According to Robert Harris, who was the only person to interview the novelist’s first wife, Ann, he liked to have ‘a football team’ of women ‘on the go’
Novelist John le Carré confessed to his first wife he ‘slept with every nanny they ever had’, a biographer has claimed.
According to Robert Harris, who was the author’s authorised biographer in the 1990s, he told his first wife Ann, that he kept ‘a football team’ of simultaneous mistresses.
The serial infidelities of le Carre – real name David Cornwell – became a shocking final chapter to his life story that fans discovered only after his death in 2020.
But now the full extent of his cheating has come to light.
Speaking on a podcast about writing, Always Take Notes, Mr Harris revealed:
“I’m the only person who ever interviewed his first wife, who gave me hundreds of letters, still in their original envelopes. It was sort of a biographer’s dream.
“But the thing about David Cornwell was his obsessional hunt for women. I remember her saying he slept with every nanny they ever had.
“And then she said, “I asked him how many women he had at that moment on the go”, and he said, “About a football team”.’
Author Mr Harris abandoned his biography when he learnt his subject’s love life was even more audacious than his novels, which include Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
He said: “It was clear to me that one couldn’t write a biography of le Carre without looking at that. I didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t that I was frightened of the legal problems – although there would have been legal problems – it was that I found it distasteful, and I didn’t want to pry into his private life. He was a novelist I admired.”
Five years before his death aged 89 in December 2020, Cornwell authorised another biographer, Adam Sisman, to publish John le Carre – The Biography on condition Mr Sisman did not go into detail on his numerous affairs.
After le Carre’s death, Mr Sisman published a second biography, The Secret Life Of John le Carre, which revealed the truth.
