LONDON (AP) -- Fans of John Le Carre's spy novels have wondered for decades whether the bespectacled hero George Smiley was based on a real-life British spy. And if so, which one?
In a BBC radio interview broadcast Sunday, the author revealed that his enigmatic character was based on two men: a spy in MI5 -- the British national intelligence agency Le Carre once worked for -- and his former Oxford University lecturer."He grew out of two people," Le Carre said. "One was a spook I was working with who wrote novels under the name of John Bingham and was otherwise the Lord Clanmorris."
Le Carre did not name the other man, saying only that he was a lecturer "who became effectively my confessor and godfather." The Sunday Times newspaper said he was the Rev. Vivian Green, Le Carre's former tutor at Oxford.
The paper said Le Carre revealed in 1995 that he had borrowed Green's "strength of intellect and spirit" for Smiley, the protagonist in his trilogy, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," "The Honorable Schoolboy," and "Smiley's People." Smiley also appeared in two earlier novels.
Le Carre said he didn't plan to write any more Smiley novels.
"He belonged very much to the cold war and should have died with it," Le Carre said.