CORNWELL, DAVID• 111(1962), which drew upon his experience as a schoolmaster at Mill-
field and Eton and introduced the character of George Smiley, the
retired intelligence officer who, Cornwell later admitted, was based
upon Bingham. With the publication ofThe Spy Who Came In from
the Coldin 1963, a typically bleak story of espionage and betrayal,
Cornwell achieved worldwide recognition and won both the Somer-
set Maugham Prize and his early retirement from SIS. He com-
pounded his success with The Looking-Glass War and later
developed Smiley as the troubled, lonely spymaster inTinker, Tailor,
Soldier, SpyandSmiley’s People.
Cornwell not only relied upon real people from his own past to use
as characters in his books but also extended the vocabulary of the
intelligence community by describing authentic espionage tradecraft
in unprecedented detail and referring to ‘‘lamplighters’’ (known as
‘‘the watchers’’ in the real world) and calling the guardians of safe
houses used to accommodatedefectors’ ‘‘babysitters.’’ In a remark-
able example of life following art, he may have introduced the terms
moleand mole hunterinto the lexicon. Certainly Cornwell was
keenly aware of his predecessors in both MI5 and SIS who had opted
for a literary life. He recalled that in his day the Security Service had
been hostile toGraham Greeneand MI5’s legal adviser, Bernard
Hill, had considered urging the attorney-general to prosecute Greene
for disclosing inside information inOur Man in Havana. As he re-
marked in an interview:
Writers are a subversive crowd, nothing if not traitors. The better the
writer, the greater the betrayal tends to appear, a thing the secret commu-
nity has learned the hard way, for I hear it is no longer quite so keen to
have us abroad. Nevertheless,[Compton] Mackenzieended his days with
a knighthood. Greene will end his with the order of merit at least, and if
there is any justice at all in the secret world of literary awards, a Nobel
prize.Cornwell’s success, due mainly to the compulsive power of his writ-
ing, is also due to his subject matter and the realistic atmosphere he
creates. His research is often painstaking, as was demonstrated when
he called upon old colleagues in SIS to entertain him while preparing
The Honourable Schoolboy, his tale of plots and intrigue set in the
Far East and based in part on the remarkableAlexis Forter.