During the Second World War and for two decades after 1950, Bingham worked for MI5, and had long been said to be the inspiration for John le Carré's character George Smiley. In 1999, le Carré confirmed that Bingham had been an inspiration for Smiley and went further in 2000, writing in an introduction to a reissue of one of Bingham's novels: "He had been one of two men who had gone into the making of George Smiley. Nobody who knew John and the work he was doing could have missed the description of Smiley in my first novel". John le Carré wrote that Bingham encouraged him to write his first novel, Call for the Dead, while still being an active MI5 officer, and in a BBC Radio Front Row interview in 2009 said that Bingham's successful thriller novels, published when the two men worked together at MI5 in the 1950s, inspired him to write his first two books.
Jack King speculation
In February 2014, MI5 released files at the National Archives on the "Fifth Column" operation, which aimed to identify British Nazi sympathizers during World War II. Some newspapers named Bingham as the agent at the heart of the operation, but the release of more files in October 2014 corrected this, and named the agent as Eric Roberts, a former bank clerk from Epsom. Bingham was recruited into MI5 by Maxwell Knight to work in the counter-intelligence and political infiltration based M Section. He had volunteered to serve in the army but a sight defect prevented him from serving in the field. Prior to his service in MI5, Bingham had been the Art Editor of the Sunday Dispatch. Bingham was the son of Arthur Bingham, 6th Baron Clanmorris and Mowbray Leila Cloete. He was educated at Cheltenham College, and married Madeleine Mary Ebel, daughter of Clement Ebel, on 28 July 1934. He fought in the Second World War, with the Royal Engineers and attached to the General Staff. He succeeded to the title of 7th Baron Clanmorris on 24 June 1960. Bingham's first novel, My Name is Michael Sibley, was unusual for its time in suggesting that the British police might not always play fair.
