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To compensate for his restlessness as a diplomat, whose functions included those of intelligence operative, he began to write fiction. The Foreign Office forbids its staff to publish under their own names; Cornwell claims to have seen the name Le Carré ("the square") on a London shop window, though the shop was unlisted in any city directory. "Perhaps," he admits, "it's a lie I've come to believe."
Like one of his fictive double agents, the pseudonymous author scribbled in trains, constructing the character who was to be his later ego. George Smiley bears no physical relationship to his ruddy, unconventionally handsome creator. But like Le Carré, he is an Oxonian, an avid student of German literature and an intellectual manqué. He too was married to a lady named Ann from whom he was to separate.
Cornwell's marital break did not come at once. The first thriller, Call for the Dead, based on the German connection, and A Murder of Quality, with its Etonian background, convinced critics that Le Carré was a real writer, not a civil service dilettante. But the books sold modestly; David Cornwell clung to his true identity and his salary. Upon the publication of his third book, the novelist instructed his accountant to wire in the unlikely event that his bank account reached £20,000. At the time, Cornwell was the father of three growing boys; the magic figure was what he required to become a full-time writer.
It was the author's next-to-last act of naiveté. For The Spy Who Came In from the Cold earned enough to bankroll the whole Foreign Office staff. Graham Greene granted it a rare encomium: "The best spy novel I have ever read." Three and a half million readers agreed. Cornwell handed in his resignation and assumed the identity of John le Carré, thriller writer.
But he neglected to take his equilibrium along. "Success often catches a writer at his most morbid time," Le Carré theorizes, "when he has finished a book. He has been to the end of his talent. It is a frightening view. I went a bit crazy." Flung into the celebrity circuit, he was "eaten alive, asked questions which I felt invasive and impossible to answer." He produced another book, The Looking Glass War, but it brought little satisfaction; reviewers said the adventure could not compare with its smashing predecessor. Le Carré traveled to Dublin to assist in the script of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. "I did it," he insists, "because Richard Burton was sulking and couldn't say his lines. That was my first and last taste of show biz."