European enticement

John le Carre, the quintessential "Englishman", renounced his British citizenship to become an Irishman, few months before his death.

Many consider John le Carré, aka David Cornwell, the man who redefined the espionage novel and carried it beyond the confines of genre fiction, to be the quintessential “Englishman” caught up in a lifelong quest of negotiating his Englishness. It will be news to many of them that a few months before his death, le Carré renounced his British citizenship to become an Irishman.

On April 1, his son, Nicholas Cornwell, revealed in a BBC documentary to be aired today, that he took Irish citizenship in December 2020, in order to remain European. His opposition to Brexit was uncompromising and, it