John le Carré has died

David Cornwell, better known by his pen name of John le Carré, died in Cornwall on Saturday.

After working in intelligence himself, he became the acknowledged master of spy fiction. The early fame he found with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was amplified in the 70s and 80s through the BBC adaptions of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People, which starred Alec Guinness as George Smiley.

As Sarah Lyall says in her New York Times obituary:

Before Mr. le Carré published his bestselling 1963 novel "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," which Graham Greene called "the best spy story I have ever read," the fictional model for the modern British spy was Ian Fleming’s James Bond - suave, urbane, devoted to queen and country. With his impeccable talent for getting out of trouble while getting women into bed, Bond fed the myth of spying as a glamorous, exciting romp.

Mr. Le Carré ... upended that notion with books that portrayed British intelligence operations as cesspools of ambiguity in which right and wrong are too close to call and in which it is rarely obvious whether the ends, even if the ends are clear, justify the means.

This interview from 2002 displays the wonderful clarity of Cornwell's thinking and speaking. He talks about Alec Guinness, the intelligence world and writing. It's a suitable way to remember him.