Some years ago the editor of the New Yorker at the time was interviewed - probably "Fresh Air" on NPR or something like it, maybe a podcast, I don't honestly remember. But I do remember the conversation - the editor was asked what he did to relax away from his duties at the magazine, what did he do to unwind? He replied that he watched the BBC series "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and "Smiley's People", over and over again because he thought they were absolute perfection, something that could never be improved with change. I tend to agree, thank you John le Carre' for bringing these stories and characters to life. Thank you Sir Alec Guiness for being - and I mean being - George Smiley.
The TV series really were perfection and not just down to Sir Alec Guinness. Ian Richardson, Bernard Hepton, Michael Jayston etc were all wonderful - not to mention Arthur Hopcraft's adaptation. The opening scene with four men, an office, no action and four words of dialogue, yet a world of detail sets the tone for the rest of the series [1]
Recently re-reading TTSS with Alec Guinness's Smiley in my imagination was a wonderful experience. Thank you John Le Carre.
PS One oddity is that in TTSS Toby Esterhase has a British accent but in SP he's acquired a broad Hungarian one!
Toby Esterhazy does mention that he tried his hand at playing the English gentleman, and was quite done with it. I would like to have known some more background of Toby. Especially, how Hungarians came to Britain in the mid 20th century. Not quite totally unrelated is the Monty Python sketch on the Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook, which also alludes to the wave of Hungarian migrants:
I have some anecdotal experience here - my supervisor at College in Britain in the 1980s was a Hungarian mathematician who left Hungary in the late 1960s having had difficulties with the authorities. He vowed never to return to Hungary and had fairly trenchant views on the regime!
Incidentally, my supervision partner was also Hungarian and has now returned and is running a bank in Budapest.
In the novel of TTSS, it is explained that Toby was a starving (literally rather than figuratively) student living in Vienna after WWII and Smiley recruited him there to the Circus (MI6).
I often wondered if this was on purpose. He was known for affecting a very English Gent persona and by SP he was openly living as a fraudulent art dealer after leaving the Circus under a cloud
That sounds like a possibility. On reflection the accent in TTSS - with no trace of his original accent - is the oddity. But then I guess he was a spy so would be good at that sort of thing!
One of the locations used for the TV series was the BBC technical training centre.
As an 80' graduate engineer I "enjoyed" the "behind the iron curtain" feel to the accommodation. The onsite bar made up for it.
Sorry! I'm taking pigeon stories as his autobiography[1], there was a biography that came out a year earlier, but that wasn't written by him.
I normally don't like autobiographies because they are usually just bad stories expertly written by ghost writers.
[1] its not really an autobiography, However pigeon stories is a series of short stories that give the background to either his characters in his books, or the situations his books cover.
My dad did the same and got me into it. Whenever I came home to visit, we'd end up watching Smiley's People. I didn't really appreciate it at 19, but by the time I was 27 I realized it was a masterpiece.
These two series are absolutely the best that has ever been produced for British TV. I am enthralled every time I re watch them, which is maybe once a year.
Thank you John le Carré for such an outstanding, mesmerizing story. Thank you Alec Guinness for bringing to life one of the best characters ever created. I guess I will have to sit down and start my yearly ritual next Saturday.
the one thing I dislike about the movie is the "Christmas party". Its not from the novel, and is there primarily to elucidate some of the relationships in the novel like Bill Hayden and Jim Pridoux, but it seems very out of place in the story.
