housemaster

His trial heard he abused 24 boys as young as nine while a housemaster at a Cheshire boarding school and through involvement with scouts in the West Midlands between 1968 and 1995.

The teenager, who admitted assaulting the two boys and the housemaster, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder by reason of insanity due to his sleepwalking.

He also attacked housemaster Henry Roffe-Silvester, who suffered six wounds to his head.

At 14, housemaster Barry Hastings began routinely waking Darren in the night and taking him up to his room to smoke.

They begin in 1945, when le Carré, whose real name was David Cornwell, is 14 years old, and writes to his future boarding-school housemaster to say he is looking forward to school.