{"id":134688,"date":"2020-12-14T10:19:44","date_gmt":"2020-12-13T23:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=134688"},"modified":"2021-05-20T09:59:22","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T22:59:22","slug":"we-remember-john-le-carre-1931-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2020\/12\/14\/we-remember-john-le-carre-1931-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"We remember John le Carr\u00e9 (1931-2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"We<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

John le Carr\u00e9, the British author of many beloved and bestselling spy thrillers, died on Saturday the 12th of December aged 89 after a short battle with pneumonia. His agent, Jonny Geller of Curtis Brown UK, revealed the news in a statement on Twitter<\/a><\/strong>, saying ‘John le Carr\u00e9 was an undisputed giant of English literature. He defined the Cold War era and fearlessly spoke truth to power in the decades that followed.’<\/p>\n\n\n

\"John

John le Carr\u00e9<\/p><\/div>\n

Born as David Cornwell on the 19th of October, 1931, le Carr\u00e9 forged a career as an intelligence officer for the British Foreign Service shortly after the second World War. He began to write spy thrillers under a pen name after being encouraged by fellow MI5 officer and novelist John Bingham, on whom he would base his most famous character – George Smiley.<\/p>\n\n\n

Smiley first made an appearance in le Carr\u00e9’s 1961 debut, Call for the Dead<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, but fame was ensured with 1963’s The Spy Who Came In From the Cold<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, a book that garnered such high profile fans as the novelist Graham Greene. Smiley would go on to appear in a number of other popular spy novels, including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (1974), and made his final appearance in 2017’s A Legacy of Spies<\/a><\/em><\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

John le Carr\u00e9 went on to write many other standalone novels over the span of his six-decade career, including The Little Drummer Girl<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (1983), The Night Manager<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (1993) and The Constant Gardener<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (2001). In 2016, he penned a memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories of My Life<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, in which he shared details of his difficult childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John is survived by his wife, Jane, and his three sons Nicholas, Timothy, Stephen and Simon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See more books by John le Carr\u00e9 here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The author of the beloved George Smiley espionage thrillers has died aged 89.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":134694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[9480,1974,2869,7205,6177,9634],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/JohnleCarre-Social.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134688"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134688"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143030,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134688\/revisions\/143030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}