SPYMASTER

It could have been a scene from a Cold War thriller.

- BY MATT ROPER Senior Feature Writer

First, Federico Varese, a young Oxford academic researching the Russian mafia, gets a mysterious letter from Britain while doing field work in Siberia.

Weeks later, he turns up at the dark corner of a Lebanese restaurant for a rendezvous with its sender, who recruits him for an important task.

That mystery man wanted information - but not for a top-secret government assignment.

It was John le Carre and he needed help to write his next novel.

Le Carre, who died in 2020 aged 89, had worked for MI5 but gave up his spy job to write fiction, becoming a bestselling author of books such as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

He raised spy novels to a new level of respect, with an attention to detail that made the murky world of espionage seem terrifyingly real.

Now, thanks to an exhibition that opened this week at Oxford's Bodleian Library, we finally know why.

In fact, Le Carre - real name David Cornwell - employed a hidden network of informants and collaborators, including real-life spies and figures from the criminal underworld, who helped shape his stories, provided him with crucial information and even turned up as characters in his books.

And, not unlike his previous career, he would seek them out, co-opt them with money and gifts, and swear them to secrecy.

Federico, who found himself among Le Carre's most trusted informants, is now professor of criminology at Oxford University and one of the curators of the exhibition, John le Carre: Tradecraft.

He tells the Mirror of his first rendezvous with the author in 1992: "He arranged to meet me at a restaurant called Al-Shami. I arrived early, but he was already there and sitting on a table with his back to the wall.

"John was already a famous author by then.

"He talked about ideas he had for his next book, and he wanted to hear from me.