Novelist John Le Carre’s former Cornish family home where he wrote best-selling thrillers has gone onto the market for the first time in 60 years for £3million. 

The writer and his wife bought Tregiffian Cottage in St Buryan, near Penzance, in the late 1960s.

The property was actually three former fisherman’s cottages which were adapted by Le Carre to create a single coastal home in 3.3 acres.

Le Carre, who died in December 2020, was best known for his spy novels, many of which were written at Tregiffian and then adapted for film and TV.

Nick Cornwell, le Carré’s son who grew up in the house, revealed their dog ate an early draft of one of the manuscripts. 

John Le Carre and his wife bought Tregiffian Cottage in St Buryan, near Penzance, in the late 1960s 

The house boasts incredible seafront views which can be seen from this bright room 

Le Carre – whose real name was David John Moore Cornwell – died in December 2020 aged 89

He told The Times: ‘Every Le Carre novel from 1970 onwards owes at least some of its genesis and most of its writing time to that house.’ 

The main house is 5,000sq ft including a self-contained guest wing.

There is a drawing room with an open fireplace, oak panelled walls and a west-facing bay window with a door to the garden.

Agents Savills add on Rightmove: ‘There is a library, which as one might expect, is a work of art, with bespoke joinery and a feature window at one end, glazed with what is believed to be part of the canopy from a second world war fighter plane.

‘There is also a seaward facing conservatory that has mesmerising views out to sea.

‘The dining room has a slate tiled floor, door to the garden, staircase to the first floor. The kitchen has a fireplace, island unit and door to the garden.

‘From here there is access to the rear hall, leading to a utility room, laundry room, boot room and scullery, with access to a safe room.’

A large swimming pool which is part of the property – with incredible views

On the first floor, there is a main bedroom suite with a barrelled ceiling, en suite bathroom and a semi-circular bay window with coastal views to the west.

There is a guest bedroom suite and further bedroom with dressing room and separate bathroom, both of which have sea views.

The guest wing, which is accessed via a staircase from the rear hallway, has a sitting room, bedroom and bathroom.

There is a detached annex/studio building, which could be rented out as a holiday let or used as a studio.

A staircase then rises to a first floor studio space, which was Le Carre’s writing room.

It has a balcony and granite staircase linking to the courtyard.

There are also a number of chalet-style buildings and a swimming pool as well as a gardener’s hut.

A living/sitting area in the house which has gone up for sale 

The description goes on: ‘The gardens and grounds have been beautifully landscaped, whilst being sympathetic to the property’s enchanting coastal setting, and are mainly to the east and south of the house and buildings.

‘Much thought and years of care have been invested in the gardens, cleverly creating a variety of formal and informal areas, split into lawns, borders and wild meadow areas with paths cut through.

‘It is difficult to do the gardens justice in words as they are impeccably maintained and planted with a variety of specimen trees, shrubs and herbaceous borders, interspersed with numerous sheltered seating areas, viewpoints and sculptures.’

It comes two years after another of Le Carre’s homes was offered for sale for almost £2million.

The writer moved into the stunning Grade II property near Wells, Somerset, in 1965.

Le Carre – whose real name was David John Moore Cornwell – died in December 2020 aged 89.

This is a story full of fairy tales. In some ways, it even resembles one. And yet it also proves that, in the real world, things rarely end happily ever after. A few days ago, Bill Willingham, the father of the celebrated Fables comic book series, announced that he was sending his most cherished work to the public domain, that is, to everyone. That’s only fair, since that is also where he got the main characters of his stories, from Snow White to the Wolf, from Pinocchio to Prince Charming, who were then relocated to modern New York. In this tale, the hero has long-faced mistreatment at the hands of the villains, DC Comics, the owner of Vertigo, which publishes the work in the United States, and its executives.

“If I couldn’t prevent Fables from falling into bad hands, at least this is a way I can arrange that it also falls into many good hands,” Willingham wrote in an online post in which he decried the label’s repeated attempts to take over his creations and opposed them with this final extreme remedy. But the company responded that it considers itself to be the true owner of the series.

In a statement published by the specialized media IGN, the company threatened to take “necessary action” to defend its rights. Thus, the end of the dispute is uncertain. But it is unlikely that everyone will end up happily ever after.

In the meantime, in a new post, Willingham celebrated the massive support he received. In fact, for the moment, he has declined all interview requests — he did not respond to this newspaper’s request, nor did the publisher — arguing that he preferred to spend the next few days working on new artistic projects. Meanwhile, the dispute continues.

Fables is one of the most celebrated graphic novels of the last 20 years, and it has spawned spin-offs and a video game adaptation (The Wolf Among Us).

This situation also touches on a key issue, namely, the intellectual property rights of characters and works, especially in a sector where, for decades, dozens of cartoonists and screenwriters have accused comic book giants Marvel and DC of pressuring them to cede their ideas and accept commissioned contracts.

Willingham sums it up as a policy aimed to make creators sign “work for hire” agreements and crush them. All of this makes a gesture that was already intended to make a splash even more resonant.

Indeed, the battle over intellectual property is as old as contemporary comics: the copyrights for Superman, Batman and The Fantastic Four all have unresolved disputes and complaints from Jerry Siegel, Bill Finger and Jack Kirby over the contemptuous treatment they suffered. And heavyweight Alan Moore has been lamenting for years that DC took away his ownership of famous works like Watchmen.

Along with prestige and principles, tens of millions of dollars are at stake, especially now that the film industry has become interested in comics.

“When you sign a contract with DC, your responsibilities to them are carved in stone, where their responsibilities to you are treated as “helpful suggestions that we’ll try to accommodate when we can, but we’re serious adults, doing serious business and we can’t always take the time to indulge the needs of these children who work for us” the Fables author wrote on his blog. Following the impact of his original message, Willingham posted two other texts. He maintains that he had thought about sending his work into the public domain when he passed away, but that “certain events” have changed his plans: among them, he lists the changes in management and attitude at the top of the publishing company; the multiple breaches of obligations such as consultations about covers, artists for new plots and adaptations; DC’s forgetfulness when it came to pay, which forced him to demand invoices of up to $30,000; the suspicious frequency with which the publisher attributed it to “slipping through the cracks” (to such an extent that the author insisted that they stop using that expression); and the time and chances he gave them to respect the pact, renegotiate it or even break it and consensually separate.

A detail from the cover of the first volume of Bill Willingham’s comprehensive collection of ‘Fables’.

“Shortly after creating Fables, I entered into a publishing agreement with DC Comics. In that agreement, while I continued to own the property, DC would have exclusive rights to publish Fables comics, and then later that agreement was expanded to give DC exclusive rights to exploit the property in other ways, including movies and TV.

DC paid me a fair price for these rights (fair at the time), and as long as they behaved ethically and above-board, and conducted themselves as if this were a partnership, all was more or less well. But DC doesn’t seem to be capable of acting fairly and above-board.

In fact, they treated this agreement (as I suppose I should have known they would) as if they were the boss and I, their servant. In time that got worse, as they later reinterpreted our contracts to assume they owned Fables outright,” Willingham laments. Hence, he concluded that “you can’t reason with the unreasonable.”

Having ruled out a lawsuit as too expensive and time-consuming at 67 years of age, he found a more creative solution: if they prevented him from owning his works and benefiting from them as he was entitled to do, he would not let the publisher do so either. Or, at least, everyone could use the comics as they wished. But the label was quick to clarify in its statement to IGN: “The Fables comic books and graphic novels [are] published by DC, and are not in the public domain”.

For his part, Willingham promises to continue fighting for all the conditions of his still-in-force contract that he considers DC to have violated, as well as for the last installments of the series, the final script of which he delivered two years ago.

There will be additional chapters in this dispute, as well as in many other ones like it: in 2024, the historic first image of Mickey Mouse, the one that starred in the 1928 short Steamboat Willie, enters the public domain in the U.S. and other countries. Copyright in the U.S. lasts for 95 years, and math is an exact science.

Therefore, in a few years, King Kong, Superman and Popeye will meet the same fate. But The New York Times has wondered how the “notoriously litigious” Disney will react and how far it will go to fight in court. And who would dare to freely use all these works for fear of a million-dollar lawsuit? The same question surrounds DC and similar companies. Because in the real world, fairy tales are rare. Or they end up in court.