The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham

"The greatest irony is that it was to George Smiley, modelled largely on Bingham, that le Carré owed his success."—London Review of Books

Following the film success of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy John le Carré's hero George Smiley has come to be seen as the perfect spy. Le Carré revealed shortly before the Iraq War that the model for Smiley was the author and MI5 officer John Bingham, 7th Baron Clanmorris. Michael Jago's brilliant account of his life is not just the story of a great intriguer; it is also of a portrait of the emotions behind the darkest human behavior.

Michael Jago read Ancient History and Philosophy at University College Oxford before settling in the USA in 1980. For 15 years he ran an educational travel business, specialising in the battlefields of western Europe and operated the American College of Travel in Los Angeles. When he sold his travel business in 1995 he launched a football magazine that grew from its California base to be published in several states across the southwestern and midwestern USA. After acquiring a further degree as a (very) mature student at Oxford, he has adopted the writing of biography as his career. He lives in both Chicago and south-west France.