Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

For the TV miniseries based on the novel, see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (miniseries). For the film based on the novel, see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (film).
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

First UK edition
Author John le Carré
Cover artist Jerry Harpur[1]
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Series George Smiley /
The Quest for Karla
Genre Spy novel
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton (UK)
Random House (USA)
Publication date
 June 1974
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)
ISBN 0-394-49219-6
OCLC 867935
823/.9/14
LC Class PZ4.L4526 Ti3 PR6062.E33
Followed by The Honourable Schoolboy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 1974 spy novel by British author John le Carré. It follows the efforts of taciturn, aging spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. Since the time of its publication, the novel has received critical acclaim for its complexity, social commentary and lack of sensationalism,[2] and remains a staple of the spy fiction genre.[3]

Chronology

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was followed by two sequels, The Honourable Schoolboy (1977) and Smiley's People (1979), later published in an omnibus edition as Smiley Versus Karla (1982). These are the fifth, sixth, and seventh le Carré spy novels featuring George Smiley. Three characters who are important players in TTSS first appeared in le Carré's very first book, Call for the Dead (1961): George Smiley, Peter Guillam, and Inspector Mendel.

Title

Control, chief of the Circus, assigns the code names "Tinker", "Tailor", "Soldier", "Poor Man", and "Beggar Man" to five senior intelligence officers at the Circus. He suspects that one of the five is a Soviet mole and assigns these code names with the intention that, should his agent Jim Prideaux uncover information about the identity of the mole, Prideaux can relay it back to the Circus using an easy-to-recall codename. The names are derived from the English children's rhyme "Tinker, Tailor":

Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Sailor,
Rich Man, Poor Man,
Beggar Man, Thief.

The code name "Sailor" is not used as it sounds too much like "Tailor" and Control drops "Rich Man", resulting in Toby Esterhase being code-named "Poor Man". George Smiley is "Beggar Man".

Plot

1973, at the height of the Cold War. George Smiley, former deputy chief of the Circus, has been living in unhappy retirement for a year after an operation in Czechoslovakia, code-named Testify, ended in disaster with the capture of agent Jim Prideaux and provoked the dismissals of Smiley and Control, the anonymous head of the Circus. Control, already ill by then, has died soon afterwards. One night, Smiley is unexpectedly approached by Peter Guillam, a former colleague, and Under Secretary Oliver Lacon, the Civil Service officer responsible for overseeing the Intelligence Services, to hear the story of Ricki Tarr, another former British agent now in hiding. Tarr heard from a tentative defector in Hong Kong of the existence of a Soviet mole at the highest level of the Circus, code-named Gerald and handled by Moscow Centre’s Colonel Polyakov. When Tarr cabled the information to London, his contact was immediately abducted back to Moscow and Tarr went on the run to escape Soviet agents.

Smiley accepts Lacon’s request to investigate in total secrecy, since all senior Circus staff are suspects. He soon focuses on the details of British intelligence’s best Soviet source, code-named Merlin, which Control had deemed suspicious from the start. Merlin had been developed and vigorously sponsored by four ambitious senior Circus men, led by Percy Alleline, who wanted to oust Control and had rallied Circus overseers in Whitehall to their cause at the time of Testify. Gerald must be one of these four: Alleline himself, a vain and politically skilled Scot who took over as Chief from Control, Roy Bland, a gifted if boorish intellectual of humble origins, Toby Esterhase, a self-serving Hungarian refugee hungry for promotion, or Bill Haydon, an aristocratic polymath and a Circus legend who once had an affair with Smiley’s now-estranged wife Ann.

Working through Circus documents surreptitiously provided by Lacon and Guillam, Smiley discovers that Merlin is not one source but several and that the operation has an ultra-secret London end: a safe house where Alleline and his inner circle personally collect information from a Merlin emissary posted in London under diplomatic cover. Eventually, Smiley realizes the truth: the Merlin emissary is none other than Polyakov himself and that the actual flow of information goes the other way, with Gerald passing actual British secrets while receiving fake and worthless Soviet material.

Smiley suspects a link between Merlin and the botched Operation Testify, whose details Control had hidden from him at the time. He tracks down Prideaux and all other Circus participants and confirms the connection. Control had independently concluded the existence of a mole and mounted Testify to learn his identity from an aspiring defector in Czech intelligence privy to the information. Polyakov and Karla, Moscow Centre’s crafty spymaster and Smiley’s nemesis, were both present at Prideaux’s interrogation which focused exclusively on the extent and status of Control’s investigations. The Czech defector was a plant, engineered by Karla to provoke Control’s demise through Testify and so protect Gerald.

Smiley pressures Esterhase, whose deep involvement in Merlin has made him vulnerable, into revealing the location of the safe house. He then lays out a trap for Gerald by having Tarr unexpectedly contact the Circus head of station in Paris and send a message to Alleline about information crucial to the well-being of the Service. This triggers an emergency meeting between Gerald and Polyakov at the safe house where Smiley and Guillam are lying in wait. They confront the mole and turn him over to a dumbfounded Alleline for interrogation while Polyakov, who has diplomatic immunity, leaves and presumably returns to Moscow in disgrace.

Gerald’s interrogation reveals that he was recruited several decades ago by Karla and became a full-fledged Soviet spy partly for political reasons, partly in frustration at Britain’s rapidly declining influence on the world stage. He is to be exchanged with the Soviet Union for several of the agents he betrayed but is killed shortly before he is due to leave England. The identity of his killer is not explicitly revealed but is strongly implied to be Prideaux, whom Gerald betrayed in Operation Testify.

Alleline is removed and Smiley is appointed temporary head of the Circus to deal with the fallout. The book ends with Smiley’s traveling to visit Ann and attempt to salvage what’s left of their relationship.

Characters

Major characters

Jargon

The characters in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy use a great deal of spy jargon which is presented as the authentic insiderspeak of British Intelligence. Le Carré has said that, with the exception of a few terms like "mole" and "legend", this jargon was his own invention.[4] Examples are:

Term Definition[4]
Agent An espionage agent or spy; a citizen who is recruited by a foreign government to spy on his own country. This term should not be confused with a member of an intelligence service who recruits spies; they are referred to as intelligence officers or more particularly case officers.
Babysitters Bodyguards.
Burn Blackmail.
Circus The in-house name for MI6, the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service), which collects foreign intelligence. "Circus" refers to the (fictional) locale of the headquarters in Cambridge Circus, London.
Coat trailing An officer of one side acting as if he is a likely defector - drinking, complaining about his job, in the hope of attracting a recruitment offer from an enemy intelligence officer, with the object of recruiting the enemy as a double agent instead.
The Competition MI5, the Security Service, the UK's internal counter-espionage and counter-terrorism service, which the Circus also calls "The Security Mob".
The Cousins The CIA in particular and the US intelligences services in general.
Ferrets Technicians who find and remove hidden microphones, cameras, etc.
Honey-trap A sexual blackmailing operation.
Housekeepers The internal auditors and financial disciplinarians of the Circus.
Inquisitors Interrogators who debrief Circus intelligence officers and defectors.
Janitors The Circus headquarters operations staff, including those who watch doors and verify that people entering secure areas are authorised to do so.
Lamplighters A section which provides surveillance and couriers.
Legend A false identity
Mailfist job An assassination operation.
Mole An agent recruited long before he has access to secret material, who subsequently works his way into the target government organisation. Le Carré has said this was a term actually used in the KGB; an equivalent term used in Western intelligence services was sleeper agent.
Mothers Secretaries and trusted typists serving the senior officers of the Circus.
Neighbours The Soviet intelligence services, in particular the KGB and Karla's fictional "Thirteenth Directorate".
Nuts and Bolts The engineering department who develop and manufacture espionage devices.
Pavement Artists Members of surveillance teams who inconspicuously follow people in public.
Persil The cleanest security category available, used of questionable foreigners, "Clean as fabric washed in Persil".
Reptile fund A slush fund, to provide payment for covert operations.[5]
Scalphunters Handle assassination, blackmail, burglary, kidnap; the section was sidelined after Control's dismissal.
Shoemakers Forgers of documents and the like.
Wranglers Radio signal analysts and cryptographers; it derives from the term wrangler used of Cambridge University maths students.

In addition the book uses terms from British English and foreign words, such as: mews, peach (to inform against, betray) shirty, redbrick and, D-Notice, thé dansant, coq au vin, Märchen and Gemütlichkeit.

The television adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy also uses the term "burrower" for a researcher recruited from a university, a term taken from the novel's immediate sequel The Honourable Schoolboy.

Background

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is John le Carré's novelisation about his experiences of the revelations in the 1950s and the 1960s which exposed the Cambridge Five traitors: Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross, and Kim Philby as KGB moles in the British Intelligence services.

The character Bill Haydon is partly derived from Kim Philby, a senior SIS officer and double agent who defected to the USSR in 1963. David Cornwell (John le Carré), who worked as an intelligence officer for both MI5 and the SIS (MI6), has said that Philby betrayed his identity to the Russians, which was a factor in the 1964 termination of his intelligence career.[6][7]

Connie Sachs, the Circus's principal Russia researcher, is modelled upon Milicent Bagot.

Adaptations

Television

In 1979 a TV adaptation of the same name was made by the BBC. It was a seven-part miniseries and was released in September of that year. The series was directed by John Irvin, produced by Jonathan Powell, and starred Alec Guinness as George Smiley.

Radio

In 1988, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a dramatisation, by Rene Basilico, of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in seven weekly half-hour episodes, produced by John Fawcett-Wilson. It is available as a BBC audiobook in CD and audio cassette formats. Notably, Bernard Hepton portrays George Smiley. Nine years earlier, he had portrayed Toby Esterhase in the television adaptation.

In 2009, BBC Radio 4 also broadcast new dramatizations, by Shaun McKenna, of the eight George Smiley novels by John le Carré, featuring Simon Russell Beale as Smiley. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was broadcast as three one-hour episodes, from Sunday 29 November to Sunday 13 December 2009 in BBC Radio 4's Classic Serial slot. The producer was Steven Canny.[8]

Film

Swedish director Tomas Alfredson made a film adaptation in 2011 based on a screenplay by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan. The film was released in the UK and Ireland on 16 September 2011, and in the United States on 9 December 2011. It included a cameo appearance by John le Carré in the Christmas party scene as the older man in the grey suit who stands suddenly to sing the Soviet anthem. The film received numerous Academy Award nominations including a nomination for Best Actor for Gary Oldman for his role as George Smiley. The film also starred Colin Firth as Bill Haydon, Benedict Cumberbatch as Peter Guillam, Tom Hardy as Ricki Tarr, and Mark Strong as Jim Prideaux.

References

Notes
  1. ↑ Modern first editions – a set on Flickr
  2. ↑ Locke, Richard (30 June 1974). "The Spy Who Spied on Spies". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 July 2015.
  3. ↑ Bradford, Michael; Burridge, James (17 October 2012). "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: the Movie". Studies in Intelligence 56 (3). Retrieved 18 July 2015.
  4. 1 2 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.
  5. ↑ New York Post
  6. ↑ Anthony, Andrew (1 November 2009). "Observer Profile: John le Carré: A man of great intelligence". The Observer (London). Retrieved 4 March 2010.
  7. ↑ "Le Carré betrayed by 'bad lot' spy Kim Philby", Channel 4 News. Retrieved 3 October 2010.
  8. ↑ "The Complete Smiley". BBC Radio 4. 23 May 2009. Retrieved 14 June 2009.

External links

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