Bernard Hepton, who played the part of Toby Esterhase in the BBC television series, played Smiley in the BBC Radio series of both Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1988) and Smiley's People (1990), with Charles Kay taking the part of Esterhase. [29] 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]

My client wants Akulov's datashard, supposedly containing extremely valuable intel on talks with the Japanese.

Deliver The Shard To The Client

During his years as a field agent, Karla traveled in several countries, recruiting agents who would later become highly placed in their respective national regimes. He traveled to England in 1936 and 1941 and recruited Bill Haydon, code-named "Gerald", who eventually became the number-two man in the "Circus" (the British Secret Intelligence Service). At another time he recruited Nelson Ko, a high-ranking technocrat in the People's Republic of China (according to Connie Sachs, Karla was one of the few Soviets to predict the souring of Sino-Soviet relations). [1] Powers, John (1 November 2011). " 'Tinker, Tailor': The Greatest Spy Story Ever Told". NPR . Retrieved 13 May 2018. Sir Maurice Oldfield Dead at 65; Famed Ex-chief of Britain's M.I.6". The New York Times. Reuters. 12 March 1981 . Retrieved 20 March 2010. Eng, David (20 June 2012). "2012 Amandaprisen, Norwegian Film Awards – nominations". Chino Kino . Retrieved 18 August 2013. a b Le Carré, John; Matthew Joseph Bruccoli; Judith Baughman (2004). Conversations with John le Carré. USA: University Press of Mississippi. pp.68–69. ISBN 1-57806-669-7.

In 1973, " Control", head of British intelligence ("The Circus"), sends Jim Prideaux to Budapest to meet a Hungarian general who has the name of a mole at the top of British Intelligence. Prideaux, realising the meeting is a trap, is shot as he tries to flee. Control and his right-hand man George Smiley are forced to retire, and Control dies soon after. Percy Alleline becomes the new Chief, Bill Haydon his deputy, and Roy Bland and Toby Esterhase his lieutenants. They had already begun receiving Soviet Intelligence from a secret source (Operation "Witchcraft"). Esterhase is a minor character in the short-story collection The Secret Pilgrim, occasionally referenced by the book's narrator, Ned. The book reveals that, between the time of The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People, he became the head of the Circus' Vienna office. Esterhase is one of the central characters in a farcical vignette in which he gets rid of a charlatan—an exiled Hungarian professor based in Munich, [22] who provides the British with virtually worthless information—by successfully convincing the CIA that he is a dauntless anti-Communist hero. Although Ned is infuriated by the incident, Smiley dismisses it as amusing. Esterhase reappears at the end of the novel to attend a speech given by Smiley, standing out from the crowd in an ostentatious tuxedo. [23] Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ( French: La Taupe, lit.'The Mole') is a 2011 British Cold War spy thriller film directed by Tomas Alfredson. The screenplay was written by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, based on John le Carré's 1974 novel of the same name. The film stars Gary Oldman as George Smiley, with Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciarán Hinds, David Dencik and Kathy Burke supporting. It is set in London in the early 1970s and follows the hunt for a Soviet double agent at the top of the British secret service. Polmar, Norman; Allen, Thomas (1998). The Spy Book The Encyclopedia of Espionage. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-375-70249-0. An assassination operation. Mailfist might be the code word for such work or the compartmented information concerning the program that performs it.Jonathan Romney of The Independent wrote, "The script is a brilliant feat of condensation and restructuring: writers Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor realise the novel is overtly about information and its flow, and reshape its daunting complexity to highlight that". [28] David Gritten of The Daily Telegraph declared the film "a triumph" and gave it a five star rating, [29] as did his colleague, Sukhdev Sandhu. [30] Stateside, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote, "As Alfredson directs the expert script by Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor, the film emerges as a tale of loneliness and desperation among men who can never disclose their secret hearts, even to themselves. It's easily one of the year's best films." [31] M. Enois Duarte of High-Def Digest also praised the film as a "brilliant display of drama, mystery and suspense, one which regards its audience with intelligence". [32] In the 1988 comic Shattered Visage, made as a sequel to the spy show The Prisoner, Smiley is mentioned as having tutored a character in interrogation.

Esterhase is one of the five high-ranking Circus officers Control suspects of being a Soviet mole. [14] After Control's death, Esterhase embraces the new Alleline regime and allows his Lamplighters to be almost entirely given over to serving Operation Witchcraft, which is in fact nothing but a disinformation campaign orchestrated by Soviet spymaster Karla. Esterhase's own role is to pretend to be a Soviet mole when meeting with the Soviets. They know he is not, but his pretense provides a cover story for Alleline, Bland, and Esterhase himself, justifying his role as a courier between the real mole, Haydon, and his Soviet controllers. [15] Bill Haydon — Commander of London Station, he has worked with the Circus since the war. A polymath, he was recruited at Oxford where he was a close companion of Prideaux. A distant cousin of Ann Smiley, he has an affair with her, and this knowledge subsequently becomes widely known. One of the four who ran the double agent codenamed Merlin. Forty years ago, the BBC broadcast its adaptation of the John Le Carré novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for the first time. Starring Sir Alec Guinness as George Smiley, the master spy hunting down a Soviet mole in the British intelligence services, it provoked controversy. Largely over whether it made any sense or not. Jim Prideaux — Former field agent and head of the scalphunters, Prideaux was shot in Czechoslovakia under the codename "Jim Ellis" during Operation Testify and kept in Soviet captivity. Now teaches at a boys' prep school. He was first identified as a prospective recruit by fellow student Bill Haydon at Oxford.Eventually he did commit, and Guinness set about fully engaging with a character he described to the Guardian at the time as being “a vulnerable man who … is capable of taking unexpectedly swift and rather harsh action”. Bernard Hepton played Esterhase in the BBC television dramatisations of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People. In the former, Hepton played Esterhase as speaking with a received pronunciation accent, but in Smiley's People, Hepton reverted to an Eastern European accent for the role. Venezia 68: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – Tomas Alfredson". labiennale.org. Venice Biennale. Archived from the original on 27 August 2011 . Retrieved 27 August 2011.