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?
