Leamas is to purportedly defect to East Germany in order to sow disinformation regarding enemy party member Hans-Dieter Mundt, the man responsible for Riemick’s murder. However, the mysterious Control, the head of 'The Circus' – Le Carré's fictional nickname for MI6, based on its offices' setting in London's Cambridge Circus – offers him one last mission before retirement. Leamas has failed in his mission as head of the West Berlin office of the British Secret Service, and after witnessing the murder of his last undercover operative, Riemick, as he tries to cross the border, he returns to Britain, and requests leave. Set against the backdrop of a divided, post-war Berlin, the novel tells the story of disillusioned British agent Alec Leamas.

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.

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