After seeing the recent film and read Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor and the Honourable Schoolboy of the Karla Trilogy, I could not resist continuing with Smiley’s People and watching the original TV taped video at the same time. Doing this involved changing video players, cleaning the video heads and readjusting the second video player to the tape. This all took time but was well worth the effort because the TV script brilliantly transfers the book to screen with one if the best assemblies of British acting. describe.
I found the book and the TV production the most dramatic and engaging of the three works and all three can be experienced individually with satisfaction and enjoyment while the three together do form a major work in this genre.
And yet the basic plot with which I was already familiar is a simple one. It is known that the head Russian Spooks, Karla married and had a daughter with mental health problems and when he uses a émigré widow in order to bring her to the West for treatment, George Smiley officially retired for the second time within a few short years is first brought back to clear up a potentially damaging mess that ahs occurred with the death of a former agent, and then alerted to what is happening sets about creating a situation in which Karla is forced to defect if he wishes the young woman to get the treatment she needs.
The difference between Le Carré and so many others working in this genre of writing is the understanding of human behaviour and his ability to draw characters whose outward personalities we can recognise and which in the BBC production the casting was superb. The only difference I can immediately see between the TV production and the book is a slight variation in the sequence of some events to ensure the that TV watcher has a clarity in their understanding for with the book one can stop and reflect or re-read a passage to ensure you have grasped what the author is communicating. As in all three of the Karla novels Le Carré switches from the individuals caught up the main event and the Spooks trying to understand what is happening before they personally act to bring the situation to a satisfactory conclusion.
The work begins with an émigré living in Paris who has reached a level of security although she has five different locks on her flat door. I encountered this fear when as a social worker I needed to visit a family of refugees from one of the post World War uprisings, Poland, Hungry, it does not matter which and had to wait for a similar number of locks and bolts to be opened before gaining entry and was explained that the mother had become and remained a nervous wreck after the experiencing the invasions of Germans and then the Russians. While the fear of the bombs is enough for most of us to deal with, being the subject of not one but two totalitarian and ideological invasions is beyond the comprehension of most of us.
The present level of the personal security of Madame Osktravova, played by Eileen Atkins, is shattered when she is approach by a Russian hood, Oleg Kirov working at the Embassy in Paris who offers the woman the opportunity to see her daughter once more. Her husband a nationalist and a Jew was banished to Siberia from where he escaped to the West and then his wife subsequently against all expectation was given permission to join him during his last moments as he was dying from cancer. The price was to leave her daughter behind who was taken into care and who according to Kirov (Dudley Sutton) had become a criminal by running away from the institution. It had been decided to rid the country of the young woman so all Olga had to do was to fill an application for the daughter to come to her in the West and permission would be granted. But Olga was no push over and in Paris she had been in contact with General Vladimir, (played by Curt Jurgens), the leader of the Estonian émigré’s with his chief Assistant Mikkel (Michael Gough) who also work for the Circus as an agent looked after by Toby Esterhase in terms of day to day contact and by George Smiley as the supervisor “the Vicar“. Because his role had been exposed he had fled to London when he had been effectively pensioned off in the form of a grant to his organisation, after the coup in which Saul Enderby, of the Foreign Office had become the permanent head of the Spooks and gained his knighthood after and despite George’s success in the saga of the Honourable Schoolboy.
In addition there had been a Political change with the policy decision taken to end the clandestine activities of the Circus in general including those of the émigré’s considered out of touch with reality and a nuisance in terms of the official attempts to establish better relations with the Soviet Union and is occupied territories. I remember articles and news programmes which from time to time painted an unsympathetic picture of these aging individuals clinging to past and scheming for something which most commentators considered unrealistic. This of course may have been a double bluff, presenting one government position for International consumption while behind the scenes everything was being done to bring about the collapse which took place against all general expectation.
In this instance Olga writes to General about what had happened and that no daughter had arrived. The General makes contact with an associate in Western Germany Otto Leipzig someone who had worked for Karla directly and had become a double agent, a fantasist at times, a racketeer and a pimp but who had provided valuable information over time about the Russian operations and is a personal friend of the owner of a sex night club in Hamburg.
In the first part of the novel and TV experience all we know is that the General had made contact with a European Lorry driver based in England and accompanies him on a journey to one of the ports bringing with him a bag/basket filled with oranges and that he is to meet someone on a ferry with a copy of the previous day’s paper who will place a folder of film negatives on top of the basket which he must bring back.
Later we learn that the mission had been carried out by Villem the son of a literal brother in arms of the General who had died a hero in the war and brought up by the General who he had come to regard as father rather than an uncle. He had married to Stella, a British woman, played by Maureen Lipman who wanted her husband to have nothing to do with the past, especially now that he got a well paid job and was planning to buy their own home. She had effectively banned all contact with the General so when Smiley arrives as part of his clean up operation and to establish what happened, she first denies her husband is present and then is shocked to learn that the two had contact with the general accompanying him to the coastal port with the basket giving him the instructions and then visiting on his return while his wife was out the house to collect the negatives.
The negatives had been passed to him by Otto who had also been to Paris to warn Olga she had to be careful. The General had replied to her letter sending her the torn half of an unused postcard. The man he would send would slip the other half of the card under her door so she would know it was someone she could trust and who she nicknamed as the magician.
Back in London the General had become very excited on receipt of the negatives. In one of the early parts of the book and TV production he attempts to ring George who he knows as Max at the Circus. But Max is long retired and the young man, Nigel Mostyn (Stephen Riddle) a recent recruit but sufficiently experienced to have heard George speak at the training school, had taken the call on a special phone used exclusively for contact from the émigré’s and other pensioned off agents. Mostyn asks the General to ring back (when his section head gets back from lunch) but the man does not return until later and then goes off for long weekend leaving Mostyn to deal with the situation himself.
Mostyn has checked the simple data record system which informs who the general is and who Max is and although this is not stated in either the book or TV production it can also be assumed he checked who the Sandman was. In addition to be told to deal the situation himself he had been told not to contact Smiley because the superiors knew how Smiley would react and because he was part of the former Order which the new political master had effectively abolished.
The General had insisted on Moscow Rules, the traditional spy craft of leaving nothing to chance. He had arranged a safe house close to Hampstead Heath where he had bread Vodka, black bread, a salami type sausage, gherkins and the proceeded to the heath and a particular hut where he had placed a drawing pin/ The General had paced a chalk mark to say all was well and he would proceed to the safe house while Mostyn had gone to the house to wait for General who had not arrived. His body was later found with his face half blown away.
It was at this point that Sir Saul had contacted Oliver Lacon, the Cabinet Office link, another super casting, with Anthony Bate, and his tendency to talk in platitudes and a lack of insight into people or understanding of the world beyond his limited public school Oxbridge experience. He wants the matter cleared up in such a way that the General never had any connection with the Circus and with no loose ends to be followed. As his “vicar” Lacon also argues that the man’s death could be said to have been Smiley’s responsibility. The Circus had been damaged enough by the recent past and was in the political doghouse so that any new scandal would cause it broken up further or abolished. There was now a committee of wise men who had to approve anything and everything in advance. Lacon as does the equally awful Saul Enderby later played in this instance by Barry Foster also ask Smiley about his wayward but influential wife and well connected wife. Is she well, is she with him or away up to her tricks. Smiley would prefer no reference and when they want to get under his skins they refer to her relationship with the traitor Bill Haydon fearing that if Smiley and confided in his wife and she with Haydon then the info would have gone straight back to Moscow.
Mostyn who appears a good and sensible lad leaves the service because he has lost his first agent. In TV series Enderby says he tried to get Mostyn into the BBC but there was not interested so he had gone into a Monastery. In the book when Mostyn reveal to Smiley the conversation was taped Lacon stamps on the young man saying this is a confidential development and Smiley is no longer part of the time but it is a move to prevent Smiley learning what was said. Smiley gets the information Mostyn privately that the General had said he was able to deliver the Sandman and that he had two proofs. The reason Karla is called the Sandman is because everyone he comes into contact is sent to sleep!
When examining the body and tracing the evidence of the man’s walk along paths through the Heath Smiley notes that he is shot in the face, a Karla trade mark to serve as a warning. He also notes that although it is evident from the foot pattern that the General had hurried when he knew someone was following he had stopped at one point before continuing to where the actual assassin was waiting for him. Smiley is shown the body and the route by Michael Elphick who plays the police Chief Superintendent who has been instructed to cooperate with Smiley who is not there so to speak and has to leave the scene before the press arrive.
The following day he inspects the flat of the General in the hope that there is evidence to help him learn what the émigré leader was working on and he notices a large pack of French cigarettes which we later learn had been bought as a present by Villem. Previously he had inspected the contents of pockets of the General which had been placed in plastic bags. This included a receipt for a taxi which at over £17 indicated a long or length journey and which after bribing the driver revealed that he had taken the General to the home of Villem Craven stopping off to by a toy for his Godson on the way and then waiting an hour to collect him to bring him home. There was no cigarette packet although the General was a chain smoker.
He also returns to the Heath and explores the undergrowth at the point where he stopped when knowing he was being followed and then spots a packet of French cigarettes placed in branch of tree. It is only later that he carefully examines the picture from the negative which he develops at his home. Before this he visits the office of the General to express his condolences to Mikkel and to Mikkel’s wife who works as a secretary clerical officer and who is known to be one of the many women with whom the General had a relationship. He has been told that Mikkel had been trying to get in with Villem following return from his mission and the General’s visit to him about the £50 he had loaned and which Villem said he had returned to the General, Smiley speculates whether Mikkel had spoken to the enemy out of ambition to replace the General and because of the relationship with the man’s wife. Similarly he had questioned Villem and his wife to check that had not betrayed the man.
There was one piece of information learned from the General which had confirmed Smiley’s concern from the outset that the General had asked for him and not his first contact Toby Eaterhase given that he had been such a stickler for standard procedures. He had expressed great disappointment about Toby some two weeks previously.
This Smiley follows up when he visits the dodgy art gallery Toby now runs following his retirement. Toby Eaterhase is a central European who Smiley rescued and recruited when they were both young men and Smiley a fieldman, In Tinker Tailor he had become head of the pavements artists those who conduct human surveillance and a member of the fifth floor confidants of the former chief, of Haydon and the others. He had been leaned on by Smiley to become his man in setting up the unmasking of Haydon and was played in the film by a David Suchet of Poirot fame as a pathetic wimp who runs with the hares and the hounds according to appears to be winning. In the TV productions he is played by Bernard Hepton who went on to play the leading role in a wartime underground series based in Belgium whose name escapes and I am too lazy to check.
His portrayal is of a confident con man selling fakes and besieged by creditors. He admits that the General came to see him with the proposition that he should go over to Hamburg to collect the proofs that Karla had created a legend, a fake history in order to place a spy using the identity of the child of an émigré and that he had arranged for the Russian hood Oleg Kirov to be blackmailed by his friend Otto Leipzig with the help of sex night club owner Claus Kretschmar. Toby had rejected the request because he had no regard for Otto and did not want to get involved again having been pensioned off.
George makes one further visit in which he is officially discouraged from doing. He goes to Oxfordshire to see Connie Sachs) played by Beryl Reid, as he had done in Tinker Tailor then bringing her back to work for him in the Honourable Schoolboy. Now she is disabled running an animal sanctuary with the help of a former female member of the Circus who had a breakdown, Hilary (Norma West), who is alarmed at the visit of Smiley fearing is it going to upset the secure existence she had developed with Connie. He presses Connie and her failing memory who confirms his own understandings that Karla had married but had been responsible for the execution of the woman when she commenced to question the regime. They had a daughter that Karla had raised at arm’s length and who had become psychological disturbed.
I am not sure at what point we get to meet Anne his wife, played by Sian Phillips who also plays the same role in the first book but who is only seen briefly from behind in the film. In the book she rings Smiley seeking his company at but he is unable to invite or go to her, fully engaged and anxious that anyone who may have knowledge of the legend is likely to be eliminated. In this TV adaptation he visits her at her father’s home to explain that he is going away and that she had best remain where she is and that he is arranging for two men to provide security day and night. She asks if he is unable to tell her what is going on because of her affair with Bill Haydon.
Smiley has the technique of never answering anyone’s questions, says goodbye and goes to Hamburg.
I found the book and the TV production the most dramatic and engaging of the three works and all three can be experienced individually with satisfaction and enjoyment while the three together do form a major work in this genre.
And yet the basic plot with which I was already familiar is a simple one. It is known that the head Russian Spooks, Karla married and had a daughter with mental health problems and when he uses a émigré widow in order to bring her to the West for treatment, George Smiley officially retired for the second time within a few short years is first brought back to clear up a potentially damaging mess that ahs occurred with the death of a former agent, and then alerted to what is happening sets about creating a situation in which Karla is forced to defect if he wishes the young woman to get the treatment she needs.
The difference between Le Carré and so many others working in this genre of writing is the understanding of human behaviour and his ability to draw characters whose outward personalities we can recognise and which in the BBC production the casting was superb. The only difference I can immediately see between the TV production and the book is a slight variation in the sequence of some events to ensure the that TV watcher has a clarity in their understanding for with the book one can stop and reflect or re-read a passage to ensure you have grasped what the author is communicating. As in all three of the Karla novels Le Carré switches from the individuals caught up the main event and the Spooks trying to understand what is happening before they personally act to bring the situation to a satisfactory conclusion.
The work begins with an émigré living in Paris who has reached a level of security although she has five different locks on her flat door. I encountered this fear when as a social worker I needed to visit a family of refugees from one of the post World War uprisings, Poland, Hungry, it does not matter which and had to wait for a similar number of locks and bolts to be opened before gaining entry and was explained that the mother had become and remained a nervous wreck after the experiencing the invasions of Germans and then the Russians. While the fear of the bombs is enough for most of us to deal with, being the subject of not one but two totalitarian and ideological invasions is beyond the comprehension of most of us.
The present level of the personal security of Madame Osktravova, played by Eileen Atkins, is shattered when she is approach by a Russian hood, Oleg Kirov working at the Embassy in Paris who offers the woman the opportunity to see her daughter once more. Her husband a nationalist and a Jew was banished to Siberia from where he escaped to the West and then his wife subsequently against all expectation was given permission to join him during his last moments as he was dying from cancer. The price was to leave her daughter behind who was taken into care and who according to Kirov (Dudley Sutton) had become a criminal by running away from the institution. It had been decided to rid the country of the young woman so all Olga had to do was to fill an application for the daughter to come to her in the West and permission would be granted. But Olga was no push over and in Paris she had been in contact with General Vladimir, (played by Curt Jurgens), the leader of the Estonian émigré’s with his chief Assistant Mikkel (Michael Gough) who also work for the Circus as an agent looked after by Toby Esterhase in terms of day to day contact and by George Smiley as the supervisor “the Vicar“. Because his role had been exposed he had fled to London when he had been effectively pensioned off in the form of a grant to his organisation, after the coup in which Saul Enderby, of the Foreign Office had become the permanent head of the Spooks and gained his knighthood after and despite George’s success in the saga of the Honourable Schoolboy.
In addition there had been a Political change with the policy decision taken to end the clandestine activities of the Circus in general including those of the émigré’s considered out of touch with reality and a nuisance in terms of the official attempts to establish better relations with the Soviet Union and is occupied territories. I remember articles and news programmes which from time to time painted an unsympathetic picture of these aging individuals clinging to past and scheming for something which most commentators considered unrealistic. This of course may have been a double bluff, presenting one government position for International consumption while behind the scenes everything was being done to bring about the collapse which took place against all general expectation.
In this instance Olga writes to General about what had happened and that no daughter had arrived. The General makes contact with an associate in Western Germany Otto Leipzig someone who had worked for Karla directly and had become a double agent, a fantasist at times, a racketeer and a pimp but who had provided valuable information over time about the Russian operations and is a personal friend of the owner of a sex night club in Hamburg.
In the first part of the novel and TV experience all we know is that the General had made contact with a European Lorry driver based in England and accompanies him on a journey to one of the ports bringing with him a bag/basket filled with oranges and that he is to meet someone on a ferry with a copy of the previous day’s paper who will place a folder of film negatives on top of the basket which he must bring back.
Later we learn that the mission had been carried out by Villem the son of a literal brother in arms of the General who had died a hero in the war and brought up by the General who he had come to regard as father rather than an uncle. He had married to Stella, a British woman, played by Maureen Lipman who wanted her husband to have nothing to do with the past, especially now that he got a well paid job and was planning to buy their own home. She had effectively banned all contact with the General so when Smiley arrives as part of his clean up operation and to establish what happened, she first denies her husband is present and then is shocked to learn that the two had contact with the general accompanying him to the coastal port with the basket giving him the instructions and then visiting on his return while his wife was out the house to collect the negatives.
The negatives had been passed to him by Otto who had also been to Paris to warn Olga she had to be careful. The General had replied to her letter sending her the torn half of an unused postcard. The man he would send would slip the other half of the card under her door so she would know it was someone she could trust and who she nicknamed as the magician.
Back in London the General had become very excited on receipt of the negatives. In one of the early parts of the book and TV production he attempts to ring George who he knows as Max at the Circus. But Max is long retired and the young man, Nigel Mostyn (Stephen Riddle) a recent recruit but sufficiently experienced to have heard George speak at the training school, had taken the call on a special phone used exclusively for contact from the émigré’s and other pensioned off agents. Mostyn asks the General to ring back (when his section head gets back from lunch) but the man does not return until later and then goes off for long weekend leaving Mostyn to deal with the situation himself.
Mostyn has checked the simple data record system which informs who the general is and who Max is and although this is not stated in either the book or TV production it can also be assumed he checked who the Sandman was. In addition to be told to deal the situation himself he had been told not to contact Smiley because the superiors knew how Smiley would react and because he was part of the former Order which the new political master had effectively abolished.
The General had insisted on Moscow Rules, the traditional spy craft of leaving nothing to chance. He had arranged a safe house close to Hampstead Heath where he had bread Vodka, black bread, a salami type sausage, gherkins and the proceeded to the heath and a particular hut where he had placed a drawing pin/ The General had paced a chalk mark to say all was well and he would proceed to the safe house while Mostyn had gone to the house to wait for General who had not arrived. His body was later found with his face half blown away.
It was at this point that Sir Saul had contacted Oliver Lacon, the Cabinet Office link, another super casting, with Anthony Bate, and his tendency to talk in platitudes and a lack of insight into people or understanding of the world beyond his limited public school Oxbridge experience. He wants the matter cleared up in such a way that the General never had any connection with the Circus and with no loose ends to be followed. As his “vicar” Lacon also argues that the man’s death could be said to have been Smiley’s responsibility. The Circus had been damaged enough by the recent past and was in the political doghouse so that any new scandal would cause it broken up further or abolished. There was now a committee of wise men who had to approve anything and everything in advance. Lacon as does the equally awful Saul Enderby later played in this instance by Barry Foster also ask Smiley about his wayward but influential wife and well connected wife. Is she well, is she with him or away up to her tricks. Smiley would prefer no reference and when they want to get under his skins they refer to her relationship with the traitor Bill Haydon fearing that if Smiley and confided in his wife and she with Haydon then the info would have gone straight back to Moscow.
Mostyn who appears a good and sensible lad leaves the service because he has lost his first agent. In TV series Enderby says he tried to get Mostyn into the BBC but there was not interested so he had gone into a Monastery. In the book when Mostyn reveal to Smiley the conversation was taped Lacon stamps on the young man saying this is a confidential development and Smiley is no longer part of the time but it is a move to prevent Smiley learning what was said. Smiley gets the information Mostyn privately that the General had said he was able to deliver the Sandman and that he had two proofs. The reason Karla is called the Sandman is because everyone he comes into contact is sent to sleep!
When examining the body and tracing the evidence of the man’s walk along paths through the Heath Smiley notes that he is shot in the face, a Karla trade mark to serve as a warning. He also notes that although it is evident from the foot pattern that the General had hurried when he knew someone was following he had stopped at one point before continuing to where the actual assassin was waiting for him. Smiley is shown the body and the route by Michael Elphick who plays the police Chief Superintendent who has been instructed to cooperate with Smiley who is not there so to speak and has to leave the scene before the press arrive.
The following day he inspects the flat of the General in the hope that there is evidence to help him learn what the émigré leader was working on and he notices a large pack of French cigarettes which we later learn had been bought as a present by Villem. Previously he had inspected the contents of pockets of the General which had been placed in plastic bags. This included a receipt for a taxi which at over £17 indicated a long or length journey and which after bribing the driver revealed that he had taken the General to the home of Villem Craven stopping off to by a toy for his Godson on the way and then waiting an hour to collect him to bring him home. There was no cigarette packet although the General was a chain smoker.
He also returns to the Heath and explores the undergrowth at the point where he stopped when knowing he was being followed and then spots a packet of French cigarettes placed in branch of tree. It is only later that he carefully examines the picture from the negative which he develops at his home. Before this he visits the office of the General to express his condolences to Mikkel and to Mikkel’s wife who works as a secretary clerical officer and who is known to be one of the many women with whom the General had a relationship. He has been told that Mikkel had been trying to get in with Villem following return from his mission and the General’s visit to him about the £50 he had loaned and which Villem said he had returned to the General, Smiley speculates whether Mikkel had spoken to the enemy out of ambition to replace the General and because of the relationship with the man’s wife. Similarly he had questioned Villem and his wife to check that had not betrayed the man.
There was one piece of information learned from the General which had confirmed Smiley’s concern from the outset that the General had asked for him and not his first contact Toby Eaterhase given that he had been such a stickler for standard procedures. He had expressed great disappointment about Toby some two weeks previously.
This Smiley follows up when he visits the dodgy art gallery Toby now runs following his retirement. Toby Eaterhase is a central European who Smiley rescued and recruited when they were both young men and Smiley a fieldman, In Tinker Tailor he had become head of the pavements artists those who conduct human surveillance and a member of the fifth floor confidants of the former chief, of Haydon and the others. He had been leaned on by Smiley to become his man in setting up the unmasking of Haydon and was played in the film by a David Suchet of Poirot fame as a pathetic wimp who runs with the hares and the hounds according to appears to be winning. In the TV productions he is played by Bernard Hepton who went on to play the leading role in a wartime underground series based in Belgium whose name escapes and I am too lazy to check.
His portrayal is of a confident con man selling fakes and besieged by creditors. He admits that the General came to see him with the proposition that he should go over to Hamburg to collect the proofs that Karla had created a legend, a fake history in order to place a spy using the identity of the child of an émigré and that he had arranged for the Russian hood Oleg Kirov to be blackmailed by his friend Otto Leipzig with the help of sex night club owner Claus Kretschmar. Toby had rejected the request because he had no regard for Otto and did not want to get involved again having been pensioned off.
George makes one further visit in which he is officially discouraged from doing. He goes to Oxfordshire to see Connie Sachs) played by Beryl Reid, as he had done in Tinker Tailor then bringing her back to work for him in the Honourable Schoolboy. Now she is disabled running an animal sanctuary with the help of a former female member of the Circus who had a breakdown, Hilary (Norma West), who is alarmed at the visit of Smiley fearing is it going to upset the secure existence she had developed with Connie. He presses Connie and her failing memory who confirms his own understandings that Karla had married but had been responsible for the execution of the woman when she commenced to question the regime. They had a daughter that Karla had raised at arm’s length and who had become psychological disturbed.
I am not sure at what point we get to meet Anne his wife, played by Sian Phillips who also plays the same role in the first book but who is only seen briefly from behind in the film. In the book she rings Smiley seeking his company at but he is unable to invite or go to her, fully engaged and anxious that anyone who may have knowledge of the legend is likely to be eliminated. In this TV adaptation he visits her at her father’s home to explain that he is going away and that she had best remain where she is and that he is arranging for two men to provide security day and night. She asks if he is unable to tell her what is going on because of her affair with Bill Haydon.
Smiley has the technique of never answering anyone’s questions, says goodbye and goes to Hamburg.
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