Sixty years on from its publication in September 1963, the novel still retains its power. While Le Carré did this over an astonishing 50-year career and more than two dozen novels, it's his third novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold that cemented this vision effectively, resulting in one of the great examples of post-war British fiction, spy or otherwise. British writer John Le Carré arguably had as much impact on the perception of spying as Fleming, but with a depiction of it that was quieter and closer to the bone. One British author tilted the image of espionage in this moodier direction more than any other. – The rebel spy who's the anti-James Bond On the other, it is something far less alluring a grittier yet bureaucratic world found in novels by the likes of Graham Greene and Len Deighton, films like Anthony Asquith's Orders to Kill (1958), and television series such as James Mitchell's Callan (1967-72) and Ian Mackintosh's The Sandbaggers (1978-80).
On the one hand, it's seen as a glamorous, adventurous spectacle, a vision emerging largely from author Ian Fleming and his most famous creation, James Bond, who first appeared in the 1953 novel Casino Royale. Espionage has a split personality in British culture.
