Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

• Pierce Brosnan was equally great in GoldenEye – James Bond careening through the streets of St Petersburg astride a tank.
• These films also served as a visual reminder: the Cold War was a thing of the past.
• When Lady Ann Sercomb married George Smiley towards the end of the war she described him to her astonished Mayfair friends as breathtakingly ordinary.
• Published in 1961, this novel ushered into existence the spymaster George Smiley.
• Read more:
  Friday essay: the secret lives of Ian Fleming and John Le Carré – the spymasters shaped by a lack of parental love

Instantly hooked on an unlikely hero

• In 2011, Oldman put in a commendable shift as Smiley in the well-received film adaptation.
• In this iconic novel, Smiley hunts down a thinly fictionalised version of the infamous MI6 double agent, Kim Philby.
• I was instantly hooked: who was this man, and why describe him this way?
• This unlikely hero – part bureaucrat, part detective – always gets things done, more often than not in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
• Read more:
  'The wilderness of mirrors': 70 years since the first James Bond book, spy stories are still blurring fact and fiction

From the Cold War to Brexit

Smiley finds himself in a spot of bother at the start of Call for the Dead.

• Despite spending much of the novel in hospital, Smiley hatches a brilliant plan and unravels the truth.
• Moving from the Cold War to the self-inflicted catastrophe of Brexit, Le Carré’s nine Smiley novels paint a remarkably candid – and increasingly melancholic – portrait of a former imperial power in terminal decline.
• Time you rang down the curtain on yesterday’s cold warrior.
• Time you rang down the curtain on yesterday’s cold warrior.
• Read more:
  What's a cold war?

George Smiley is James Bond’s reality check

• However, in marked contrast to Le Carré, Fleming rails against the reality of Britain’s diminished status as a world power in the wake of the second world war.
• This, in turn, helps us understand the enduring appeal of George Smiley.
• Smiley is an Abbey, made up different periods, fashions, and even different religions, not all of them necessarily harmonious.
• Smiley is an Abbey, made up different periods, fashions, and even different religions, not all of them necessarily harmonious.
• George Smiley, who is slated to appear in a new novel to be written by Le Carré’s son, is a reminder, disguised as fiction, that still waters do indeed run deep.

Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.