for his stepmother, Jean; arranging for allowances to be paid to Ann’s mother and sister; and employing his brother Tony as a part-time ‘proof-reader’, for an annual retainer of $2,000. His mother was threatened with eviction from the cottage where she was living; he bought it, so that she could stay there.* Hale Crosse confessed to being ‘rather shaken’ at the number of dependants for whom he seemed to feel responsible.29

  Around this time David met his old friend John Bingham for a cup of coffee in a Wimpy Bar. He described success on the scale which had come to him as ‘like being in a car crash’.

  Coward-McCann’s publication of The Spy who Came in from the Cold was the culmination of months of planning. From the start Geoghegan had been determined to prove that a small, aggressive publishing house could do as well as a bigger one, given the right book. To persuade the trade to take The Spy who Came in from the Cold seriously, he had to overcome the widespread prejudice against ‘suspense’ novels. At the time, the market for these was dominated by cheap paperbacks. Geoghegan decided to put a quiet grey jacket on The Spy who Came in from the Cold, to indicate that it was a serious novel rather than a pulp thriller. He took advertising space in Publishers Weekly, comparing the book to Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon.

  Geoghegan told his salesmen that The Spy who Came in from the Cold was the book to push. They were allowed to offer booksellers one free book for every ten ordered. He urged them to read it; having spent fourteen years on the road selling books himself before landing his own imprint, he knew the importance of personal commitment from the individual selling the book. Geoghegan also sent advance copies to salesmen in other publishing houses – an unusual measure, intended to generate talk within the trade. He announced that $10,000 had been earmarked for publicity, an extraordinary amount for a book by an unknown author. When the Graham Greene quote came in, he made full use of it, in advertisements and window streamers, on 35,000 matchbook covers (apparently the first time a book had ever been promoted in this way) and on an orange wrapper put around the jacket.

  It was slow going to begin with. One major book club turned it down twice, before the Book of the Month Club took it, originally just as a ‘mystery’ for its ‘One Dollar’ book club, upgrading at the last moment to the more upmarket Literary Guild Alternate Selection. The Reader’s Digest took it for its Condensed Book Club, after David’s political views had been pronounced acceptable by contacts in the CIA. Serial rights were sold to Show magazine for $2,000, a respectable though not spectacular sum. Dell picked up the paperback rights for $25,000, which seemed a lot at the time but would come to look relatively modest.

  Geoghegan reckoned that he needed to sell 50,000 copies to break even. By the end of November Coward-McCann had almost 60,000 on order – though of course these we
re orders from the bookstores, not sales. Geoghegan dropped another $10,000 into the promotion kitty, enough to fund a series of full-page advertisements.30

  Publication on 10 January 1964 coincided with a major snowstorm over the New York area, by far the most important region for book sales. Potential buyers were reluctant to venture out to the stores. But the reviews vindicated Geoghegan’s faith in the book. The New York Times reviewer praised it ‘both as a compelling and dazzlingly plotted thriller and as a substantial and penetrating novel of our times’, acknowledging that the book had raised the genre to a higher level: it was ‘a light year removed from the sometimes entertaining trivia which have (in the guise of spy novels) cluttered the publishers’ lists for the past year’ – perhaps a reference to Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which had been a fixture on the American bestseller list for the previous six months or so.31 This was one of several reviews to suggest that The Spy who Came in from the Cold had rendered the James Bond novels obsolete. In fact On Her Majesty’s Secret Service would be the last of Fleming’s books to appear in his lifetime, since he was to die of a heart attack that same summer.

  As the storm lifted, orders began to pile in by the thousand, so that Coward-McCann’s sales manager was forced to ration stock on hand. Within a month 45,000 copies had been sold.32 The Spy who Came in from the Cold entered the American Bestseller List at no. 7 on 26 January 1964; four weeks later it reached no. 1.

  Now that he had quit his job, David was footloose, though he had to remain abroad another fourteen months to avoid paying tax. He decided that the family should head for Agios Nikolaos in Crete, perhaps an unlikely destination – chosen, according to Ann, on the recommendation of a man whom David had met in a swimming pool. But Ann had always dreamed of going to Greece, and at the time it seemed as good a choice as any other. Neither of them spoke Greek.