The spymaster’s sons opening his books up to a modern audience

Growing up in an almost idyllic British childhood, between homes in Hampstead in north London, and St Buryan in Cornwall, brothers Simon and Stephen Cornwell do not seem like the sons of a super spy. And yet, like many things in the smoke and mirrors world of espionage, the names never tell the whole story.

Simon and Stephen’s father, born David John Moore Cornwell, is better known as John le Carré, the author of espionage blockbusters such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Little Drummer Girl, The Night Manager and The Tailor of Panama.

Author John le Carré in The Pigeon Tunnel.Credit: Apple TV+

Though their dad’s day job took him across Europe at the height of the Cold War, the Cornwells came to their father’s books only in their teenage years, and it took some time before they fully understood that their quietly spoken, deeply intellectual dad was in fact a spy.

“I only got into his books when I was probably 12 or 13, but he was, from the moment we were born, a storyteller,” says Simon. “The house was always full of stories, and he wrote, and he drew pictures, and he told stories, and he did it with passion and with fire. So I don’t think we were ever [in] any doubt, not only was he a writer, but he clearly couldn’t be anything other than a writer.”

Adds Stephen: “In a way, an interesting way, our early childhood ... he was a spy, right? So in a domestic context, there is an aspect of your parent’s life that is managed. The profession is not openly talked to, and normalcy is a very carefully maintained thing,” he says. “I think, certainly, as an author within the family that was assisted by a pen name, that there was a difference between le Carré, and David Cornwell, and our dad.”

Simon and Stephen now run Inkfactory, the production company which oversees adaptations of their father’s works, including the award-winning miniseries The Night Manager, and the film Our Kind of Traitor, directed by Susanna White. In development is a new series adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, last produced for the screen in 1965, as a film starring Richard Burton.

John le Carré (David Cornwell) with sons Stephen Cornwell (left) and Simon Cornwell (right) during filming of The Pigeon Tunnel.Credit: Apple TV+

The brothers have also produced The Pigeon Tunnel, a new documentary film from director Errol Morris, which is best described as an extended and intimate conversation between Morris and le Carré, filmed in 2019, a year before le Carré’s death in 2020.

In the literary world, le Carré’s name ranks alongside Ian Fleming, the author of the books on which the James Bond movies were based. But unlike Fleming, who turned his spy career into flamboyant and colourful stories full of martinis, shaken not stirred, le Carré’s career as a spy was darker and more complex, a tone that was reflected in his writing.

Le Carré worked for the army’s intelligence corps and later MI5 and its foreign intelligence counterpart MI6. While stationed in Europe he dabbled as a novelist. He wrote his first two books, under his pseudonym, while still working as a spy, but the defection of British spy Kim Philby to the Soviet Union in 1963 essentially shattered le Carré’s career in espionage, as it compromised almost every British spy working in Europe.

And while the worlds of Bond and le Carré’s hero spy George Smiley were very different - Bond’s world was fast-paced and sexualised, while Smiley’s world was darker, more real and ethically uncertain - Simon and Stephen confess their dad enjoyed watching Bond movies. Indeed, the original Bond, actor Sean Connery, was a friend.

Author John le Carré, born David Cornwell.Credit: Apple TV+

“I think our dad watched every single Bond movie; I do remember us watching Bond movies together,” Simon says. “Both [Fleming and Le Carré’s worlds] are fantasy, but one has ridiculous, and as you point out, a very male kind of wish fulfilment aspect to it. And the other resonates with reality really. And with yes, spying, but also spying as a metaphor for everything we encounter in our day-to-day lives.”

“We enjoy [Jason] Bourne and Bond and Jack Reacher, when they’re well-rendered, and they have lots of fun, and they’re wish fulfilment fantasies, right?” adds Stephen.” They are their own form and they’re great. I think what our dad was writing, which is often the case in different genres, is a different experience, which is [that] you see yourself in those worlds. They become amplifications of the things we all face in life, the choices we all face, the characters we interact with.”

Le Carré’s two most resonant books are The Spy Who Came from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. That is in part because they are connected to two of the most successful screen adaptations of his work. But also because they are prominent on school library bookshelves, where most young readers first encounter them.

They are also two of le Carré‘s most impactful works because in many ways they are barely fictional, the implication being that much of the narrative is lifted from le Carré’s own career as a spy. Indeed, le Carré himself once said: “Characters don’t actually work until they’ve got a bit of you in them. Until that point, they’re basically paper men.”

John le Carre’s sons Simon and Stephen Cornwell.

“I think for him, that reality is the imagined reality that was born out of experience, but he created in his head,” Stephen says. “I think that those stories, there is that interest in yin and yang between fiction and fact, right? And that it goes both directions, and that they live so intensely, people have to ascribe reality to them. I remember him saying to me once after an interview, the thing people forget about him is he just, as he said, ‘I make shit up. I tell stories.’ ”

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the documentary is how contemporary le Carré was; he only died in 2020, and in his later years he was well versed in the complexities of modern politics. At one point he reflects on his experience as a spy, noting: “I felt that both sides, East and West, were inventing the enemy that they needed.” It is a line which could easily be used in a discussion of modern geopolitics.

“He was obsessed with politics,” Simon says. “He died [only weeks] before January 6 and I remember him sitting in the intensive care unit, literally the afternoon before he died in the evening, complaining that the Wi-Fi in the intensive care unit was not fast enough for him to be able to watch CNN properly, and it kept on cutting out,” Simon says. “We are often looking at his books saying, can we retell that story in the present? And you realise, with a horrible jar, that yes, you can retell it in the present.”

The themes and ideas that le Carré was “railing against are worse today than they were when he wrote the book 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago,” adds Stephen. “He was aware of that because it was rooted in human behaviour and his understanding of the human psyche. It’s very easy to think of him as someone that wrote in the past, right? But he wrote in the present. And he wrote about tomorrow, and the dangers [that are] coming.”

All four of le Carré’s sons are, or were, connected to their father’s work in some way. Simon and Stephen work as producers on adaptations of his works for the screen. Nicholas became a writer, as Harkaway. And a fourth sibling, Timothy, who died in 2022, worked editing their father’s letters.

“He was an incredibly powerful figure in our lives,” Simon says. “We grew up surrounded by stories, telling stories, being told stories, entertaining actually. And on the other side, asking questions about the world. Dad didn’t take things at face value. He always interrogated both the metaphysical logic of things and the human logic of things. In contrast to maybe many overachieving fathers, his presence was an empowering one.”

“Surprisingly, in parental terms, obviously fathers and sons and family are very central in his books, and his storytelling, and it’s a theme he revisits,” Stephen adds. “I think like many fathers, where it ends up being positive, he was hugely influential. And maybe that’s a testament to us, and life, and other people. There has been a lot of independence in those journeys.”

The Pigeon Tunnel is on Apple TV+.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.