Author John le Carré was such a prodigious philanderer he confessed to his first wife he ‘slept with every nanny they ever had’, a biographer has revealed.
The literary spymaster told Ann Sharp, whom he married in 1954, he kept ‘a football team’ of simultaneous mistresses.
The serial infidelities of le Carré – real name David Cornwell – became a shocking final chapter to his life story that fans only discovered after his death in 2020, but now the full extent of his cheating has come to light.
Robert Harris, who was the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy author’s original authorised biographer in the 1990s, interviewed Cornwell’s first wife Ann, with whom he had three sons during a 17-year marriage which ended in divorce in 1971.
Speaking on a podcast about writing, Always Take Notes, Mr Harris revealed: ‘I’m the only person who ever interviewed his first wife, who gave me hundreds of letters, still in their original envelopes. It was sort of a biographer’s dream.
Author John le Carre, whose real name was David Cornwell, at his home in London
Sue Dawson on holiday with le Carre in Lesvos in 1983
John le Carre pictured with his second wife Valerie Jane Eustace in 2001
‘But the thing about David Cornwell was his obsessional hunt for women. I remember her saying he slept with every nanny they ever had. And then she said, ‘I asked him how many women he had at that moment on the go’, and he said ‘about a football team’.’
Mr Harris, who pens fiction and non-fiction and has recently published a novel based on the unorthodox love life of former Prime Minster Herbert Asquith, abandoned his le Carré biography when he learnt his subject’s love life was even more audacious than his spy stories.
He said: ‘Well it was clear to me that one couldn’t write a biography of le Carré without looking at that.
‘I didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t that I was frightened of the legal problems – although my god there would have been legal problems – it was that I found it distasteful to be honest with you, and I didn’t want to pry into his private life.
‘He was a novelist I admired. And so that, more than anything, was the reason I decided to just write my own books instead.’
Five years prior to his death aged 89 in December 2020, Cornwell authorised another biographer, Adam Sisman, to publish John le Carré – The Biography on condition Mr Sisman did not go into detail on his numerous affairs.
Sue Dawson on holiday with Le Carre in Lesvos, Greece, in 1983
John Le Carre appears at the premiere of ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,’ in London on September 13, 2011
Robert Harris (pictured), who was the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy author’s original authorised biographer in the 1990s, interviewed Cornwell’s first wife Ann
After le Carré’s death, Mr Sisman published a second biography, The Secret Life Of John le Carré which revealed the lurid truth about his serial adultery. Mr Sisman identified at least 11 women with whom he had affairs during the first 30 years of his second marriage to Jane, which started in 1972.
He revealed how the Spy Who Came In From The Cold author ran his many mistresses like agents – with codenames, dead drops and safe houses. It was a portrait of duplicity and betrayal as carried out by a novelist whose work was characterised by those themes.
He quoted Cornwell as telling him in a letter: ‘My infidelities produced in my life a duality and a tension that became almost a necessary drug for my writing, a dangerous edge of some kind.
‘They are not therefore a ‘dark part’ of my life, separate from the ‘high literary calling,’ so to speak, but, alas, integral to it, and inseparable.’
Cornwell is reported as saying he didn’t want to ‘humiliate’ his wife Jane, to which Mr Sisman had replied: ‘It’s a bit late for that.’ Jane died two months after her husband passed away, aged 82.
Mr Sisman said one of the mistresses, Sue Dawson, a woman in her mid-20s who lived in Chelsea, had once asked him what he would do if his wife ever found out about their affair, and Cornwell had replied: ‘I’d deny you – I would deny you utterly.’
Author John le Carre pictured in 2004. He died aged 89 in December 2020
Mr Sisman said: ‘When David decided to seduce a woman, he would pursue her relentlessly. A handsome man even in late middle age, he could be scintillating company, witty and attentive, with a fund of entertaining stories and a deep reservoir of experience to draw upon.
‘He wrote erotic letters to them, making them feel missed and desired. He lured those with literary ambitions into imagining that they might write together. He had the ability to make people love him even when they knew that they shouldn’t, and to want to protect him and share his life.’
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