{"id":5906,"date":"2026-09-22T12:19:03","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T12:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/?post_type=_characters&#038;p=5906"},"modified":"2026-10-16T18:56:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T18:56:20","slug":"alec-leamas","status":"publish","type":"_characters","link":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/_characters\/alec-leamas\/","title":{"rendered":"Alec Leamas"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5906","_characters","type-_characters","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":{"isdb_character_id":"C0000012","character_display_name":"Alec Leamas","character_last_name":"","character_gender":false,"character_aliases":"","character_role":"","character_portrait":"","character_short_profile":"Head of the Circus's Berlin Station, whose network of agents in East Germany has been systematically dismantled by the East German counterintelligence chief Hans-Dieter Mundt. Recalled to London, Leamas is sent on one final, deliberately punishing mission: posing as a disillusioned defector to engineer Mundt's downfall from within.","character_full_profile":"<table width=\"623\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"449\">The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"449\">Head of the Circus's Berlin Station, whose network of agents in East Germany has been systematically dismantled by the East German counterintelligence chief Hans-Dieter Mundt. Recalled to London, Leamas is sent on one final, deliberately punishing mission: posing as a disillusioned defector to engineer Mundt's downfall from within.<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"449\">British Secret Intelligence Service (the Circus)<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"449\">Cold War, early 1960s, shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"449\">United Kingdom, East and West Germany; earlier wartime service took him to the Netherlands and Norway<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"449\">British; comes from a working-class background, unusual among Circus officers, and has little patience for the polished manners of the British upper class<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"449\">Male<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"449\">Fifty years old at the start of the novel<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"449\">English, Dutch, and German \u2014 the latter two acquired from a childhood spent partly in the Netherlands and from his long wartime and postwar career in the region<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td width=\"449\">Described as a tough, hard-drinking, physically and emotionally weathered man, worn down by years of dangerous fieldwork and personal loss rather than by age alone.<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>","character_type":"Protagonist","character_status":"Active","character_books":"","character_series":[3083],"character_creators":[3085],"character_agencies":[3140],"character_organizations":"","character_record_status":"Published","character_verification_status":"Verified","character_editorial_notes":"","character_sources":null,"character_relationships":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_characters\/5906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_characters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/_characters"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_characters\/5906\/revisions"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_agencies\/3140"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_author\/3085"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_series\/3083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spyscribe.com\/isdb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}