Thread by @dean_frey

Remembering John Le Carré on his birthday 🎂
📷 Dudley Reed
"One of the fascinations of the intelligence world is that it’s such a reflection of the society it serves. If you really want to examine the national psychology, it’s locked in the secret world."

John Le Carré by Lord Snowdon, 1989
@NPGLondon
"The one thing you can bet is that spying is never over. Spying is like the wiring in this building - it’s just a question of who takes it over and switches on the lights. It will go on and on and on."

John Le Carré by Terry O'Neill, 1975
"Le Carré’s true subject is not spying. It is the endlessly deceptive maze of human relations: the betrayal that is a kind of love, the lie that is a sort of truth, good men serving bad causes and bad men serving good."
- Timothy Garton

Coffee with John Le Carré ☕️
The author takes a break with photographer Nadav Kander

John Le Carré by Barry Ryan, 1994
@NPGLondon
"I think he has easily burst out of being a genre writer and will be remembered as perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the 20th century in Britain."
- Ian McEwan

John le Carré by Erich Hartmann, 1965
"Let's all pretend to be someone else, & then perhaps we'll find out who we are."
I wonder where this photo was taken; perhaps West Berlin?

John le Carré by David Montgomery, 1985
"Jesus Christ only had twelve, you know, and one of them was a double."

John le Carré by Tom Jamieson, 2017
"Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic."

"Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes."
- John le Carré
He's been luckier with his film adaptations than most authors!

The best home for cinematic Le Carré, though, was long-form television:
"Added together, Alec Guinness’s pauses in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People would last the length of an average feature film."
- Mark Lawson