<P> The scheming con - man character, Rick Pym, Magnus Pym's father in A Perfect Spy, was based on Ronnie . When his father died in 1975, Cornwell paid for a memorial funeral service but did not attend it . </P> <P> Cornwell's schooling began at St Andrew's Preparatory School, near Pangbourne, Berkshire, and continued at Sherborne School . He proved to be unhappy with the typically harsh English public school régime of the time and disliked his disciplinarian housemaster, Thomas, and so withdrew . </P> <P> From 1948 to 1949, he studied foreign languages at the University of Bern in Switzerland . In 1950, he joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army garrisoned in Austria, working as a German language interrogator of people who crossed the Iron Curtain to the West . In 1952, he returned to England to study at Lincoln College of the University of Oxford, where he worked covertly for the British Security Service, MI5, spying on far - left groups for information about possible Soviet agents . </P> <P> When his father declared bankruptcy in 1954, Cornwell quit Oxford to teach at Millfield Preparatory School; however, a year later he returned to Oxford, and graduated in 1956 with a (First Class Honours) Bachelor of Arts degree . He then taught French and German at Eton College for two years, becoming an MI5 officer in 1958 . He ran agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephone lines and effected break - ins . Encouraged by Lord Clanmorris (who wrote crime novels as "John Bingham"), and whilst being an active MI5 officer, Cornwell began writing his first novel, Call for the Dead (1961). Cornwell has identified Lord Clanmorris as one of two models for George Smiley, the spymaster of the Circus, the other being Vivian H.H. Green . As a schoolboy, Cornwell first met the latter when Green was the Chaplain and Assistant Master at Sherborne School (1942--51). The friendship continued after Green's move to Lincoln College, where he tutored Cornwell . </P>

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