--- title: The Spy Who Ruled Summer description: The legacy of le carré's breakthrough book canonical: https://time.com/2926409/the-spy-who-ruled-summer/ author: Lev Grossman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-26T09:53:45.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T08:38:21.379Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: The Spy Who Ruled Summer og:description: The legacy of le carré's breakthrough book og:url: https://time.com/2926409/the-spy-who-ruled-summer/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Spy Who Ruled Summer twitter:description: The legacy of le carré's breakthrough book twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # The Spy Who Ruled Summer by [Lev Grossman](https://time.com/author/lev-grossman/) ## Lev Grossman Jun 26, 2014 9:53 AM UTC by [Lev Grossman](https://time.com/author/lev-grossman/) ## Lev Grossman Jun 26, 2014 9:53 AM UTC “I had been poor too long, I was drinking a lot, I was beginning to doubt, in the deepest of ways, the wisdom of my choice of job.” That, by his own account, was the state of mind of MI6 officer David Cornwell, a.k.a. John le Carré, when he wrote The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, a book that dominated the summer of 1964 and shaped every depiction of espionage that followed. \[The following text appears within a diagram. Please see your hard copy for actual diagram.\] MOVIES THE RICHARD BURTON VERSION OF THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD A surprisingly faithful, uncompromising adaptation SYRIANA Updates Le Carré’s bleak vision for the oil age DANIEL CRAIG’S BOND Borrows some of Le Carré’s grit and realpolitik Le Carré learned the craft of deception early from his father, a sometime con man TV THE AMERICANS Blends personal relations and international relations HOMELAND Season 3’s plot is straight out of the Le Carré playbook WRITERS IAN RANKIN Fond of antiheroes like Le Carré’s Leamas HENNING MANKELL Brought Le Carré’s psychological insights to his crime novels ALAN FURST Le Carré is “patrician, cold, brilliant” ROBERT LUDLUM Shares Le Carré’s vision of amoral bureaucracies GRAHAM GREENE Both influenced and learned from Le Carré STELLA RIMINGTON MI5 alum to author in Le Carré mode BEN MACINTYRE His histories of espionage echo Le Carré’s fiction ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2926409/the-spy-who-ruled-summer/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2926409/the-spy-who-ruled-summer/"},"headline":"The Spy Who Ruled Summer","datePublished":"2014-06-26T09:53:45.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T08:38:21.379Z","description":"The legacy of le carré's breakthrough book","url":"https://time.com/2926409/the-spy-who-ruled-summer/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lev Grossman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/lev-grossman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/2926409/the-spy-who-ruled-summer/","name":"The Spy Who Ruled Summer"}}]}] ```