Mystery. Secrecy. Intrigue. For many people, these words bring to mind the swashbuckling world of spies and espionage: cunning, elusive agents who dart into the night, revealing themselves only for the briefest of moments before vanishing into the shadows from which they came. Excitement. Action. Charm. The mere mention of spies or espionage today often brings up famous spies from pop culture, such as the Men in Black and the iconic James Bond. The espionage genre is certainly not sparsely populated, with countless books, films and TV shows depicting the dangerous lives of these shadow lords. Writers and producers of the spy genre, however, often view the world of espionage through rose-colored glasses as they write, portraying that world as one with clear distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil. Despicable, power-hungry villains like “Dr. No” plot to destroy the world but are stopped just in time by bold and courageous James Bond heroes. However, in the real world, this distinction is often blurred – and sometimes even non-existent. Real-life espionage is full of dark tactics, backroom deals, treachery, and betrayal. As famed author and prolific contributor to the spy genre John Le Carre once wrote, “Who can spy on spies?” (Le Carre 77). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Born as David John Moore Cornwell, the man behind the pseudonym "John Le Carre" was born in Poole, Dorset, England, on October 19, 1931 to conman Ronnie Cornwell and his wife Olive. After his mother abandoned him and his father at a young age, Le Carré spent much of his childhood at various boarding schools and eventually left England at 16 to study at the University of Bern in Switzerland. While in Switzerland, the young Le Carré attracted the attention of British foreign intelligence, beginning a long and successful career with British intelligence. Already a member of MI5 even when applying to and studying at Oxford University, Le Carré helped monitor the school's more radical elements for MI5 before graduating and teaching at Eton College for two years. Subsequently, Le Carré briefly rejoined MI5 before moving to MI6, the foreign intelligence branch of British intelligence, in 1960. He began his literary career just a year later, in 1961, with the publication of his first novel mystery, Call for the Dead, taking into account the alias "John Le Carre" to comply with MI6 restrictions and regulations. It was in 1963, however, that the MI6 agent turned author rose to global fame with the success of the novel that many still consider his magnum opus, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. With The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Le Carré firmly secured his position as a leading author and leading figure in the spy genre, drawing on his vast personal experience as an agent of the SIS, MI6 and other British intelligence agencies to create compelling stories and narratives of life undercover. According to literary critic Tony Barley, "By 1974...le Carré's identity as a writer of spy thrillers was well established." Many of his other masterpieces, however, came later in his life, such as another of his most famous and popular novels, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Through the novel, John Le Carre reveals that British and American intelligence agencies during the Cold War and beyond were just as ruthless and immoral as the Soviets they fought against. Le Carre's 1974 novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy tells the story of George Smiley, aof Le Carré's most famous and recurring characters and, like Le Carré, a British foreign intelligence agent. The year is 1973, at the height of the Cold War in Europe, and Smiley, forced into retirement after a failed operation in Czechoslovakia, has just been informed by Control, the head of SIS, that there is a Soviet mole high up in the British intelligence: “'There's one bad apple,' Control said, 'and it's infecting all the others'” (Le Carre 293). Determined to track down and expose this mole, Smiley sets out to investigate and rescue British intelligence secrets from its enemies, both at home and abroad. Along the way, as he sifts through layer upon layer of secrets and lies that stand between him and the Soviet mole, Smiley uncovers a web of conspiracies and machinations that nearly bring down Britain's intelligence service - all of which can be traced back to a shadowy Czech general named Stevcek .“Stevcek had control over everything… Then, in the mid-sixties, Control comes to this corner, Stevcek's second spell in Moscow, and it's marked green and red fifty-fifty. Apparently, Stevcek was assigned to the Warsaw Pact liaison staff as a colonel general, Control says, but that was just a cover. «It has nothing to do with the Warsaw Pact liaison staff. His real job was in the English section of the Moscow Center. He operated under the stage name Minin… This is the real treasure,” Control says.” (Le Carre 293) At the end of the story's plethora of twists, “there is however a strong sense of incompleteness, uncertainty and bewildered wonder, as if the ghosts themselves were unable to understand the events that had just occurred, or indeed what they are working for or against” (Cowley). And although the Soviet mole's true identity is ultimately discovered and revealed by Smiley at the novel's climax and conclusion, the story does not end there: rather, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy serves as the first book in Le Carré's "Karla Trilogy" , named after the Soviet spy codenamed "Karla" in Le Carré's novels, who is revealed to be Smiley's counterpart in the Soviet intelligence service and his sworn "arch-nemesis" throughout the trilogy and beyond. Karla is described by Smiley as a mysterious, enigmatic and highly skilled spy: “Legends have been made and Karla was one of them. Even his age was a mystery…decades of his life were missing, and probably never would be, since the people he worked with had a habit of dying or keeping their mouths shut” (Le Carre 206). Tinsmith, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and all of John Le Carré's other works, although works of fiction, have a significant basis in real facts and events, as well as Le Carré's personal experiences as a British intelligence agent in his early days pre-novelist. In fact, much of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is adapted from the true story of Harold "Kim" Philby, a British intelligence officer who rose to prominence in MI6 after World War II. In 1963, however, Philby, after being exposed as an undercover Soviet agent, fled England and defected to the Soviet Union. Le Carré himself contributed to a 1969 book about Philby's defection before fictionalizing – and immortalizing – the events in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Koger). This era was extensively depicted in le Carré's novels, all of which were set in the midst of the Cold War, when tensions between the totalitarian communist regime of the Soviet Union and the democratic Western powers - namely the United States and Great Britain - reached new highs. seemingly every day. On both sides of the conflict, intelligence services worked around the clock, day and night, to uncover secrets, plans and.