Watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy online: Episode 1 John Le Carre: The Secret Centre

JOHN LE Carre, the award-winning novelist, has disclosed for the first time details of his career as a spy in the intelligence and security services. In his first television interview for 15 years, Mr Le Carre admits he started working for the secret service when he was 16 and went on to become a senior undercover operative in West Germany at the height of the Cold War. It is the first time the author, whose books include Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, has explicitly confessed to having been a spy. Related Articles Le Carré donates cliffs to nation The interview features in John Le Carre: The Secret Centre, a documentary about the author's life to be broadcast on Boxing Day on BBC2. In the programme Le Carre, now 69, describes how he first became involved with foreign intelligence after running away to Switzerland to escape the influence of his father, a confidence trickster. While living in Berne he met an MI6 official from the British consul and began running errands for him. Le Carre, whose real name is David Cornwell, returned to England after a year but maintained contact with the secret services while studying at Oxford University and later, as a teacher at Eton, before joining MI5 full-time. He was transferred to MI6 and dispatched to West Germany, where, according to his first wife, Anne Martin, he spent several years "deep undercover". Le Carre says his career in espionage came to an abrupt end in 1963 following the publication of his first spy novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Le Carre has always been guarded about his spying career, although it was understood to have informed much of his writing. Nigel Williams, the documentary's maker, said he thought Le Carre had decided it was time to come clean about his past: "He is a highly patriotic Englishman and he hadn't talked about it before because he thought it wasn't right to do so. But he is almost 70 now and I think he felt he should set the record straight."

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