CARRÉ, JOHN LE (DAVID CORNWELL). (1931-2020). British intelligence officer and author of some of the best-known works in the espionage genre. ALS. (“David”) and SP. (“David alias John le Carré”). 2pp. 8vo. Penzance, February 19, 1986. A letter written on Le Carré’s Cornwall stationery to a young and attractive Jessica (Weber).
“Dear Jessica – Thanks for the lovely pix – it was so good to meet you. Good luck & stay happy! Best…”
With a color photograph of Carré with his arm draped around Weber’s shoulder standing in front of a doorway. Inscribed on the verso: “For Jessica with fond memories from David alias John le Carré.”
Born David Cornwell in Dorset, le Carré, as he would later be known, was abandoned by his mother at age 5 and raised by his father, Ronald “Ronnie” Cornwell, a known associate of English gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray. Frequently in debt, Carré’s father was once imprisoned for insurance fraud. After attending public school and studying foreign languages in Switzerland, le Carré was recruited by the Intelligence Corps and interrogated defectors from East Germany. Following his studies at Oxford, he began work as a spy, first for MI5 and, later, MI6.
His first work of fiction, featuring George Smiley, was published in 1961 and his books were first adapted for film with the 1965 movie The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, followed by The Deadly Affair in 1967 and The Looking Glass War in 1970. Our letter was written the same year he published The Honourable Schoolboy. Le Carré’s works continued to be made into films throughout the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s including the 2001 The Tailor of Panama, 2005 The Constant Gardener, 2011 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and 2016 The Night Manager.
Although Le Carré was evasive for much of his career about the meaning behind his penname, in a 2010 interview with Democracy Now! he explained: “Well, I’ve told a lot of lies about that in my time, I have to confess. I began writing when I was still in the British Foreign Service, and it was then understood that even if you wrote about butterfly collecting, you used another name. So the fact that I was in a secret department does not play a part. Then, I think I decided that I needed three pieces to a name… Then the word carré in French has a bunch of ambiguous meanings. A balle carrée, for example, is a dance where the ladies ask the men to dance. Carré at roulette, if you put a numéro carré, you put a counter on each corner of a number. And so it goes on. And I think an homme carré is a little bit a dubious guy. That seemed to me to suit me perfectly at that time,” (“John le Carré (1931-2020) on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa & More,” Democracy Now!, democracynow.org/2020/12/25/john_le_carre_1931_2020_on).
Two corners of the letter are slightly bent. Both the photo and the letter are in fine condition.
