The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham - Hardcover

Michael Jago

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1849545138 ISBN 13: 9781849545136

Publisher: Biteback Publishing, 2013

Synopsis

After a period following the Iraq War, when the reputation of Britain's spooks has hit an all-time low, John le Carré s intellectual hero George Smiley has come to be seen as the perfect spy, a man who would never allow secret intelligence to be misused for political purposes. Le Carré revealed shortly before the Iraq War that the model for Smiley was the author and MI5 officer John Bingham, the 7th Baron Clanmorris. Michael Jago's brilliant account of Bingham s life is not just the story of a perfect spy, it is also of a writer whose thrillers transcended the genre, exploring the emotions behind the darkest human behaviour. As an intelligence officer the bespectacled Bingham had a deep influence on Le Carré, then a junior colleague in MI5. Like Smiley, Bingham was an expert interrogator. His understanding of the human psyche, demonstrated so brilliantly in his seventeen novels, persuaded his subjects to give up the intelligence they were holding deep inside. He took part in many of MI5's greatest wartime and Cold War operations, from the Double Cross operation that ensured the success of D-Day, through the tracking of Soviet spies in Cold War Britain to the monitoring of Lord Lucan and others planning a right-wing coup in the 1970s. As le Carré said, Nobody who knew John and the work he was doing could have missed the description of Smiley in my first novel.

About this title

About the Author

MICHAEL JAGO is an Englishman based in Chicago and south-west France. He holds an honours degree from University College, Oxford in Greats and has published and edited a number of journals.

Edition details

• Publisher: Biteback Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1849545138
• ISBN 13: 9781849545136
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320