John le Carré was born to be a spy…and one of the premier espionage novelists of the last century.
“Betrayal fascinates me,” Le Carré (real name: David Cornwell) tells Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris in The Pigeon Tunnel, a fascinating film about the life of the late bestselling author, whose credits include The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The biggest revelation is that, for a man who crafted tales of international government truths and lies, his most astounding story was his own.
Courtesy of Penguin
“What came out, was how much he was driven by his relationship with his own father,” says Simon Cornwell, who, with his brother Stephen, co-produced this look at their dad.
Le Carré’s father was a charming, and at times violent, confidence man for whom “Life was a stage where pretense was everything,” the novelist recalls. “Of truth and conviction, we didn’t speak.”
His mother, fed up with her husband’s affairs, abandoned the family when Le Carré was 5. The boy’s sense of independence helped him fit in at his posh school, and when he was called up for National Service after World War II, he joined the Intelligence Corps and began writing about spies, producing an international bestseller.
Morris skillfully extracts his life story through gentle interrogation. “That quest for identity runs [through] much of his work,” says Stephen Cornwell. “That sense of discovery as an artist was fuel for him.”
The Pigeon Tunnel, Friday, October 20, Apple TV+
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