Tinker, tailor, Marxist academic… how Le Carré angered Eric Hobsbawm

Marxist intellectual asked author why MI5 man in A Perfect Spy had a name so like his own, new biography reveals

Their names stand high among the roll call of British men of letters of the modern age: both revered authors with an international following, but publishing in very different corners of the literary world. One, John le Carré, is the creator of a succession of brilliant spy thrillers, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Little Drummer Girl, the other, the late Eric Hobsbawm, was a leading exponent of leftwing historical thought, a man who was also the subject of state surveillance for many years.

Now the first biography of Hobsbawm, A Life in History, due out early next month, is to reveal an unlikely correspondence between the two men that centred on the name of a character in one Le Carré novel. In the 1986 book A Perfect Spy, later made into a BBC television series, Le Carré makes reference to a character called “Hobsbawn” who was under the control of the British security services. The real man, Professor Hobsbawm, was not pleased.

Related: After The Night Manager: five of the best Le Carré novels

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