In British fiction, there were once two kinds of spies. There was the James Bond mode - glamorous, gets the gadgets and the girls - and then there were the spies of John le Carre, grim, shabby men whose lives were bracketed by complicity and betrayal.

"This is a war," says one such agent, Alec Leamas, in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. "It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it's nothing, nothing at all beside other wars - the last or the next."

Le Carre, who died on Saturday (Dec 12) aged 89, was in his youth a British agent. He wrote more than 20 novels, including the 10 books that loosely constitute a series around Cold War spymaster George Smiley and the world of "The Circus", his name for the Secret Intelligence Service.

Here are five of his best novels.

1. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1963)

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This novel eviscerated and remade the spy genre and propelled le Carre to best-selling fame. Graham Greene, one of the 20th century's most acclaimed novelists, called it "the best spy story I have ever read".

It was inspired by the Berlin Wall, which le Carre observed being built; he wrote in a 1989 foreword: "I will never forget the time when a disgusting gesture of history coincided with some desperate mechanism inside myself, and in six weeks gave me the book that altered my life."

After his last operative is shot defecting from East Berlin, disgraced British agent Alec Leamas is "put on the shelf" and goes to seed. In fact, Leamas has been tasked to "stay in the cold" for one final assignment: to bring down a powerful East German officer.

The book, which shocked readers with its depiction of the amorality of Western espionage and its twist ending, was made into a 1965 film starring Richard Burton as Leamas. Its events are revisited in le Carre's penultimate novel before his death, A Legacy Of Spies (2017).

2. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974)

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George Smiley, le Carre's iconic spymaster, is brought out of an unhappy retirement to flush out a Soviet mole in the highest echelons of the Circus, a plot that is reminiscent of real-life double agent Kim Philby, who is believed to have betrayed le Carre, among others, to the Russians.

Smiley's late former boss, Control, had whittled the suspects down to five men, codenamed Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Poor Man and Beggarman - Smiley himself - after a children's rhyme.

This intricately plotted novel is the first of the Karla trilogy - followed by The Honourable Schoolboy (1977) and Smiley's People (1979) - in which Smiley faces off with his nemesis, Soviet espionage chief Karla. Smiley is often described as the "anti-Bond" - quiet, fat and poorly-dressed with an adulterous wife, yet devastatingly effective at his work.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has been adapted for the screen as a 1979 BBC mini-series starring Alec Guinness as Smiley and as a 2011 film with Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch.

3. The Little Drummer Girl (1983)

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Charlie, a radically-minded British actress aged 26, is plunged from the theatre of the stage into the theatre of the real when she is recruited by an Israeli spymaster to snare a Palestinian terrorist.

As Charlie is immersed in both Israeli and Palestinian ideologies to play her role, her divided loyalties and constant paranoia that anyone could be a spy - "everyone belongs to someone", she realises - begin to take a toll on her mental health.

A rare le Carre novel led by a woman - the author often came under fire for failing to write complex female characters - it has been adapted for the screen, most recently as a TV mini-series in 2018 directed by Park Chan-wook, with Florence Pugh as Charlie.

4. A Perfect Spy (1986)

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The most autobiographical of le Carre's novels, it tells the life story of British intelligence officer Magnus Pym, who mysteriously disappears after his father's funeral. His colleagues suspect he has been a Czech double agent for most of his career.

Elements of Magnus' back-story draw on le Carre's early life and Magnus' father Rick Pym is based on le Carre's own father Ronnie Cornwell, a charming con man with whom le Carre had a troubled relationship.

5. The Constant Gardener (2001)

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Justin Quayle, an unassuming British diplomat, is pulled into the murky world of pharmaceutical corruption when his activist wife Tessa is brutally murdered while travelling in northern Kenya.

Justin, a passionate gardener, turns to digging of a more dangerous variety as he investigates Tessa's murder and discovers an international conspiracy involving drug experimentation in Africa and a government hush-up.

It was made into a 2005 film starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Tessa.