John le Carré’s mother abandoned him at the age of five and he was beaten by his father, according to his autobiography.
The author has revealed details of his difficult upbringing in his memoire The Pigeon Tunnel, serialised in the Guardian.
The former spy writes of his mother and father, who he refers to as Ronnie and Oliver.
“Today, I don’t remember feeling any affection in childhood except for my elder brother, who for a time was my only parent,” he wrote.
He also recalled an audiotape his mother left in which she describes how their father beat her and says it was the reason she chose to leave.
“Certainly Ronnie beat me up, too, but only a few times and not with much conviction. It was the shaping up that was the scary part: the lowering and readying of the shoulders, the resetting of the jaw.”
Le Carré is one of Britain's greatest novelists in the post-war era but also worked as an MI6 agent.
However he insisted he was first and foremost an author rather than a “spy who turned to writing", claiming he loved to write and prefers the "tradition of unmechanised writing", instead of using laptops and computers.
The writer made a guest appearance in an episode of the BBC adaptation of his book The Night Manager, which starred Tom Hiddlestone.
