Have you met George Smiley? In a sense he’s an enigma. Just think of the different personas of the actors who have played him over the years.
I’m betting that most of you think you know who he is. But do you really? Would you recognize him if you saw him on the street?
I remember reading words like chubby, ordinary, middle-aged. But Alec Guiness? Gary Oldman?
I couldn’t really see him in my mind’s eye until I read John Le Carre’s debut novel published in 1961 and titled Call for the Dead. Recently, I picked it up — almost by accident. I’m so glad I did, because I got to know Smiley a lot better by reading it. Then I picked up Le Carre’s second book and learned even more.
About Call for the Dead
The book is short, only 160 pages, so it didn’t take long to read and, as first novels go, it’s pretty good. I got a bit bogged down in Chapter 12 when I couldn’t quite keep up with the characters, but this was soon resolved as the author closes the book with a review and run through of what he’s written.
I’m not going to give you a summary of the book here. Suffice it to say that Smiley is working at a menial intelligence job involving security clearances for civil servants. After a man he interviews apparently commits suicide, circumstances evolve and Smiley resigns in disgust. When it becomes clear that the man’s death may have been a murder, he launches an independent investigation with the help of his protege, Peter Guillam, and a police detective named Oliver Mendel. Of course, with Le Carre nothing is quite so linear, so if you’d like the details, be sure to read the book. You can buy it from Amazon or pick it up (like I did) from your local library.
Meet George Smiley
What I absolutely loved about the book is that the author gave me a really in-depth look at George Smiley by stuffing his paragraphs full of adjectives that give us a more complete picture of Smiley than we get in later works.
Still, it’s interesting to me, that even before you are introduced to Smiley, you meet the love of his life, the lovely, but fickle, Ann. In the first paragraph of his first novel, Le Carre tells us a little about her:
When Lady Ann Sercomb married George Smiley towards the end of the war she described him to her astonished Mayfair friends as breathtakingly ordinary. When she left him two years later in favour of a Cuban motor racing driver, she announced enigmatically that if she hadn’t left him then, she never could have done . . .
As I mentioned, I’d met Smiley several times in later work. But I don’t know if I would say that I’ve thought of him as ‘breathtakingly ordinary’. Dumpy maybe. Sometimes maligned. But here’s how Le Carre describes Smiley a few pages after introducing Ann:
Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.
Now that’s a statement!
Early in Le Carre’s second novel, A Murder of Quality (1962), the author goes even further noting:
Looks like a frog, dresses like a bookie, and has a brain I’d give my eyes for.
George Smiley: The Fictional Spy Most Likely to Succeed in the Real World
Here’s a wordmap describing George Smiley, arguably the most cunning spy in the Cold War’s literary spy genre, in words most often used to describe him. Does he seem like a real life spy to you?
Having formed an image of Smiley that was sort of bloblike and non-descript, I was surprised to read that the American scholars Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen describe Smiley as the fictional spy most likely to be successful as a real spy. Despite the descriptions just quoted, the duo find a portrait of Smiley a bit later in A Murder of Quality that they prefer:
Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colorful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country’s enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonymity and his safety. His fear makes him servile—he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes.
Polmar and Allen write that Smiley’s banal qualities together with his intelligence and a talent for intrigue make him ideal as a spy even though he is very far from the popular stereotype of how a spy should look and act. (Wikipedia)
About A Murder of Quality
Said to be his only non-espionage novel, A Murder of Quality reads more like an Agatha Christie whodunit than a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Still, we learn a fair amount more about Smiley and Ann:
Damned pretty girl, Ann was, and went and married this fellow. Some funny little beggar in the Civil Service with an OBE and a gold watch.
OBE is no trivial honor, as some of you may know. It’s the Order of the British Empire, the second highest honorific of the British Empire (excluding a knighthood/damehood).
The Two Early Books
These two early books are quick, easy reads. In fact, given what we now know about Le Carre, you may wonder why he bothered to write ‘Murder’ at all. It seems like sort of a silly little book, and doesn’t at all suggest to me the “glory” that is to come. But, I want to give the author credit for setting the stage for his future work. I can’t help but think Le Carre was purposeful in providing some of the autobiographical glimpses that will inform his future work.
Lastly, I just want to say that both books are lacking in the Cold War context that we look forward to when reading a Le Carre novel. In fact, I’ve often thought that I could create a Le Carre Cold War Timeline that would tell us most of what we need to know about the Cold War.
The first book, Call for the Dead, is situated in a post World War II world where national security is rising to the fore, and intelligence services are expanding. You do get a sense of this in the book.
A Murder of Quality pays lip service to the 1956 problems in Hungary that led to an influx of refugees in Great Britain. That’s about it.
Overall, I think the author, himself, sums up his second book better than I can. Writing in 1989 he says:
Rereading the book now, I find a flawed thriller redeemed by ferocious and quite funny social comment. Most of all I recognise the dankness of those old stone walls that formed the limits of my childhood and left me for the rest of my life with an urge to fight off whatever threatened to enclose me.
Now I’m ready to start on Book #3, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I’d love for you to speed through the first two books and join me in this project. Who knows where it might lead? At the very least it’s an escape from the news. With luck we’ll pick up some insight along the way. For sure, we’ll be entertained.
Just in case: George Smile and John Le Carre not your cup of tea? Check out our post on The GOATS: 12 Iconic Spy Novelists.
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If you like mood music when you read, you might want to check out this playlist on Spotify. It’s titled John Le Carre.
Both of these books have been made into movies. The name of Call for the Dead has been changed to The Deadly Affair because of some sort of conflict. James Mason plays Smiley. (1967) Simone Signoret also stars. It’s available on Amazon Prime.
A Murder of Quality is available on YouTube here. It stars Denholm Elliott as Smiley, along with Glenda Jackson. This is a 1991 television film.
(It may be more than you want to know, but the actors playing Smiley over the years include Rupert Davies (1965) James Mason (1966) George Cole (1978, 1981) Alec Guinness (1979, 1982) Peter Vaughan (1983) Bernard Hepton (1988, 1990) Denholm Elliott (1991) Simon Russell Beale (2009–2010) Gary Oldman (2011).)
George Smiley radio dramas are available on Internet Archive. You can access them here.
You can find Smiley on Wikipedia here.
Polmar, Norman; Allen, Thomas (1998). The Spy Book The Encyclopedia of Espionage. New York: Random House.
