I first met George Smiley when I was 21. The tap on my shoulder happened in suburban Essex when, home for Christmas, I watched Sir Alec Guinness’ sublime performance as the spymaster in the 1979 BBC adaptation of the John Le Carré novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. This complex tale of espionage, human frailty and betrayal, played out in the morally grey and stodgily brown 70s Britain that lingered into my childhood in the 80s, blew me away and I’ve been obsessed ever since.
The series of seven episodes was directed by Jonathan Powell and was broadcast between 10th September and 20th October 1979. The opening scene, in which various bigwigs of British intelligence gather for a meeting in a nondescript room in ‘The Circus’ (Le Carré’s name for both his fictionalised British intelligence and its HQ) is a dialogue-free and patient work of genius that sets the tone for the slow-moving yet gripping hours to follow. George Smiley is brought in from semi-retirement to flush out the Soviet mole in the highest levels of the service. Under suspicion himself, Smiley must work out whether Percy Alleline (‘Tinker’, played by Michael Aldridge), Bill Haydon (‘Tailor’, Ian Richardson), Roy Bland (‘Soldier’, Terence Rigby) or Toby Esterhase (‘Sailor, Bernard Hepton) is working with the Soviet enemy.
When the mole is revealed as being Bill Haydon, Peter Guillam refers to him as having been a hero to his generation – “my kind at least, a kind of antiquated English patriot. No matter what kind of dirt we have to do, it’s for England”. But of course the traitor – and the 1960s Cambridge Five spy he was based on, Kim Philby – was no patriot or hero at all, at least not to Britain. His loyalties were strictly to Mother Russia, in the form of the USSR, and more specifically to Moscow Centre, the greatest rivals of Le Carré’s Circus in the “great game” of Cold War espionage. That rather lackadaisical term for Anglo-Russian conflict goes back to British Intelligence officer Arthur Connolly in 1840, though it was popularised by Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim in 1901. It is used by certain foolish characters in Tinker, Tailor, usually those who, safe behind their desks in Whitehall, do not have to suffer the game’s realities first-hand. Smiley, of course, would never utter such nonsense. He’s played ‘the game’ at close quarters and he knows very well how lethal the stakes are for everyone concerned. It is Smiley who is the “antiquated English patriot”, not his quarry.
Quiet Smiley might be, but Guinness’ genius in the role is carrying the cold determination and lengths to which he will go to capture a traitor – and avenge a friend. Agent Jim Prideaux was sent to Czechoslovakia by the Circus’ old boss, Control, on a nearly-fatal wild goose chase to learn the identity of the mole among the top brass. “A bullet in the back is quite a high price, even in your world” Smiley is told by Lacon, a Whitehall intelligence type who lives well above the fray. “Two bullets actually” replies Smiley, as he would never disrespect Prideaux’ imprisonment and torture by the Russians by getting such a painful detail wrong.
Smiley’s propriety here reflects his own vulnerabilities. Haydon had an affair with Smiley’s wife, the faithless Lady Anne, on the orders of his Russian handler, Moscow Centre’s legendary spymaster Karla. So Smiley must face his “failings as a husband” too – a terrible sacrifice that serves to emphasise his loyalty to his work. Smiley’s patriotism is “antiquated” because mostly unspoken British values – freedom of speech, fairness and democracy, defended by loyalty, decency and service to society – are utterly disregarded by the British Establishment he serves.
Smiley’s dogged determination always seems to me like the best kind of patriotism. The contradiction inherent to Smiley is that he’s the last, best defence of the Establishment, even though he seems to loathe it with a passion.
I understand that contradiction very well, and it’s probably the reason that Smiley found it so easy to turn me. I’d discovered Tinker Tailor not long after my sojourn at a minor public school in Essex, an institution that also produced the likes of reality TV star Jodie Marsh and footballer Frank Lampard. The experience left me with a lifelong suspicion of the Establishment, as well as a deep understanding of Middle England’s racism. I’ve always felt like I’m not quite a gentleman – too brown, too left-leaning politically, lacking the supreme confidence so many of my public school brethren have as standard. Yet the now-fashionable far left never seduced me either, as I had no doubt even in my 20s that Communism (luxury or otherwise) ends up in the punishment block of the Lubuyanka Jail. In Tinker Tailor, this is where Ricki Tarr’s source Irina’s miserable life ends up after her betrayal of the mole.
Having known people who lived under Communism and were lucky enough to escape it, the ideology has always been toxic, even if seeing the state of the UK after decades of neoliberalism means I’ve never been more sure of the terrors of unfettered capitalism. Smiley seems to have at least some of my social democratic values, as he shares Control’s terror of his successor Percy Alleline’s supporters. Described as “Golfers and Conservatives”, they are what Roy Bland (quoting Bill Haydon) calls the “pigs in clover society” of materialist England. But for all his doubts about the order he defends, Smiley will do what he has to do because he knows it’s better than Karla’s slavish fundamentalism.
Now the years have passed since my public school education ended, re-watching Tinker Tailor is one of the few times I feel oddly grateful for it. It gives such an insight into the drab and distressing world Smiley inhabits, where abject brutality is hidden in many shades of grey Englishness. In Tinker Tailor, it is an ambiguous identity, that stretches from Smiley’s restrained yet dogged pursuit of the mole to Percy Alleline’s foolish posturing as Chief, and even Toby Esterhase’s extravagant 70s suits, which only mark him out even more as a foreigner to his xenophobic colleagues. No matter how much he affects the manners of an English gentleman, he will never be truly accepted.
I recognised my own life in the friendship Jim Prideaux, in hiding working as a teacher at the fictional Thursgood Preparatory, strikes up with his brutalised pupil Bill Roache. Like young Bill I had my doubts about my school and its values when I was there and now I’d happily see public schools banned outright. I suspected then what I know now – that they are a cradle of privilege, engendering the Tory nonsense that having money makes you better than others who don’t. They encourage the kind of British exceptionalism that I never believed in, because I saw it as the basis for the racism I would occasionally encounter growing up. It’s the same British exceptionalism that runs through the flaws and failings of the Circus in Tinker Tailor and beyond, in Le Carré’s other writing. Yet I would be a fool if I wasn’t grateful for the decent education I got despite all that and the subsequent advantages that gave me (my first job in London came from an old school friend and another became an editor who would occasionally employ me). So like Smiley, I’ve benefited from my proximity to the Establishment, even if we are both deeply suspicious of it. I absented myself from it as soon as I could, doing my best to learn from my hero’s mistake in not cutting the cord sooner. For Smiley though, the Circus is a habit he just cannot break. Indeed it claims him totally when he consents to “looking after things for a while”, and becomes the new boss.
In Haydon’s last appearance we see him as he truly is – small, petty, egotistical and weeping, having betrayed everyone whoever loved him due to a grandiose sense of self-importance. In a wonderful performance Ian Richardson finally gets a chance to let fly with the arrogance that’s always been hinted at behind Haydon’s eccentric facade. Haydon’s Establishment entitlement hasn’t even been dented by his unmasking and he enjoys a cigarette and shows off to Smiley how clever he’s been, from making sure he was with Anne the night of Testify to leading Alleline a merry dance – the contrast with Smiley’s reserve is stark. Via Guinness, Smiley’s delivery is as dry as the desert as he refuses to lower himself to the level of Haydon’s ranting and raving. He simply won’t give Haydon the satisfaction.
His true self is revealed when he visits Ann to tell her about Haydon’s betrayal. At the bitter end, we get perhaps the most accurate and acute take on who he really is. “Bill, standing at the centre of some secret stage – he had a wonderful time. He enjoyed himself. He loved being a traitor,” she says. Smiley barely ever raises his voice but does in this moment when he asks, “Did you love him? Ann, did you?” His wife replies, with a kindness that is almost cruel, “No. Poor George, life’s such a puzzle to you, isn’t it?” Smiley can only clean his glasses with his scarf and look away. Even patriots have their limits and Smiley’s is his emotional life, in which he is an abject failure. I always liked him more for this all too human vulnerability, because with it he is truly the anti-Bond: constantly cuckolded, all too humane.
Smiley could have killed Haydon (as Bond surely would have), but is far too sensible, hoping to exchange the traitor for Circus personnel held by Moscow Centre. For Smiley, patriotic duty wins out over revenge, yet his restraint is wasted when Prideaux, Haydon’s old friend (and it is heavily implied by everyone from Lacon to Connie Sachs, his former lover) breaks his neck. Prideaux is done with patriotism and duty, thank you very much – and who the hell can blame him? Yet in his final appearance he blinks back tears. He’s just a plain field man, like Bond is, but in Le Carre’s far more plausible world of espionage, he ends up broken and alone, his revenge on his betrayer clearly no comfort at all.
So is all Smiley’s work really worth it? Well, he ends up as Chief of the Circus, so professionally it is. Eventually he’ll use Jerry Westerby, played here full of gin-soaked bonhomie by Joss Ackland, to break a pivotal Karla operation. Beyond the fiction, was the sacrifice of Smiley and his real-life counterparts really worth it? The real USSR lost the Cold War, after all. Yet today Russia, run by a former KGB agent, has invaded its neighbour and meddles with the democratic process in Western nations. These of course are still mired in realpolitik and diplomatic double standards. Smiley’s values of freedom and decency seem to be further away than ever both at home and abroad. In Tinker Tailor, there’s an intriguing scene in which Guillam asks Smiley if Karla is fireproof because he can’t be bought or beaten. Smiley reproaches him instantly: “Not fireproof, because he’s a fanatic. I may have behaved like a soft dope, the very archetype of a flabby Western Liberal but I’d rather be my kind of fool than his.” These days I tend to feel that a big part of growing up is deciding what kind of fool you want to be. In a world sinking into authoritarianism, with the far right on the march in Europe, and against the backdrop of the wars going on in Ukraine and Palestine, I’d still rather be George Smiley’s kind of fool than anyone else’s.
