Thursday, 26 January 2017

Spies are good people the David Cornwall story


The world of spying in the national interest is well documented on film book and documentary. I have been a great admirer of the work of the writer John Le Carré who until reading his authorised biography by Adam Sisman, (published by Bloomsbury for £25) I was unaware that his birth name was David Cornwall and that his half-sister is the actress Charlotte Cornwall who I first admired in the TV series the Rock Follies.

I have his books - Smiley’s People (also TV DVD and audio book), The Honourable Schoolboy and audio book, Tinker Tailor Solder Spy (also TV DVD & audio book), The Russia House with the film DVD, The Constant Gardener(and film DVD) and The Mission Song; I have the DVD of the TV series- The Perfect Spy together with the rest of the BBC audio books collection - The Secret Pilgrim, Call for Dead, The looking Glass War (with film DVD), The Murder of Quality and The Deadly Affair (with DVD film), together with that of The Tailor of Panama. I also saw the TV series of the Night Porter, and then came A Delicate Truth which begins with a mission to the land of my parents and their families, Gibraltar and which I listened to as a book at bedtime on the BBC. I have seen Our Kind of Traitor and A Most Wanted Man in Theatre and ordered the DVDs because of this writing and which for me is the most haunting of all his works because of the performance of Richard Burton- The Spy Who Came in from the Cold where I have the film DVD and audio book). The BBC has just announced it is to make a new series based on the book. I have seen all the films in theatre and on TV, some several times.

One Sunday Times headline on January 15th (2017) was The Spy Left out in the Cold.  The article suggests that the Trump dossier is a black ops project of a known but unnamed wealthy Republican who wanted to stop Tump gaining the Presidential nomination for his Political Party.  He used a Washington firm of former investigative journalists which sounds more like Exaro News than Mark Thomas Williams and his Associates, who sub contracted to a former senior MI6 Russia expert, heading the Russia desk at one point, and who had established an arm’s length free enterprise service with another senior colleague. One former CIA chief who has gone through the dossier is on public record of saying a little of the content appears accurate, some does not and the majority is unknown but in total it is the kind of initial raw data based on intercepts, informant’s beliefs, rumours and gossip which then requires rigorous testing. The Sunday Times article argues that the individual. who is named and background reported, has gone into hiding and had worked for the British government in Russia and was head of the Russia desk when Litvinenko was assassinated in London and has since had a vendetta with President Putin which one suspects is long standing given the record of other Cambridge graduates being recruited to the British Service, then working for the Russians and spending chunks of their lives as political refugees. I now fear for the man in question given the likely response of the Trump when he controls the CIA from Friday, although I fear more for Edward Snowden when Trump has his first summit with the Russian former spymaster leader. I still do not understand the way Russia has been painted as our number one enemy when like Trump I believe the long-term threat comes from China, with its economic as well as potentially offensive military power and an unequalled totalitarian system capable of world domination at a time and manner of its choosing. While Trump has British roots, it is at least a decade since the USA wanted out from its European defence involvement and commitments to concentrate on the Pacific rim as any military and geopolitical strategist of international renown will explain if one cares to ask.

It is the issue of fiction mirroring reality, often revealing more significant truths, that has interested me since first becoming the subject of MI5 surveillance in 1960 and where I have always had suspicion that that a female friend whose murder in 1963 has remained unsolved appeared to possess more information about what happened at Holy Loch in 1961 than I would expect an Admiralty secretary, as she claimed, could be expected to know.

The book opens with a quote by Scott Fitzgerald about writers being different people in search of a single identity with one implication that if one has a fully integrated personality one would get on with the business of experiencing life and not sit in a room living through the creations of the mind.  I approached the reading and writing about David Cornwall John Le Carré with the question are spies made or created? I have also considered if the implications of leading one or more lives secretly, and is something which spies have in common with the actor. I have also tried to remember the changing context of work and life over 80 eighty years, with David Cornwall born in 1931 and myself in 1939. A major part of the work deals with the sources for the books and their characters, the impact of becoming an international literary superstar and the interesting people this life has brought him into contact.  There is also the question can the restless spirit, the new and frequently exciting experience junkie ever settle to everyday life, domesticity and the realities of aging?

Adam Sisman is the third attempt to get Le Carré to disclose the story of his life. One attempt was by Graham Lord, Literary editor of the Sunday Express for two decades and whose published work includes the lives of John Mortimer, Joan Collins, David Niven, James Herriot and Arthur Lowe.  Books about writers, politicians, sports and other personalities tend to attract a limited audience, divided between those who respect and admire the individual as a role model and who want to know something of the private person, or hope to gain knowledge to help in achieving a similar ambition and those who enjoy reading about scandal and bad example. The available information suggests that Mr Lord had obtained material which if published would cause upset to those Le Carré cared about and fortunately he was in position to employ lawyers to provide protection. Whatever Lord knew he took to his grave when he died of liver cancer at the age of 73 in 2015, the same year the Sisman biography was published. I wonder if he lived to the read the book?

The writer Robert Harris (Fatherland) obtained a contract to write the story on the understanding it would not be published until Le Carré death and is reported (in the Telegraph in 2011) to have devoted months, creating 30000 words of notes, spending one day with David’s first wife returning letters to the author when she died in 2009

Sisman admits he had a grand time spending several days with David arriving around 11 am, breaking off to eat and drink at a local Inn and then work on until a “fortifying drink” before departing and was provided with an extraordinary long list of people to be contacted which matches that provided by Lady Thatcher coupled with the same promise not to interfere or exert influence on the work.

When enjoying the brilliant BBC TV series production of Le Carré’s A Perfect Spy, I became aware that this was based on his early life, his engaging but middle class ‘crook’ of a father whose behaviour drove his mother to abandon her children when they were primary age school boys.  Ronnie Cornwall, a superstar conman, appears to have led one of the most extraordinary lives I have encountered given his life style and contacts, attractive to women and investors he also appears to have done great harm to others about which he appears never to have openly repented and I read with interest to see how his death affected his younger son.

Sisman begins the work with a cautionary note explaining that it was difficult to substantiate some of the Le Carré’s memory and family legend about their childhood experiences, but it is evident that his father’s charm and ability to impress attracted his mother offering a way out from the restricted and boring life led by many daughters of the well-off middle classes who were expected to live chaste lives at home before a suitable marriage could be arranged. The provision of domestic help within the household and the employment of a nanny to take responsibility for the chores of upbringing meant that his mother was not equipped to be a wife and mother expected to undertake all the demanding and tiring tasks herself and it is there is also evidence that she quickly became aware of his wondering eye and the willingness of other women to respond.

Whether she would have accepted her situation if this had remained the position, a common one for many women between the two World Wars, remains speculation as her husband established himself as a leading member of the local community, invited to join the Brotherhood, a member of the Chamber of Commerce and an active Rotarian also becoming the first President of a local Round Table. He enjoyed a fine lifestyle of eating out at good restaurants, drank brandy and whisky by the quart, smoked large cigars, stayed at the best hotels, entertained generously and lavished presents.  The problem was this was based on other people’s money.  When debts accumulated, he commenced to move his family for fresh starts in new communities, but eventually he went to prison and became bankrupt and his wife was forced to return with her sons to her parental home. Eventually the situation became too much and she ran off and remarried leaving the two boys with their father. This devastated them leaving lasting scars.

Sisman also reveals, unsurprisingly it must be said, that the father had a dark side possessive and controlling but also reveals early on in a footnote that sometimes when he returned home drunk he would get into bed with his son and start to play with him as he might with his mother. In a footnote, there is reference to David raising the issue with his half-sister in later life. It is my expectation that the present statutory inquiry covering England and Wales concerned with abuse within and members of national institutions will comment that abuse in a family domestic situations are more common place than generally appreciated, and should also not be confused with sexual awareness and development in childhood, usually involving other children and young people as well as from observing the more open parental behaviour which developed from the early 1960’s.  How any one individual coped with such experiences and whether everyone is affected in a negative way remains to be established but there is also no doubt that tens of thousands in the UK, and millions throughout human world history have been harmed ruining some lives and the cause of a premature ending.

Children whose parents fail to show them love and fail to respect their separate identity often muddle their need to be loved through sexual intimacy with potentially traumatizing experience for them and for their partners There is reference to David developing an emotional attachment to a young beautiful nanny, a refugee from Germany, who he subsequently tried to find when he joined the “Circus” but without success and to an older schoolgirl being attracted to him but then went off with someone else leaving him to write about the experience. 

One outcome of the departure of his mother is that David and his older brother found themselves in a typical authoritarian private bordering school in the era of the forties where headmasters and other staff could physically assault, hurt and harm pupils at will and where I suggest being beaten can have as great a negative impact as being the victim of sexual exploitation by adults and experimentation by peers, sometimes within a family.

Another aspect revealed about his father was also of interest to me his political involvement and attempt to become a Member of Parliament in a wartime by-election, having previously assisted William Douglas Home to win a by-election and whose aristocratic older brother was to become Prime Minister. He withdrew just before the election, under pressure it is suggested by the spokesperson of the Commonwealth Party (independent socialists in the tradition of the syndicalist and cooperative movements). The spokesperson is reported as Peggy Duff who as General Secretary of the CND interviewed me after it was proposed I should become the paid organiser for the London Region after George Clark decided to give up his volunteer role and chief marshal for Aldermaston marches. Peggy had been business Manager at Tribune and on the Aneurin Bevan wing of the Party.

David appears not to have been directly affected by the horror of the war with mention of seeing bombers flying overhead while camping, and having escaped call up his father appears to have viewed the war as a golden opportunity to make money involving his sons when home in some of his enterprises. But the finances of his father remained precarious and having sent his sons to Public schools the fees for him at Sherborne became in arrears. As with many such establishments the emphasis was on becoming leaders with compulsory sessions twice a week in training to become army officers. The regime was one of open windows and cold showers and other character building programmes. A WoW piece of information is that he became friends with one of my political role models, Robin Cook, whose father, an Indian civil servant had died suddenly, and was sent to the school as his mother decided to stay in India. The Labour Minister Roy Jenkins who went on to found the Social Democrats was invited to give a talk to the small Gateshead Fabian Society but only would accept if accommodated in the best Newcastle hotel and provided a meal at the best restaurant.  Robin Cook came based on being given whatever contribution to expenses the group could afford. I had been briefly introduced to Jenkins and future Prime Minister Callaghan at a social event at the Houses of Parliament, I had helped organise with the help of a Member of Parliament to mark the passing of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969.

Financial concerns appeared to end when Ronnie Cornwall moved into the property market owning 4000 houses at one point and having and a stated wealth of £13 million in today’s values but the money was spent as his life style and social status also rose with politicians, aristocrats and senior civil servants counted as associates together with underworld figures and police as was typical for that period. Staggering information was that just before the war he held a party of the visiting West Indian Team and then did so again in 1948 for the Australians with Bradman’s last visit where as a nine-year-old I sat on the grass to witness his last two ball innings at the Oval.  Ration ended just before I left school in 1955, while the boys participating in some of their fathers lavish holidays, including one visit to Paris staying at one of the best hotels.

Sisman discussing the issues with led David to decide to leave Sherborne before his final year, suggesting that there was conflict between the values of school and those of his father’s life. He not only left the school, but home and England and freed from the constraints he became his own man, albeit a young one. He went to Berne in Switzerland and without qualifications registered at the university where he floundered  but persisted and then through a meeting said to have taken place over Christmas he was recruited by a couple  who said they were from the Consular section of the British Embassy and  keen to prove  his patriotism he agreed to attend meetings of left wing student groups and report back especially on the involvement if any British subjects attending and there you have it an example of how the state focussed on the perceived threat from the East, made use of talents of those on extreme right or who had served the Reich, the subject of the excellent BBC  TV drama  Close to the Enemy directed  by Stephen Poliakoff and with Alfred Molina and Lindsay Duncan in important secondary roles alongside the brilliant young actor Freddie Highmore among several others destined for long careers.

The highlight of his year as an infiltrating informant, in addition to becoming fluent in German, was to shake the hand of Thomas Mann. In 1949 with help David went to Germany and West Berlin. One of my uncles served with the army of occupation in Germany at the same time. His wife came back a nervous wreck. I was evacuated to her home during the concentration of VII rockets on the area close to Croydon airport where I lived, staying at their officer’s quarters near Catterick, now the largest military base in Western Europe.  A temporary illness brought Cornwall home and taken to see Marlene Dietrich at the Café Royal. It was another decade before I saw Marlene at the New Theatre Oxford.

In Germany, David had been to Bergen-Belsen and four years after this I had read the official reports on the Belsen and Auschwitz War Crimes Tribunal hearings at the reference Library in Wallington following a recommendation from the Jesuit modern history teacher at the independent Catholic John Fisher School, Purley. While he was to have first-hand experience of the reality of a divided and occupied Germany my experience was in the cinema as I commenced to be taken every Monday and Thursday to see older release as the local cinema within walking distance, going with cousins to see more recent releases over weekends. The film with greatest impact was the Third Man. I have some memory of The Search, the Man Between, Berlin Express and The Heavens above us.

David next important development was Officer training after National Service and directed by the War Office into Intelligence, which he presumed was because of his experience in Switzerland and where at a subsequent visit to St Moritz he had met his future first wife. Sisman draws the reader’s attention that while the future writer was raised at home and school in a male dominating environment his future wife’s experience was one of female control although interestingly her father chased other   women as did Ronnie Cornwall although the similarity ends as Ann’s family had several generations of distinguished service to Britain.

Although lacking basic educational qualification David then set his sights on going to Oxford the end of his National Services. His father is estimated to be spending half a million a year in to-days money and his relationship with Ann progressed with marriage planned. The reference from the Headmaster predicted he would become either the Archbishop or a criminal. The young man had many talents, from poetry to drawing, from fluent German and its culture to a competitive skier and like his father he presented as confident and articulate, patriotic and loyal but also with his own sense of right and wrong and of justice.

I still wonder if I would have been able to have talked myself into reading Philosophy, Psychology and Physiology at an Oxford college as John Beichon, my tutor in Psychology wanted before he took his team at the Institute of Experimental Psychology to the USA. John went on to become Chief Executive at Which, head a London Polytechnic and play an important role in the development of the Open University. My best memory is accepting his invitation to the dining club feast with other university staff who did not belong to a college and where the chief guest a college Master, walked out before the final courses on hearing another guest, a Jazz musician, admit to also running girls in Soho. My contribution was to entertain in the early hours with prison experience stories while he and some of the others played billiards in a room at the top of the Nuffield College tower. I returned to my digs and was very sick from the assortment of wines and other drinks.

It was at Oxford David was asked by the Government if he would pretend to be left wing and spy on his fellow students, as he had done before when a student at the university in Berne. The Official History of MI5 has confirmed the approach of infiltrating left of centre organisations and spying on politicians and trade union activists which was given fresh impetus by the Cold War which developed after armistice 1945. Although the impression given is that he embarked on this with enthusiasm he looked back on doing this with regret.

There are also similarities between Joe Carter, (the Undercover Police officer whose book is separately reviewed) and David Cornwall although the direction in which their lives has taken appears to be very different and where the individual good they did is likely to remain secret and they both must spend the rest of their lives living with the unintended consequences of the roles they performed in the interests of the state.  This is where David Cornwall has been able to work off his occupational life through his fictional writings and to have an authorised version of life which attempts to indicate something of how life and work may have become entwined.

One similarity is restlessness and a resistance to conventional existence and which we know in the instance of David Cornwall-Le Carré this comes from the personality and lifestyle of his father and the devastating impact of his mother walking out on her two children. David left public school early and his expedition to further education in another country with a different language was also short term. There is no suggestion of a military career after national service and that he was able in effect to buy his way into Oxford University although this is no different from the majority whose route is the private school and money. At Oxford, the state came calling and to the surprise of everyone after starting with the good life of the Tory drinking club fine dining Brideshead good life which David Cameron and friends made infamous once more with their rise to power. David Cornwall became an active socialist joining the appropriate university clubs with the purpose of spying on his new comrades.

He was forced to leave because of changes in his father’s financial fortunes, although beforehand on a holiday in Switzerland where it is said he developed a relationship with the priest, historian and rector of Lincoln College, Vivian H H Green who was used to create the fictional character of George Smiley. David Cornwall’s first attempt at earning a living was at a private school in Somerset where the grandfather of his fiancée and future wife was a member of the teaching staff. The couple married in 1954 as I was in my last year at private school, struggling with learning Latin to enter for the sixth form, university and priesthood!  David then was keen to return to Oxford and complete the degree which he did demonstrating the character and determination of a young man with a wife and not having to pretend being what he was not. But was he really cut out to be a school master when he took work again at Eton.  This was not to last long and he was recruited full time to MI5 and then MI6. He was 26 years of age while aged 19 I was coming to end of my spell working in local government in the finance department of Croydon County Borough Council, occasionally playing chess for the social club team and playing a washboard at an annual social. Visits to Cy Laurie and other Soho area Jazz clubs declined and I cannot remember when I first joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.  David was best man for Robin Cook and Robin had been for him and one wonders if he ever spied on him officially.

Interestingly the books author comments that David quickly found that the technical people at MI5 were the creatives which begs the question at what point did the service begin the sophisticated psychological profiling of the 1980’s and at point were tests evolved for use by international finance and business. When he joined, there was no formal training and pay was £1100, still substantial more than the team of ex WW1 and II veterans with whom I had been attached as office junior of Middlesex House one side of the bridge from what is now the purpose-built spy HQ.

In those days those foreign nationals working for the CIA, the Soviets, Mossad who were attached to an embassy were talked of illegals but were also said to have been identified. There was no foreign travel for the masses, and those coming in and out of the British homeland could be monitored, rationing and taking British money out of the country was still controlled. David is said to have disclosed that the man responsible for combatting the soviets arrived at ten popped out for breakfast, returned briefly before a good long lunch with a contact and after a brief repose in the office teatime marked home time. I was also familiar with this kind of behaviour which echoed that of the section head at Middlesex House who also arrived around ten, took long lunches, followed by afternoon naps in his office and left early.

I was also struck by the reported comment of Peter Wright who described the 1950’s as the years of fun. In 1961 when I guess  MI5  opened  a proper file on me after I met a range of  Home Office and Met people at Scotland yard with George Clark to discuss the quarter of million people we hoped would make the last day of the Aldermaston March and I wanted to encourage as many as we could to join us on the first leg of the Direct Action Committee six week march through England before Scotland and direct action  on  and by Holy Loch,  while  I and others  suspected  that Ralph Scheonman who appeared to control Bertrand  Russell  was CIA, planned in secret a demonstration at the American Embassy. He reappeared again during the so called Arab Spring.

David Cornwall is said to have reminded that at the time there was a significant difference between the Home Office led MI5 which was full of middle and some working-class people while the Foreign Office MI6 was middle class to aristocratic.  One also assumes the War Office which carried on until 1964 when the Ministry of Defence first emerged was also more Officers and MI6 than Len Deighton’s hero.  McClean defected in the early 1950’s with Burgess while was not until 1963 and the Keeper of Royal Art was not out until 1979 by Margaret Thatcher soon after she came to power with Harold Wilson using the Royal Prerogative to prevent prosecution and prevent public awareness. 

One of David’s professional interests was the Communist Party of Great Britain where an agent had infiltrated first as a shorthand typist and worked her way to a position of trust which enabled her to pass documents and information to the Service.  The bread and butter work involved vetting those seeking to work directly for government or to or the in-defence industries, referring to a shop steward making application to work for Hawker Siddeley. A postman seen reading the Daily Worker was investigated. It is not clear if David reported his then wife who after seeing the film On the Beach in 1959 immediately joined the CND.

 I cannot now remember if our very small CND group in Wallington, a handful of married couples, plus a teacher who joined without his wife, all parents, also picketed the film when it was shown as the local Odeon although I remember how self-conscious we felt when handing out leaflets standing with a hold a placard in the High Street. By 1960 as his first child, a boy was born, David sat the Foreign Office exam required for joining MI6, while I was in prison at Stafford refusing to enter an oral recognisance not to undertake further Satyagraha civil disobedience enabling with Peter C Brown (Smallcreep’s Day) to plan our opposition to locating Polaris Submarine on the Clyde where a first counter strike would obliterate Glasgow.

David’s new office location was secret to the British Public but a succession of British double agents presumably passed the information to the Kremlin. When recently it is said a Trident carrying submarine on trial before starting another prolonged underwater vigil loss contact with the testing fired unarmed missile understandably sent in the direction east west not to worry the Russia and had to be destroyed, the Government argued could not disclose any details to Parliament  or to the Defence Select Committee of the House of Commons in closed session  because  it was a matter of national security, the White House was confirming the problem had occurred, the details of which would become known if the American Congress or senate set up a  committee of inquiry. The British government decision was in fact political and nothing to do with national security.

As a recruit to the service there does appear to have been the kind of training we have come to now expect from learning to use guns and the ability to kill in unarmed combat with a single blow as well as the skill in recruiting and running agents in other lands together with the ability to live without detection as someone else. This was the sexy spying which evidently David longed for and has been noted did undercover police officer, Joe Carter admits he found his work exciting. David arrived in Germany as I was deciding to either become full time organiser for the London region CND or go to Ruskin College. No sooner had David joined the service that his first novel was published and he was on the first phase of morphing into John Le Carré

David’s role was that of a legitimate Foreign Office representative but interestingly his work was to detect underground Nazi cells at the same time as the British and USA governments were continuing to recruit former Nazis because of their knowledge and skills as well as placing them in positions of power and influence in what was then West Germany. This is the first time I have come across an admission that the secret services were also interested in the activities of the far right as they had been in the left.

This was also a time when the British Prime Minister came to Germany for support for joining the Common Market but our recent allies and defeated foe joined forces to keep us out as they are now wanting to punish when a narrow majority of the population want us to leave. A picture is painted by the biographer of diplomats bemoaning their loss of tribal power and status in the days of the Empress and Emperors with its locked in social life and the winds of sixties change yet to blow but I wonder was there really no drugs, sex and rock and roll? Turning page was the answer as David had to turn to Special branch for suitable addresses when playing host to a group of future German leaders on a visit to London.

David also still had time to write and in 1963 came the Spy who came in out of the cold, the Vassal affair. John Profumo - the Secretary of State for War who brazenly lied to Parliament about his affair with Christine Keeler, her friend, Mandy Rice Davies, aristocratic house party weekends and the death of Stephen Ward. Profumo redeemed what the Establishment considered the great sin of being caught out by withdrawing from public life and working for the Toynbee Hall Settlement in East London just beyond the citadel of capitalism.

Meanwhile I had switched from Politics and Economics at Ruskin to child care social work at Barnett House studying criminology with Nigel Walker then at Nuffield. Ronnie, David’s notorious father turned up at his home out of the still murky blue.  A little while later he left the country and it is suggested perhaps a photo of him and the Krays was a factor.

Th Spy who came who came in from the Cold rocketed David into international writing stardom but his marriage was ending, President Kennedy went to Berlin and committed to American solidarity which continued until the era of President Obama and we shall shortly know the implications of the election of President Trump.  I went on a college study trip to Sweden and the land of Summer with Monika, Wild Strawberries a Scenes of a Marriage. Kim Philby presence in Moscow became public. George Blake was intended to be in the Scrubs for another forty years.

It was at this point in his life that David was under pressure to become Le Carré in more ways than full time when he became teamed up with James Kennaway, the creator of Tunes of Glory and where the film starred Alec Guinness one of Britain’s great screen actors who was subsequently to become George Smiley. Kennaway until his premature death aged 40is portrayed as an indiscriminate a sex addict and as with all addicts the pressure is put on those around to join in. This was the aspect of the book which the Daily Mail featured with the headline emphasis that Le Carré had a relationship Kennaway’s wife and which involved him allegedly telling her that he had only married under instruction of MI5, a means of moving in left wing circles! It can be said that while all power corrupts, the expected lifestyle of those who achieve international success and fame will destroy unless the individual is particularly strong willed and self-disciplined.

Whereas sexual morality remained a subject of strong debate in this period, those with incomes over £15000 faced super tax of around 90% on both sides of the Atlantic were free to find ways to limit their liability and which created the new industry of legitimate tax avoidance. A few years later I attended a social function for a group of Federal, State and County officials from the USA visiting Britain to view the new Social Services of 1971 but their main interest was over the fact that we were dedicated public servants paying our taxation dues whereas they boasted about not paying any tax with one of the best ways to offset the liability by making profit from rented slum housing. One aspects for achieving the same objective was to become in effect stateless, not staying anywhere to pay the required sums with David making his home in Greece for the Summer and Austria in the Winter while he worked out how to cope with being in demand and the money. He became a citizen of the world but a prisoner of the writing celebrity machine with his wife complaining that everyone commanded his time and attention apart from his family.

What interests me in terms of the character of a spy in fact and in fiction is that his attraction to the ‘fast’ life of others continued with his relationship with James Kennaway replaced by a new relationship with the then young conservative politician Alan Clark who was open about his tendency to fornicate with anyone interested irrespective of age and their relationship. Clark is also reported to have been friends with the fascist right. There were others mentioned in the rest of the book whose lifestyle was closer to Ronnie Cornwall than David. I like the way Sisman reveals something of the catalogue of David’s history of infidelities without the kind of prurient and detailed accounting which other contemporaries have compromised under pressure to make their autobiography/biography commercially attractive to the avaricious media.

A constant theme throughout the life story is that of man brought up without the close or in fact any direction from a traditional stereotype mother, housekeeper/wife and yet and a fascination about those who as adults treated women with ruthless disregard with their own gratifications and ambitions predominating.  Le Carré writes an article about Philby who by all accounts was a killer sociopath but needed women to accept and adore as he was. Le Carré is said to have clashed with Graham Green, another spy man writer, over their respective assessment of Philby, the man and his treachery,

While it can be said David, Cornwall had quickly become John Le Carré, the international literary superstar, it is evident he maintained contact with former secret service colleagues mentioning that his former boss Sir Roger Hollis, then under investigation visited his home as a safe house, while another former colleague was used to fact check for several books. While Le Carré also commenced to be courted my other superstars (although Richard Burton’s attempt to introduce the couple to Elizabeth Taylor misfired) of greater interest to me than the invite to join one of the Queen’s get know people in the media eye lunches, is the information that he had contact with the ex-Sherborne school boy who became chairman of the Thatcher think tank. (Centre for Policy studies) whose influence on British economic policy and the balance between public service and private wealth accumulation has been profound.

Le Carré was then entertained to a lunch of 24 by the President of Italy with David having the impression the other guest were members of government and senior people from the intelligences services. I remember once saying to the Director of Social Services of Newcastle after he had been appointed the only non-politician Commissioner to the European Parliament, much to the amazement of local authority associations who had nominated Chief Executives, if he was enjoying eating in Europe’s finest restaurants to which he just said Palaces.

In contrast when Le Carré went to Russia for the first time his suitcase disappeared for two days, his room was searched whenever he was not there. Fortunately, after leaving a visit in the early hours, not knowing where he was or how to get back to the hotel he could wake the surveillance team outside who got him home. In contrast    meeting with post graduates one asked about defining the boundary between individual conscience and social responsibility which is an issue throughout his work and then the students confided they had secretly watched the TV series Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  Another event recalled with lasting pleasure was when he had been invited to lunch with the Russian dissident Joseph Brodsky who had been imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital and Siberian hard labour camps just as he was informed he been given a Nobel Prize.

The visit and book about Russia (The Russia House) marked the ending of Russia’s ability to control its empire and like the UK it has taken decades to adjust and seek its new place in a world where China has become the main challenger to the self-appointed world power of the USA.  By the mid 1990’s he was being asked what he could not write about, although as Sisman  has pointed out his subject matter while centred on the Cold War had been wider. Interestingly it is reported that David Cornwall had prepared a list of countries where he anticipated there would be issues which would command international attention including Libya, El Salvador, Cambodia and Angola. Not on the list is what has become the main threat to international stability the rise of religious fundamentalism between Muslims and everyone else. This is not to imply he had not considered the subject but he recognised that for a writer to engage with the subject of religious belief arouses deeper passions than political ideologies in terms of the hold on most people who will accept the imposition of a political ideology on the same basis they will accept the power and its abuse by those who able to take and hold power without some ideological pretence.

According to Adam Sisman, David has remained rightly, in my judgement, critical of the decision of Salman Rushdie to first challenge the fundamental beliefs of some Muslims and then to make himself into something of a public martyr, whereas  since those at Charlie Abdo became physical martyrs and as I have suggested at the outset of my  writing on Spies and the world of intelligence gathering the motives and subsequent behaviour of Edward Snowden can be questioned and where his period of stay in Russia has been only recently extended following the election of President Trump.

Just when I reached the point in biography of wondering if there is anything more of interest to me or relevant to my focus Sisman mentions that David consulted his neighbour Anthony Samson whose books on the changing nature of power in Britain I have read since his first work on the subject, Anatomy of Britain, was published and purchased in 1962, with updates in 1965, 1971, 1982, 1992 and 2004.  However, these works now appear parochial in a time of global organisations and global power, especially having just quickly read through the 200 pages on what is presently known on the membership of Le Cercle.

David,  because of having become Le Carré, moved legitimately among circles we describe today as fashionable and of the Establishments of many lands who courted his attention, and the opposite of his father who used other people’s money in an attempt to gain favour, and although I believe the book confirms that his inherited personality dramatically reshaped by the departure of his mother was eminently suitable for the double dealing life of a spy, and although some may claim that in total his books are an indictment of the way states of different political structures and  values use people for the personal ambitions and interests of those currently with the power, at the core I gained the impression  of a thinking patriot, a sincere and important writer and a serious man, a  man who understood people and how the world worked.

David’s claim, however that he had only spent five minutes in the Service during a period when a few of those with whom he worked also worked for the Russians and then spent thirty years using his wits to create books about a service he had only a lay person’s knowledge is at best I suggest questionable. He continued to be in demand for social meetings with former and current spymasters from the Soviets, in the USA and home.

The book also describes his journey from child, to adventuring young man, adventuring adult, international literary superstar, and then the challenges and changes of aging, the funerals of parents, a wife, of friends and associates and of what to do about the accumulation of written records and other material, giving hundreds of boxes to the Oxford Bodleian because Oxford remains his spiritual home.  As I read the book I was struck by the extent of his continuing success and my repeated failures but also some similarities which I suspect most those of us who reach the late seventies face, reconciling an increasing long life with the prospects of oblivion but with still things we would like still to be experience and questions to be answered. I am wrestling how best to relocate the many boxes of records and papers acquired overran approaching right decades.

Another consequence of longevity is meeting people whose impressions are based on a time past time meetings, a past association or relayed gossip or in the instance of David confuse Le Carré with being him. Worse still those who have no idea of what we have experienced or achieved or who suffer from questionable amnesia.

Because of my own visits to Gibraltar in 2003 and 2004 and the years of research about the family homeland I was not surprised by the location of A Delicate Truth and hope David has visited and understood that Gib has become the Berlin of the Mediterranean although I wonder if the plan for the Rock to become the new Hong Kong will be adversely affected by Brexit.

The book concludes with the starling admission that David well into his 80’s is now writing with as great a belief and enthusiasm as he ever has, and long this may be so. I hope he will also put pen to paper about the need for the Labour Party to unite in the face of the rise of the far right in Europe and in the USA, and it was also interesting to read that he gave up on the Party during the Blair years voting again in 2015. I wonder what he makes of the approach and policies of Jeremy Corbyn?

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