"His father didn't admit until he [le Carré] was an adult that he'd served a jail term, and his mother left late at night without saying goodbye," said Sisman. As a boy, le Carré told school friends his father had been a spy. Sisman explained: "He was of a generation, during the war, that what your dad did was terribly crucial. Ronnie was that most despised person, a war profiteer, rather than away at the front fighting in the army." "He was sent to Sherborne, the Dorset public school, but ran away when he was 17. And here the truth and the fiction of his life start to collide - he claimed he'd been recruited by MI5 to spy on student groups in Bern, Switzerland.