‘‘When you enter the secret world and you are engaged in the intensive examination of your enemy, your opponent, you in a sense begin to know him and think about him not just as an opponent but some kind of secret sharer.’’
That was John le Carre, who has died at the age of 89, talking to The Age in 2001 about his own experiences with the British secret service before he embarked on his long and more successful career as a spy novelist and fierce critic of the hypocrisy and moral and political decline of his country – and, indeed, the west. He died of pneumonia on Sunday morning (Australian time) just as the British government was stumbling towards the final deadline for Brexit, a development he loathed.
In a sense how he defined his experience running agents in East Germany for MI6 determined the nature of his novels and particularly the three great Cold War novels featuring his best-known protagonist, George Smiley: there was a lot of talk, a lot of thought and a lot of smart people trying to get a handle on what the Soviet Union and its spymaster, Karla, were up to, and then outwit them. And, of course, they were frequently hindered by a traitor - a mole - in their midst.
read more here from The Sydney Morning Herald and John le Carre
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