David Omand, the former head of GCHQ, told the Cheltenham Literature Festival that the author’s works were entertainment and should be read ‘for pleasure’
John le Carré worked for MI5 and MI6ANDREW FOX/MIRRORPIX/GETTY IMAGES
David Sanderson, Arts Correspondent
Wednesday October 14 2026, 1.00pm BST, The Times
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John le Carré’s fiction should be forgotten about as it gives an unrealistic portrait of the intelligence services, the former head of GCHQ has said.
David Omand said that the authors Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene gave realistic depictions of the intelligence community, adding that many others including le Carré were just entertainment.
Omand, who also held senior intelligence posts in the Cabinet Office and the Home Office, said the “level of mistrust” that le Carré conveys in many of his novels could not conceivably occur in a functioning intelligence agency.David OmandKATIE WILSON FOR THE TIMES
When asked this week about the best and worst depictions of intelligence agencies in fiction, Omand cited Maugham’s Ashenden: Or the British Agent as one of the greatest. The 1927 collection of stories was partly based on Maugham’s experiences working for Britain’s intelligence services during the First World War.
“Forget about le Carré,” Omand told The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival. “Just read it for pleasure. It is not realistic. The level of mistrust that le Carré portrays; no intelligence service could survive if there is insider conflict.”
Omand’s criticisms of le Carré echo those of Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, who said the writer who died in 2020 was “corrosive”.
Dearlove said at a literary festival in 2019 that le Carré flipped the “coin of reality”. He added: “Intelligence organisations are based on trust between colleagues. His books are exclusively about betrayal.”Dearlove at the Hay Festival in 2009ALAMY
The Smiley novels of le Carré, whose real name is David Cornwell, sealed his place as one of the most renowned and acclaimed of postwar British novelists.
Le Carré’s own experiences working for MI5 and MI6 are said to have inspired his literary career, which took off with the 1963 release of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
One of his most famous novels, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, where the spymaster George Smiley hunts for a mole within British intelligence, echoed the real-life betrayal of Kim Philby.
Dearlove, who served as head of MI6 from 1999 to 2004, said le Carré’s fictional depictions had made “most professional Secret Intelligence Service officers … pretty angry with him”.
He said in 2019: “I rather resent the fact that he has traded on his knowledge and reputation and yet the feeling I get is that he really rather intensely dislikes the service,” adding that “something must have happened to him while he was there [at MI6] to breed this cynicism”.The actor Gary Oldman plays George Smiley in the film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier SpyENTERTAINMENT PICTURES/ALAMY
Le Carré subsequently wrote to The Times rebutting Dearlove’s criticism, and said that John Scarlett invited him to dine with his senior staff after he became the head of MI6 in 2004.
The author also said that Dearlove’s predecessor, David Spedding, also invited him to lunch at the service’s headquarters and later visited him at his home in Cornwall.
Le Carré said of Spedding: “He kindly believed that, due in part to my novels, MI6 had assumed a sensible place in the public awareness: human, fallible, aspirational, contentious, and part of real life.”
The author also wrote: “Antony Duff, a former director-general of MI5 and a longtime friend, thought my books were trash but harmless.”
Omand, who releases the first in a planned trilogy of spy novels next year, told the Cheltenham Literature Festival that beyond Maugham and Greene, there were very few espionage novelists worth reading.
He said: “Greene is worth reading. He touches upon espionage. He was in the secret service, MI6, during the war. There is a long list [of spy novelists], but most of them are entertainment.”CultureBooks
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