He has written some of Britain’s best-loved espionage novels, filled with Cold War double agents inspired by real people he met while spying for the British Government in West Germany.

John Le Carré, whose real name is David Cornwell, left MI6 in 1963 and built a new career on secret plots of a fictional kind.

But the novelist has been accused by a real-life spymaster of being "obsessed" with his secret service career, despite having only serving for three years, and writing "corrosive" books that undermine the UK’s intelligence services.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, said Le Carré’s novels are “exclusively about betrayal” and trade on the author’s limited experience as an intelligence officer to make spying seem immoral.

Speaking on Sunday to an audience at Cliveden Literary Festival, Sir Richard said MI6 spies were angry with Le Carré, now 87, for portraying them as duplicitous and untrustworthy.