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David John Moore Cornwell (born 19 October 1931), pen name John le Carré , is a British author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, and began writing novels under a pen name. His third novel ''The Spy Who Came in from the Cold'' (1963) became an international best-seller, and it remains one of his best-known works. Following the success of this novel, he left MI6 to become a full-time author. Le Carré established himself as a writer of espionage fiction. In 2008, ''The Times'' ranked le Carré 22nd on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2011, he won the Goethe Medal, a yearly prize given by the Goethe Institute. ==Early life and career== On 19 October 1931, David John Moore Cornwell was born to Richard Thomas Archibald (Ronnie) Cornwell (1906–75) and Olive (Glassy) Cornwell, in Poole, Dorset, England. He was the second son to the marriage, the first being Tony, two years his elder, now a retired advertising executive; his younger half-sister is the actress Charlotte Cornwell; and Rupert Cornwell, a former ''Independent'' newspaper Washington bureau chief, is a younger half-brother. John le Carré said he did not know his mother, who abandoned him when he was five years old, until their re-acquaintance when he was 21 years old.〔 His relationship with his father was difficult, given that the man had been jailed for insurance fraud, was an associate of the Kray twins (among the foremost criminals in London) and was continually in debt. A biographer reports, "His father, Ronnie, made and lost his fortune a number of times due to elaborate confidence tricks and schemes which landed him in prison on at least one occasion. This was one of the factors that led to le Carré's fascination with secrets."〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=John Le Carre biography, plus links to book reviews and excerpts )〕 The character "Rick Pym", the scheming con-man father of protagonist 'Magnus Pym' in his later novel ''A Perfect Spy'' (1986), was based on Ronnie. When Ronnie died in 1975, le Carré paid for a memorial funeral service but did not attend.〔 Cornwell's formal schooling began at St Andrew's Preparatory School, near Pangbourne, Berkshire, then continued at Sherborne School; he proved unhappy with the typically harsh English public school régime of the time, and disliked his disciplinarian housemaster, Thomas, and so withdrew. From 1948 to 1949, he studied foreign languages at the University of Bern in Switzerland. In 1950 he joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army garrisoned in Austria, working as a German language interrogator of people who crossed the Iron Curtain to the West. In 1952, he returned to England to study at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he worked covertly for the British Security Service, MI5, spying upon far-left groups for information about possible Soviet agents. When Ronnie declared bankruptcy in 1954, Cornwell quit Oxford to teach at a boys' preparatory school; however, a year later, he returned to Oxford and graduated, in 1956, with a First Class Honours Bachelor of Arts degree. He then taught French and German at Eton College for two years, afterwards becoming an MI5 officer in 1958; he ran agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephone lines, and effected break-ins.〔Garton Ash, Timothy. – Life and Letters: "'The Real le Carre'". – ''The New Yorker''. – 15 March 1999.〕 Encouraged by Lord Clanmorris (who wrote crime novels as "John Bingham"), and whilst being an active MI5 officer, Cornwell began writing ''Call for the Dead'' (1961), his first novel. Lord Clanmorris was one of two models – Vivian H. H. Green being the other – for George Smiley, the spymaster of the Circus. As a schoolboy, Cornwell had first met Green when he was the Chaplain and Assistant Master at Sherborne School (1942–51), and then later as Rector at Lincoln College. In 1960, Cornwell transferred to MI6, the foreign-intelligence service, and worked under 'Second Secretary' cover in the British Embassy at Bonn; he later was transferred to Hamburg as a political consul. There, he wrote the detective story ''A Murder of Quality'' (1962) and ''The Spy Who Came in from the Cold'' (1963), as "John le Carré" (''le Carré'' is French for "the Square" 〔), a pseudonym required because Foreign Office officers were forbidden to publish in their own names. Cornwell left the service in 1964 to work full-time as a novelist, as his intelligence officer career was ended by the betrayal of British agents' covers to the KGB by Kim Philby, a British double agent (of the Cambridge Five).〔 Le Carré depicts and analyses Philby as the upper-class traitor, code-named "Gerald" by the KGB, the mole George Smiley hunts in ''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' (1974). Credited by his pen name, Cornwell appears as an extra in the 2011 film version of ''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'', among the guests at the Christmas party seen in several flashback scenes. In 1964, le Carré won the Somerset Maugham Award, established to enable British writers younger than 35 to enrich their writing by spending time abroad. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「John le Carré」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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