John le Carré Remembers November 22

The spy novelist supreme was a spy himself on that fateful day

The late British spy novelist John le Carré, author of such Cold War classics as “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” was himself an intelligence agent on the day President John F. Kennedy was killed on Nov. 22, 1963.

But “John le Carré” was a nom de plume (required by his employers), and at the time there were but two books published under that name. He would go on to publish 25 more. David Cornwell was the true name of the writer, and on the day of the assassination, he was working in foreign intelligence for MI6, having left the domestic British intelligence agency MI5 in 1960.