What a life!
Studying German in the late 1940s was a shocking thing to do, but the language turned out to be unexpectedly useful. By age 20, Mr. le Carré was using his German skills while working for British intelligence in the Soviet zone of postwar, Allied-occupied Austria. When he returned to England in 1952, he worked for MI5, posing at Oxford as a communist to inform on left-leaning students.