The Spymaster.

b1931, d 2020

What, in relation to your writing, are you most proud of?

I am most proud of my international market.

At what point in your life did you start to describe yourself as an author?

With my first novel.

What did you buy with your first royalties cheque?

My first cheque went to pay off my overdraft.

What is the first crime story you remember reading?

Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Speckled Band.

Timeline

Books published:

• Call for the Dead – 1961
• A Murder of Quality – 1962
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – 1963
• The Looking Glass War – 1965
• A Small Town in Germany – 1968
• The Naive & Sentimental Lover – 1971
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – 1974
• The Honourable Schoolboy – 1977
• Smiley’s People – 1979
• The Little Drummer Girl – 1983
• A Perfect Spy – 1986
• The Russia House – 1989
• The Secret Pilgrim – 1991
• The Night Manager – 1993
• Our Game – 1995
• The Tailor of Panama – 1996
• Single & Single – 1999
• The Constant Gardener – 2001
• Absolute Friends – 2004
• The Mission Song – 2006
• A Most Wanted Man – 2008
• Our Kind of Traitor – 2010
• A Delicate Truth – 2013
• The Pigeon Tunnel – 2016
• A Legacy of Spies – 2017
• Agent Running in the Field – 2019

Awards received:

• British Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)
• Somerset Maugham award for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1964)
• Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
• British Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for The Honourable Schoolboy (1977)
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize Fiction Award for The Honourable Schoolboy (1977)
• Japan Adventure Fiction Association Prize for The Little Drummer Girl (1983)
• Mystery Writers of America Edgar Grand Master (1984)
• British Crime Writers Association Diamond Dagger Lifetime Achievement Award (1988)
• The Malaparte Prize, Italy (1988)
• Helmerich Award of the Tulsa Library Trust (1990)
• Nikos Kazantzakis Prize for best work of fiction, The Russia House (1991)
• British Crime Writers Association Dagger of Daggers for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (2005)
• Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (2005)
• Goethe Medal of the Goethe Institute (2011)

Bio

John le Carré is the nom de plume of David John Moore Cornwell, who was born in 1931 in Poole, Dorset, and was educated at Sherborne School, at the University of Bern and at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first-class honours degree in Modern Languages. He taught at Eton from 1956 to 1958 and was a member of the British Foreign Service from 1959 to 1964, serving first as Second Secretary in the British Embassy in Bonn, and subsequently as Political Consul in Hamburg.

He started writing in 1961 and has since published twenty-five novels and a memoir.

David Cornwell is an Honorary Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford and has Honorary Doctorates at Exeter University, the Universities of St. Andrews, Bath, Southampton, Plymouth, Bern, Oxford and Falmouth College of Arts.

He divides his time between Cornwall and London.