MI6 spy-turned-author John Le Carre reveals: 'I was tempted to defect to the Soviet Union during the Cold War'

Soviet spy?: John Le Carre was 'tempted' by the Iron Curtain



Author and former spy John Le Carr was tempted to defect to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, he revealed yesterday.

The 76-year-old, who wrote his first three books while working as an MI6 agent, admitted he was curious to know what it would be like working for the Russians.

When Le Carre whose real name is David Cornwell, was asked if he was genuinely tempted to switch sides, he said: 'Yes, there was a time when I was, yes.



'I wasn't tempted ideologically. But when you spy intensively and get closer and closer to the border . . . it seems such a small step to jump . . . and find out the rest.'

Le Carre has written 21 books, seven of which have been made into films, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Constant Gardener.

His novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was a BBC television hit nearly 30 years ago, with Alec Guinness playing the lead role of George Smiley.

The author also revealed that he turned down the chance to meet Kim Philby in 1987, the double agent who betrayed him by giving his name and those of other British spies to the Russians.

'I just couldn't do it,' Le Carre told The Sunday Times.

'There was always an instinct towards corruption in him.

'And remember, he was responsible for sending countless British agents to their deaths, to be killed - 40 or more in Albania.'

Le Carre who lives with his wife in Cornwall and has 12 grandchildren, rarely gives interviews but is famously candid when he does.

He had a public spat with writer Salman Rushdie after dismissing the Booker Prize winner's novel The Satanic Verses as an affront to Muslim sensibilities.

He suggested it was entirely predictable that it would endanger those connected to its publication.

In another interview Le Carre said it will take Britain more than a century to become a multicultural society.

Discussing his recent novel, The Mission Song, in which he writes that racial and social inequality is still rife, he said: 'I wanted to show how hypocritical it is that we call ourselves a rainbow society and say that everyone is equal, or that we don't notice what colour others are, which I think is absolute bull****.

'With our racial biases, it's going to take us at least a century of education before we integrate people.'

He also writes openly on his official website, where he scorns those who call him a 'spy turned writer'

'I was nothing of the kind', he says. 'I am a writer who, when I was very young, spent a few ineffectual but extremely formative years in British Intelligence.'

He adds: 'I never knew my mother till I was 21. I act like a gent but I am wonderfully badly born. My father was a confidence trickster and a jail bird. I hate the telephone.

'I can't type. I ply my trade by hand. I live on a Cornish cliff and hate cities. Three days and nights in a city are about my maximum.

'I don't see many people. I write and walk and swim and drink.'

Le Carre's latest novel, A Most Wanted Man, is released later this month.