Alexander Howard stumbled on spymaster John Le Carré soon after relishing a James Bond film. And he was instantly hooked on George Smiley, Le Carré’s unglamorous bureaucrat-detective – an unlikely hero.
John Le Carré in a scene from The Pigeon Tunnel.
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John le Carré and Ian Fleming, the world’s most famous spy novelists, share experience in UK intelligence and difficult childhoods. But their heroes, George Smiley and James Bond, are very different.
Patrice Lumumba, left, first Prime Minister of independent Congo in 1960. The CIA celebrated his death.
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