Espionage has a split personality in British culture.
On the one hand, it is perceived as a glamorous, adventurous spectacle, a vision that originated mainly from the author Ian Fleming and his most famous creation, James Bond, who first appeared in 1953 in the novel Casino Royale.
On the other hand, there is something much less attractive - the harsher, yet more bureaucratic world that can be found in the novels of Graham Greene and Lee Deighton, in films such as Order to kill Anthony Esquith (1958) and television series such as Remaining James Mitchell (1967-72) and The Sandbaggers (1978-80) by Ian Mackintosh.
One British author took the espionage picture in this darker direction more than any other.
The writer John le Carré probably had as much influence on the perception of espionage as Fleming, but with a quieter and more realistic portrayal.
And while Le Carre has done this over an astonishing fifty-year career, in 26 novels, his third novel The spy who took shelter in the lee (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold) it was he who effectively solidified this vision, producing one of the shining examples of post-war British prose, espionage or otherwise.
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Sixty years after its publication in September 1963, the novel has retained all its power.
Set in the time of divided, post-war Berlin, the novel tells the story of disillusioned British agent Alec Limas.
Limas has failed as head of the British Secret Service's West Berlin office - he witnessed the murder of Rimick, the last undercover operative, so he returns to the UK and asks to be relieved of duty.
However, the mysterious Control, head of "Circus" - Le Carré's fictitious nickname for MI6, based on the headquarters of his offices located in London's Cambridge Circus - offers him one last mission before retirement.
Limas is to defect to East Germany in order to spread disinformation about enemy party member Hans-Dieter Munth, the man responsible for Rimick's murder.
But, as in any spy story, nothing is as it seems.
As the mission is complicated by Limas' front, specifically his relationship with British Communist Party secretary Liz Gold, the tension grows as to whether he will be able to fulfill it - or whether it was really meant to be.
With all the ideological background of the Cold War, the story rises above the conventional spy thriller, exposing the raw, grim reality of field operations carried out during the period of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie and smuggled microdots.
Le Carré was less interested in simply dramatizing the basics of the espionage craft in a gut-wrenching way - though he certainly did it in more detail than any other writer of the time.
Rather, he wanted to question the very act of espionage, emphasizing the amoral techniques used in the invisible struggle between the intelligence services of East and West.
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How does he manage to be so authentic
Le Carré's history as an intelligence agent in real life is felt in the authenticity of his works, especially in A spy, just as in the explicitly pessimistic tone of the book.
Born David Cornwell, Le Carré served in the British Intelligence Service from the late XNUMXs, when he was stationed in the Austrian city of Graz as part of his regular military service.
Due to his good knowledge of the German language, he helped in hearing people who defected from East Germany.
He then returned to study at Oxford, where he became an informant for MI5 on communist student groups, before joining the agency full-time when he left.
He started writing while working in the dirty world of wiretapping and house burglaries - under a pseudonym, because that was the job's requirement.
He transferred in 1960 to MI6 and was attached to the embassy in Bonn.
A spy was the last novel he published before it, like so many others, was compromised in 1963 by double agent Kim Philby and his notorious betrayal of his colleagues in the British Secret Service.
Philby exposed all their fronts to the KGB, ending Le Carré's intelligence career for all time.
However, even without Philby's uncovering of his cover, the chances are that Le Carre would have been exposed anyway.
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Critics A spy, especially those on the other side of the Iron Curtain, sensed that the author was most likely a real intelligence officer.
Le Carré, in typical provocateur fashion, had copies of the book smuggled into Eastern Bloc countries, eager to find out how it would be received there.
Her mostly positive reception made him a little uncomfortable, while some recognized the obvious reality hidden behind the fiction.
Russian critic V. Vojnov was the first to be featured A spy for the Moscow art magazine Literaturnaja gazeta pointed out that its authenticity could only be conveyed by someone with a history within the intelligence world.
Of course, the level of detail in the book meant that readers eager for more Bond spectacle were left unsatisfied.
A Times account of the period, for example, complained that there was "too much description and too little action".
Most reviews, however, were positive and even the previous master of espionage Graham Greene admitted that it was "the best spy story he had ever read".
The first-hand knowledge, grim atmosphere, and complex morality gave the novel an air of realism, making it stand out from the imaginary adventures of other spy prose.
It was a true turning point for the genre, building on the foundations laid by Dayton and Greene's novels such as Ipkres file (1962) and Our man in Havana (1958), but pushing the boundaries in terms of the credibility of the story and the melancholy of its tone.
Why the novel is actually about loneliness
Equally refreshing was the fact that Le Carré's protagonists are not the dashing heroes of typical spy stories.
They struggle with ethical dilemmas and are haunted by personal sacrifices, and remain crushed and impoverished by the relentless psychological cost of their own work.
Limus is truly one of the most hopeless and pessimistic characters in British fiction.
This is best illustrated by the fact that Richard Burton was chosen to play the character in the 1965 film adaptation of the book.
While the equivalent of 007's secret agent on the big screen was the suave Sean Connery, graceful as a panther and in his early thirties, Limas was middle-aged, with the cost of his work clearly visible on Burton's face, the result of the actor's turbulent life and alcoholism.
And indeed, the choice of Barton turned out to be a stroke of genius.
"The story A spy it was actually a story about loneliness…” Le Carre stated in a 1974 interview
Through a compelling story, readers were exposed to the two-faced nature of the struggle for supremacy in the Cold War, where loyalties constantly shift and trust is a rare luxury.
For Le Carré, loneliness and spying went hand in hand, simply because no one could be trusted.
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The Spy was Le Carré's third novel after A phone call for a dead man (1961) and High level murders (1962)
Both of the books that preceded it were an unusual mixture of spy novel and crime thriller, although they leaned more towards the latter, despite introducing one of George Smiley's most popular and enigmatic prose spies for the first time.
He is undoubtedly Le Carré's most popular character, mostly because of the trilogy Boy, Lady, King, Spy (1974) A noble student (1977) and Smiley's people (1979)
The character also instantly conjures up the image of actor Alec Guinness thanks to two celebrated BBC adaptations in 1979 and 1982.
Although A spy still a quintessential Smiley novel, his presence is reduced to a ghostly puppeteer, seen and mentioned in the novel only a few times.
And while Le Carré's novels in which Smiley is much more present tell the story explicitly from his perspective, A spy it more faithfully reflects Smiley's place in the larger society - unseen, quietly manipulative, playing long-term behind-the-scenes games that no individual pawn can understand.
"The novel's value, then—or its flaw, depending on your point of view—is not that it is authentic, but that it is credible," Le Carré said.
His willingness to tell the truth made him no more popular with MI6 than he was with the enemy.
In a memoir Pigeon tunnel from 2016, he recalled a festive dinner, just a few years after its publication A spy, during which a former colleague cornered him and told him what he thought.
"'You bastard, Cornwell,' a middle-aged MI6 officer, once a colleague of mine, roared across the room at me as a group of Washington insiders gathered for a reception hosted by the British ambassador," he wrote.
"'You bastard.' He hadn't expected to meet me, but now that he had, he was glad of the opportunity to spit in my face whatever he thought of me for tarnishing the honor of the Service."
Perhaps the mirror he held up to the Service was not liked by his former colleagues, but it certainly made for great prose.
And yet, beneath the brutally accurate portrait of what it means to be a spy, A spy is actually a novel about enduring, even defiant humanism in the midst of conflicting ideologies, all told through impeccably evoked characterization.
That's the very essence of Le Carré's Cold War exploits - no one gets out of the spy business clean, not even those who turn a deaf ear to their masters in Whitehall, Washington or the Kremlin when their conscience finally starts to itch.
It is probably this reality that annoyed his former colleagues so much, and the novel is all the better for its unflinching handling of the ethics of espionage.
And while A spy celebrates its 60th birthday, it is as powerful today as it was in the middle of the Cold War, especially now that old divisions are returning and global crises follow one another.
The novel's credibility is key to the lasting power of Le Carré's storytelling, even if the whole truth is hard to accept.
As he wrote in the book itself: "Intelligence work has only one moral law - it is justified by results."
What is the true cost of public safety?
Le Carre was too great and too mature a writer to offer easy or comforting answers.
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