LONDON - Espionage writer John Le Carre says in a newspaper interview that he was tempted to defect to the Soviet Union back when he worked for the British intelligence agency MI-6.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 76-year-old novelist said he wasn't tempted ideologically.
But he says he was curious about what it was like on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Le Carre -- whose real name is David Cornwell -- has first-hand experience with defection and betrayal.
He began working for British intelligence in 1949, being posted to Bonn and Hamburg in what was then West Germany. But the Times said his career was derailed by British defector Kim Philby.
Cornwell drew on his real-life experiences for a string of bestselling novels, making his name with the publication of "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" in 1963.
That book and others received critical acclaim for their exploration of the moral ambiguities of the Cold War. Many were made into movies: "The Constant Gardener," starring Ralph Fiennes, was the latest to receive big screen treatment.
Le Carre is also known for his outspoken criticism of U.S. foreign policy. In an open letter to U.S. voters in 2004 he called the invasion of Iraq a "hare-brained adventure" and called on Americans to boot Bush from office.
But he had semi-conciliatory words Sunday for Salman Rushdie, the Booker Prize-winning novelist with whom he has feuded.
Le Carre refused to support Rushdie when the Iranian government issued a fatwa, or religious edict, ordering Muslims to kill him because "The Satanic Verses" allegedly insulted Islam.
Le Carre accused him of deliberately offending Muslims, and the bad feeling led to a very public spat carried in the pages of the Guardian newspaper.
"It just seemed to me unreasonable to expect Islam to suddenly reach the same stage of development as our own religions. But perhaps I was wrong," Le Carre was quoted as saying. "If so, I was wrong for the right reasons."
