…and this was adapted to the big screen in 1965. Tinker, Tailor is probably more familiar to people now living on the basis of the six-part television adaptation with Alec Guinness made in the late seventies, and the feature film version released five or six years ago. The novelist was also probably at the height of his powers when he wrote the latter book. Drop the name “George Smiley” and more people in the English-language readership will recognize it than they would “Alec Leamas,” the doomed protagonist played by Richard Burton half a century ago.

cordially,