Soldier Spy

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Karla appears briefly in the 2011 film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as a voice, provided by Michael Sarne, as well as in a partial shot in a Budapest coffee shop holding Smiley's lighter.

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. The first recorded Karla activities came during the Spanish Civil War, when he entered Nationalist territory in Spain posing as a White Russian journalist (i.e., an anti-Communist Russian), and recruited a large number of German agents. The network was code-named "Karla", and the agent was later known only by that name. It was an outstanding achievement for such a young man and would become characteristic of Karla in the series. [1] In Smiley's People, he has retired from the Circus and opened a second-rate art gallery in London, whose wares are of dubious provenance. An old Circus agent, Vladimir, approaches him, asking for help with a private operation, but Esterhase refuses. When Vladimir is later killed, Esterhase somewhat shamefacedly recounts their meeting to Smiley. [18] Obituary: 12 January 2009". The Daily Telegraph. London. 12 January 2009. Archived from the original on 11 November 2012 . Retrieved 4 March 2011. Toby Esterhase — He is the head of the Acton lamplighters, the section of the Circus responsible for surveillance and wiretapping. Hungarian by birth, Esterhase is an anglophile with pretensions of being a British gentleman. He was recruited by Smiley as "a starving student in Vienna".The Soviet intelligence services, in particular the KGB and Karla's fictional "Thirteenth Directorate". Go the hotel where Akulov's staying and swipe that data out from under his nose. As if it needs to be said but he'll have heavy protection. And remember I'll pay extra if you get in and out without a trace. Guillam is half-French and half-English, and comes from a family that has worked for The Circus (le Carre's name for MI6) for generations. Although Call for the Dead indicates that he served in the Second World War, the later books in the series indicate that he was born around 1933. [2] Although he has done observational "field work" in the past and recruited spies that report to him, Guillam himself is uncomfortable with getting personally involved in spying operations, preferring an administrative role. His hands-off approach to spy work places him on the periphery of the numerous cliques and rivalries that form within the Circus, allowing him to survive multiple bureaucratic shakeups that occur throughout the 1960s and 1970s; nevertheless, he retains a secret loyalty to George Smiley, who functions as his mentor. He constantly finds himself reassigned to divisions and assignments considered mediocre or undesirable, including running the Scalphunters, the division of the Circus responsible for espionage operations requiring violence or assassinations. Guillam goes through a number of failed relationships, including an affair with a married musician twenty years his junior.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the fifth of le Carré's spy novels to feature the character of George Smiley (the first four being: Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and The Looking Glass War) and the fictionalized intelligence agency of "the Circus." Two of the characters, Peter Guillam and Inspector Mendel, first appeared in Call for the Dead, while Control appeared in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. With Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, le Carré returned to the world of spy fiction after his non-espionage novel, The Naïve and Sentimental Lover, was panned by critics. [5] Le Carré drew on the defection of Kim Philby, a high-ranking MI6 operative revealed to be a Soviet spy in 1963 Garner, Dwight (28 August 2017). "George Smiley and Other Old Friends Return in John le Carré's 'A Legacy of Spies' ". The New York Times.

Broadcasts

Eventually he did commit, and Guinness set about fully engaging with a character he described to the Guardian at the time as being “a vulnerable man who … is capable of taking unexpectedly swift and rather harsh action”. Alec Guinness portrayed Smiley in two highly successful BBC TV series: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979), and Smiley's People (1982). The middle story, The Honourable Schoolboy, was not filmed due to the cost of the Indochina setting. The Far Eastern parts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy had been relocated to Portugal for the same reason. Gary Oldman plays Smiley in the 2011 film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal. [28] That being said, this is a very dense, expertly filmed (every frame has context and meaning), vision that somehow is just too British Buttoned Down for it's own good. Director Tomas Alfredson moves the film along at a slow but steady pace - giving you time to contemplate all the clues and red herrings, just as the main character George Smiley (in a magnificently controlled performance by Gary Oldman), tries to work it all out.