But George Smiley and the others live on. The true Spy Master of several generations has left us. He was generous with his creativity, and always a true gentleman. Amazingly, he was always at the other end of the phone if we had a question, or needed a line or to confirm if a character might say something specific. I got to know David a little bit, over conversations, lunches, and his visit to the set. His characters were drawn deftly and deeply, nuances too many to count, and for me, inhabiting George Smiley remains one of the high points of my life. Produced by le Carr’s sons, writers Simon Cornwell and Stephen Cornwell through Ink Factory, this limited BBC series earned an Emmy award for its director Susanne Bier, and Emmy nominations for. He was of course a very great author, the true ‘owner’ of the serious, adult, complicated spy novel - he actually owned the genre. I have lost a friend, a mentor and an inspiration.”

“We have lost a great figure of English literature, a man of great wit, kindness, humor and intelligence. “His like will never be seen again, and his loss will be felt by every book lover, everyone interested in the human condition,” Curtis Brown’s statement read. Throughout his career, le Carré wrote 25 novels and one volume of memoir, “The Pigeon Tunnel” in 2016, and has sold more than 60 million copies of his works around the world. His last novel, titled “Agent Running in the Field,” was published in October 2019. He was nominated in 2016 for a Primetime Emmy Award as an executive producer on “The Night Manager.” John le Carré’s books spawned countless film and TV adaptations, like 1965’s “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” starring Richard Burton, the 1979 “ Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” miniseries starring Alec Guinness as well as 2011 film starring Gary Oldman, 2005’s Oscar-winning “The Constant Gardener” starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, AMC’s acclaimed recent limited series “The Night Manager” and “The Little Drummer Girl,” “A Most Wanted Man” starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, and many more.

Kenneth Anger, Avant-Garde Filmmaker and Hollywood Fabulist, Dead at Age 96

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