Spy author John le Carré has died - here are his best books and movies

Cold War espionage author John le Carré has died aged 89 after a battle with pneumonia.

Le Carré drew on his experience working for the British intelligence services including MI6 during the Cold War in his writing, but later in life said he was irked at the extent to which his fiction was portrayed as representing real-world spying.

A statement shared on behalf of the author’s family said: “We all grieve deeply his passing. Our thanks go to the wonderful NHS team at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro for the care and compassion that he was shown throughout his stay. We know they share our sadness.”

Here is everything you need to know.

What was John le Carré’s real name?

Born David Cornwell in 1931, le Carré was first educated at the University of Bern, in Switzerland, where he studied German.

He studied further at Oxford before teaching at Eton, then embarking on his undercover intelligence career, in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British embassy at Bonn, in western Germany.

Asked if he considered himself an Englishman, he told 60 Minutes: “Yes of course I’m born and bred English, I’m English to the core.

“My England would be the one that recognises its place in the EU. The jingoistic England that is trying to march us out of the EU, that is an England I don’t want to know.”

Throughout his career, le Carré turned down literary honours, saying in a 2017 US interview that he was “so suspicious of the literary world that I don’t want its accolades.”

He even turned down a knighthood, telling the same interviewer: “least of all do I want to be called Commander of the British Empire or any other thing of the British Empire, I find it emetic.