This story has been widely reported.

Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian writes:

‘Eighty-five boxes of manuscripts, long kept in a Cornish barn, are the first batch of a vast literary archive that John le Carré, author of the Smiley novels and one of Britain’s most significant living writers, has given to the Bodleian library, Oxford.

Following in the footsteps of Alan Bennett, who gave his archive to the library in 2008, le Carré’s manuscripts (with voluminous correspondence to come in due course) have been pointedly donated to the library of the university where he was educated, rather than sold to an American institution. […]

Part of the particular fascination of le Carré’s papers is that they reveal – in a way that nothing written on a computer could – his detailed working methods.

A day’s longhand writing by the author will be typed up by his wife, Jane Cornwell. Tweaks, edits and rewrites will then accrue, taped or stapled on to the original’.

Meanwhile Anita Singh in The Telegraph observes that:

‘Le Carré studied at Oxford as did the fictional Smiley, and in 1995 he unmasked his Lincoln College tutor, the Rev Vivian Green, as the inspiration for the character. […]

The Bodleian plans to make the archive available online and to use it as a valuable research resource. To mark its arrival, the library will display drafts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on March 3, World Book Day’.

Read the full Guardian article here and read the full article in The Telegraph here