In fact, did you even raise an eyebrow when I called Le Carré "a great writer"? Did it occur to you that I may be entering the realm of hyperbole - or did it just seem natural for someone of his standing and talent? I suspect the latter. Over the past few weeks on the Reading Group, I've been deliberately lavish in my praise for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Partly that was because it's no more than the book deserves, but partly it was also to see if I could get a rise. Would anyone now challenge the idea that a spy book can hold its own against more conventionally literary fiction? Would anyone disagree that this is one of the finest novels of any sort written in the last 50 years? It seems not. Instead, contributor after contributor labelled his books as "masterpieces" and hardly anyone had a negative word to say. UPDATE 12-25-17 ... reading again ... for my course at Oxford this summer ... British spies in fact and fiction ... there is always something new in this magnificent book Since I wasn’t very good at it, the beginning part of this book went slowly for me. Not the book’s internal pacing, of which John Le Carré is a master, but my own. Trying to keep up to the book while deciphering everything I needed to know was a challenge. Small, podgy, and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London’s meek who do not inherit the earth. His legs were short, his gait anything but agile, his dress costly, ill-fitting, and extremely wet."

Prideaux, who is in fact alive and now a schoolmaster, tells Smiley that his Budapest mission was to relay the identity of the mole to Control, via one of the code names assigned by Control to each of the members of the Circus suspected to be the mole—"Tinker", "Tailor", "Soldier", "Poorman" and "Beggarman". He was tortured by the KGB, and saw Irina shot in front of him. After a lifetime of living by his wits and his considerable memory, he had given himself full time to the profession of forgetting." For me, the key to his character comes in the novel, in his recollection of a conversation with his wife Ann on the Cornish cliffs, where she asks: is Bill "a better performer than you?" The failure resulted in the dismissal of Control, Smiley, and allies such as Connie Sachs and Jerry Westerby, and their replacement by a new guard consisting of Percy Alleline, Toby Esterhase, Bill Haydon, and Roy Bland. Control has since died, and Smiley's former protégé, Peter Guillam, has been demoted to the " scalphunters". Oliver Lacon — The permanent secretary in the Cabinet Office. Civilian overseer of the Circus. A former Cambridge rowing blue; his father "a dignitary of the Scottish church" and his mother "something noble". [18]de Semlyen, Phil (9 July 2009). "Tomas Alfredson to Direct Tinker, Tailor". Empire . Retrieved 26 September 2011.

Got to be good at something, surely; everyone is. How about football? Are you good at football, Bill?" I like you to have doubts,” he said. “It tells me where you stand. But don’t make a cult of them or you’ll be a bore.”Gritten, David (5 September 2011). "Venice Film Festival: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – first review". The Daily Telegraph. London. ISSN 0307-1235. OCLC 49632006. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022 . Retrieved 26 September 2011. The Cold War assurance of mutual destruction provides the British imagination with a field of conflict perfectly tailored to the restriction of overt or "hot" action (Smiley's also impotent), which is then carefully sublimated through elaborately mannered, gentlemanly games of intelligence and subterfuge. Intriga, bazată pe cazul real (în care a fost implicat inclusiv le Carre) al spionului englez Kim Philby transformat în cârtiță rusească în timpul Războiului Rece, se desfășoară lent, parcă în timp real, și oferă cititorului mici revelații din loc în loc, astfel că până spre final știi tot, mai puțin răspunsul la întrebarea „care dintre cei mai sus puși ofițeri ai serviciilor secrete engleze e cârtița?”, care-i un fel de singularitate în mijlocul unei găuri negre, pur și simplu nu-l poți anticipa înainte să treci de event horizon. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John LeCarre is an exciting story about a mole who moves up to the highest levels of the British intelligence community. Based on the information he provided, the covers of some of the best agents were blown. They know he is there, but they don't know who or where and they have to find him. The safety and existence of the British intelligence community depends on it. How do they do it? UPDATE 1-18-18 ... For espionage thrillers, this is as good as it gets. The setting is the Cold War, and both the Britain and Russia are tired but still engaging in lethal combat by spy. One central theme that I did not appreciate before this re-read is that the primary conflict, even when Le Carre tells the story from a British POV, is not between British spies and the Russians, but between Russia and America, with British spies taking sides, not always as expected. The conflict between personal and patriotic motives plays out dramatically in each of the major characters.

Smiley had been abruptly pensioned off one year earlier from his post as second-in-command to Control at the British Secret Service. In the year leading up to his departure, trouble had been brewing.

Success!

Like Philby, [Haydon] betrays his colleagues, his friends, his country, and his class [...] Smiley, on the contrary, lives by loyalty — to his faithless wife, Ann, his subordinates, his colleagues, and his country. In the end, integrity triumphs over corruption. [11] An assassination operation. Mailfist might be the code word for such work or the compartmented information concerning the program that performs it.