After a univercity education in Berne and Oxford, he spent much of the 1950 and 1960 work for MI5 and MI6. It was while he was with he secret service agencies that he started writing spy novels, using many of the people he work with as the inspiration for his fiction. His first novel, The Spy Who Came in form the Cold (1963), was an international bestseller. With th success of this novel, le Carre' left MI6 and concentrated fully on his writing.