John Le
John Le
age british came diplomat embassy extreme guise intelligence junior officer personal secret spy time wrote
I wrote 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' at the age of 30 under intense, unshared personal stress and in extreme privacy. As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Bonn, I was a secret to my colleagues, and much of the time to myself.
maturity age democracy
I don't know whether it's age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.
age stories belts
When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.
artist agents assassins
Agents of disruption, subversion, sabotage and disinformation tunnelers and smugglers, listeners and forgers, trainers and recruiters and talent spotters and couriers and watchers and seducers, assassins and balloonists, lip readers and disguise artists.
feelings age sometimes
When you're my age, you have the feeling sometimes that you're seeing the show come round again.
cutting age way
By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.
came spy
The spy who came in from the cold.
dangerous desk watch
A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world
war literature shade
During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.
movie book reading
Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.
held impunity
Totalitarian states killed with impunity and no one was held accountable. That didn't happen in the West.
absolutely books darling defined french man passes people secret wartime
In my day, MI6 - which I called the Circus in the books - stank of wartime nostalgia. People were defined by secret cachet: one man did something absolutely extraordinary in Norway; another was the darling of the French Resistance. We didn't even show passes to go in and out of the building.
begin decent liberal mass opinion suffer suffers whether wonder
I suffer from the same frustration that every decent American suffers from. That is, that you begin to wonder whether decent liberal instincts, decent humanitarian instincts, can actually penetrate the right-wing voice, get through the steering of American opinion by the mass media.
admired awkward borrowed elements extremely fellow george hunt invested mole mythical people recalled retired spy
The creation of George Smiley, the retired spy recalled to hunt for just such a high-ranking mole in 'Tinker, Tailor,' was extremely personal. I borrowed elements of people I admired and invested them in this mythical character. I'm such a fluent, specious person now, but I was an extremely awkward fellow in those days.