British espionage writer John le Carré has died after a short illness.

The author of “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold” and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy passed away over the weekend from pneumonia.

Canlit legend and Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood tweeted that le Carre’s novels featuring spymaster George Smiley — described by le Carre as an “antidote” to James Bond — were the “key to understanding the mid-20th Century”

Author Stephen King called le Carre “a literary giant and a humanitarian spirit”.

He was born in England as David Cornwell in 1931.  He studied at the university of Bern, in Switzerland and then Oxford, before entering a career in undercover British intelligence.

He wrote under the name le Carre, because he was forbidden from publishing spy novels under his birth name.

John le Carre was 89.
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