Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, written by John le Carré and published in 1974, is le Carré’s masterpiece, even better than The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. It’s a multilayered narrative focusing on the moral ambiguities and the personal sacrifices inherent in espionage. Critics regularly, and rightly, describe it as the best spy novel ever written, and a novel that transcends its genre.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Title
The title is figurative, using a twist on the nursery rhyme Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor. In the novel, the Circus gives the suspected traitors codenames based on the rhyme:
Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Sailor,
Rich Man, Poor Man,
Beggar Man, Thief.
(For more on titles, see How to Choose a Title For Your Novel)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Logline
The British Secret Service asks a retired spymaster to find a soviet mole who must be one of his former protégés. He can trust no one as he tries to discover who the traitor is.
(For more on loglines, see The Killogator Logline Formula)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Plot Summary
Warning: My plot summaries contain spoilers The major spoilers are blacked out like this [blackout]secret[/blackout]. To view them, just select/highlight them.
It’s the early 1970s. Jim Pridoux arrives at a minor public school as a temporary teacher. He has a back injury and a mysterious past.
In London, George Smiley, previously second-in-command of ‘The Circus’ (MI6) is in enforced retirement. Control, the former head of the Circus, is dead, having died soon after being forced to resign over a disastrous operation.
The Civil Service undersecretary responsible for the Intelligence Services invites Smiley to his house. There, Smiley meets both the undersecretary and Ricki Tarr, an agent he recruited decades ago who went missing in Hong Kong.
Tarr explains that while in Hong Kong, he had an affair with the wife of a KGB agent. The woman hinted to him that a Soviet mole has infiltrated the Circus. Tarr reported this information to the Circus, expecting they would want to talk to his source. Instead, the KGB picked his source up and smuggled her out of Hong Kong, presumably to her death. Tarr went into hiding, convinced the Circus had a mole. Eventually, when it seemed the KGB had located him, he fled to Britain and made contact.
Mole Hunt
The undersecretary asks Smiley to conduct an unofficial investigation to determine who the mole is—a formal enquiry is impossible, as it would warn the traitor. The suspects are four senior men: Percy Alleline, head of the Circus, and the heads of section: Bill Haydon, Toby Esterhase and Roy Bland.
Smiley sends an operative he trusts to see who in the Circus received the message from Tarr. The page in the communications log is missing, which suggests the mole exists and has access to headquarters.
Smiley reviews the Circus’s key operations, the most important of which, ‘Operation Witchcraft’, provides top-grade intelligence from a highly placed source in Moscow, codenamed ‘Merlin’.
Smiley learns Merlin has told the Circus that Tarr is a KGB provocateur. Smiley confronts Tarr, who convinces him that this is not true. The only alternative is that Merlin and Witchcraft are under KGB control, with disastrous implications for the Circus.
Testify
Next, Smiley reviews Operation Testify, which involved Control sending Jim Pridoux to Czechoslovakia to help a Czech general defect. The mole blew Pridoux’s cover, and the Czechs shot and captured him. They handed him over to the KGB, who interrogated him. Eventually, the KGB released him in a spy swap and his injuries forced him to retire. Piecing the story of Operation Testify together, Smiley becomes convinced that it failed because of the mole.
Smiley tracks Pridoux down at the school where he’s been hiding. Pridoux tells Smiley that Control mounted Operation Testify because the Czech general claimed to know the mole’s identity. Smiley decides that Control fell into a trap set by the Soviets to discredit him and remove the threat to their mole.
Witch Hunt
Smiley meets Toby Esterhase, who knows the location of the safe house where the Witchcraft team meets Merlin. He explains his theory: Merlin is delivering misinformation to the Circus and the Witchcraft meetings are where the mole supplies intelligence to the Soviets…
Convinced [blackout] that Smiley is right, Esterhase tells him the location of the safe house.[/blackout]
Smiley [blackout] sets a trap. Tarr sends Alleline a message saying that he has evidence that Witchcraft is a KGB operation. Alleline alerts the other suspects. Smiley stakes out the safe house, expecting that the mole will want to contact the KGB to warn them. Eventually Haydon appears. Cornered by Smiley, Haydon confesses he is the mole. When asked about his motives, he claims it was anger at Britain kowtowing to the USA.[/blackout]
Smiley [blackout] arranges to trade Hayden for several of the agents he betrayed. But before the swap can take place, someone, probably Pridoux, murders Hayden.[/blackout]
(For more on summarising stories, see How to Write a Novel Synopsis)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Analysis
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has a Mystery plot (see Spy Novel Plots). This structure allows Le Carré to build tension and reveal information as Smiley meticulously investigates his former colleagues, piecing together fragments of information from various sources.
The ‘Mystery’ Plot
The Protagonist:
- Discovers a disaster perpetrated by an unknown Antagonist for unknown reasons (or is assigned to investigate by their Mentor).
- Makes a plan to investigate the tragedy and discover who the Antagonist is.
- Investigates and gathers clues suggesting who the Antagonist is.
- Is impeded by the Antagonist.
- Involves one or more Allies in their investigation (Optionally, there is a romance sub-plot with one of the Allies).
- Attempts to discover further clues to the identity of the Antagonist, dealing with further Allies and Enemies as they meet them.
- Is betrayed by an Ally or the Mentor (optionally).
- Discovers the identity of the Antagonist and the reasons for their actions and any wider plan.
- Is involved in a final confrontation with the Antagonist and stops (or fails to stop) them carrying out their plan.
What Makes Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy So Good?
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy stands out as a masterpiece of spy fiction for multiple reasons. It combines the intrigue of a spy thriller with the depth of literary fiction, offering a richly textured story that operates on multiple levels: as a gripping mystery, a character study and a commentary on human nature.
Unlike many spy thrillers that focus on action, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy delves deep into the psychology of its characters. Their motivations, fears, and moral dilemmas are complex and explored in great detail. It also explores profound themes, like loyalty, betrayal, and the nature of patriotism. These themes give the story great depth .
Le Carré also uses the story to offer a critique of the intelligence community, the Cold War, and Britain’s declining global influence. This social and political commentary elevates the novel beyond its genre.
More than anything, though, it’s simply Le Carré’s prose style: His ability to create atmosphere, develop characters, and build tension through prose is exemplary and in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, he’s at the height of his powers.
Betrayal
The primary theme of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is betrayal. It lurks everywhere in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
- Professional betrayal: The mole betrays the Circus and its agents.
- Personal betrayal:
- Tarr seduces the wife of a KGB agent to get information from her.
- Smiley’s wife, Ann, is a serial adulteress.
- Hayden is one of Ann’s lovers, betraying his friend Smiley, and betraying her as he’s only having the affair to confuse Smiley.
- Hayden betrays his close friend (and implied lover) Pridoux, sending him into a situation where he’s likely to be killed.
- National betrayal: Hayden betrays Britain (and not even for ideological reasons, he has no particular sympathy for communism).
An Unglamorous Business
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy shows espionage as an unglamorous world. There’s barely any sex (though there is a love affair), no car chases, and no shoot-outs. There aren’t even any glamorous foreign locations, except perhaps Hong Kong. Smiley investigates the case in drab safe-houses and run-down steakhouses.
Smiley works out who the mole is not through car chases and gunfights, but by going through the archives, cross-referencing the whereabouts of suspects on particular dates, and relying on his superb memory. He spends his time reading dossiers and searching through the paperwork, looking for anomalies. With that done, he interviews people, interrogating them, not by slapping them around until they ‘break’, but by empathising with them and listening carefully.
This all lends credibility to the story. It feels real, although, as I said in my review of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, le Carré’s novels are only relatively realistic, compared to things like James Bond, not actually realistic.
However, one thing that Le Carré, with his background in real intelligence work, gets right is the fundamental nature of intelligence work. Many espionage novels, and particularly movies, get things back to front, showing identifying and finding the enemy as easy but battling them as hard.
In reality, and in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, it’s identifying the enemy that’s the difficult bit. The search is for the truth. Once the truth is known, the end comes swiftly.
Characters
Smiley is one of the best espionage novel characters ever created, but why? He’s a short, overweight, retirement-aged intellectual, who wears thick glasses. His appearance reminds people of a mole. He’s quiet, polite, unassuming, diffident. He also appears very privileged, with his house in Chelsea worth something like £3 million (at current day prices) and his upper-class wife. Not exactly the stereotype of a sympathetic antagonist.
But his physical appearance and demeanour contrast with his intellect. He uses cunning and manipulation, not violence, to achieve his ends, his primary weapons being his memory, his analytical skills, and his empathy. He’s also fundamentally conflicted, because he’s an ethical man in an immoral world. This makes him a fascinating and sympathetic protagonist.
The supporting characters are also relatable, each with their disparate motivations and flaws, human beings, with human failings. For example, Tarr is a womaniser. Ann, despite loving Smiley, is incapable of being faithful to him. Pridoux, despite being deeply wounded, barely holding himself together even, is kind to the schoolboy he befriends. Le Carré portrays his characters as deeply flawed and human. Even the most skilled spies are subject to personal weaknesses and failures, and Smiley himself recalls his failed attempt to recruit Karla and agonises over his wife’s adultery.
This humanisation of the characters is in stark contrast to less literary works of spy fiction.
Decline and Duty
Le Carré set Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in the Britain of the 1970s, deep in its post-imperial decline and clinging to the glories of the past, in particular World War Two. He swings between nostalgia for a lost world and realism about how far the country has fallen. Characters question why the Soviets are even bothering to infiltrate Britain. The British are trading the Witchcraft information for influence in the USA, and it’s hinted that Karla may be using the Circus as a backdoor into the CIA.
The novel also examines the concepts of loyalty and duty. Smiley, despite having been forced into retirement after Operation Testify, remains loyal to the Circus and his principles. He investigates the mole not for revenge, but because it’s his duty. He knows the Circus has already failed, and identifying the mole will only reduce the damage, not repair it. Still, it’s his duty to resist the depredations of his nemesis, Karla.
The ongoing struggle against the Soviet Union drives the plot, and Smiley regards the Soviet system as evil, but he is also well aware that in fighting them he has to use their tactics and that the moral difference is slim. As he says to Karla, as he fails to recruit him during a flashback:
Don’t you think it’s time to recognise that there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?
Prose Quality
Two quotes that make the case. First minor character, Guillam, Smiley’s bag-man and protégé, describing how he met Toby Esterhase, one of the suspects:
On the day the Berne police hit the villa and Guillam had to hop over the back wall, he found Toby at the Bellevue Hotel munching pâtisseries and watching the thé dansant. He listened to what Guillam had to say, paid his bill, tipped first the band-leader, then Franz the head porter. “If you ever want to get out of Switzerland in a hurry,” thought Guillam, “you pay your bills first.”
Second, this description of Connie Sachs, the Circus’s head of research (retired):
The door opened part way, held on a chain; a body swelled into the opening. Two shrewd eyes, wet like a baby’s, appraised him, noted his briefcase and his spattered shoes, flickered upward to peer past his shoulder down the drive, then once more looked him over. Finally the white face broke into a charming smile, and Miss Connie Sachs, formerly queen of research at the Circus, registered her spontaneous joy.
Prose quality is something that can be hard to pin down. But really, just read any page of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and I think you’ll agree Le Carré is a superb technician.
Reality: Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five
The real Soviet moles in British Intelligence were the Cambridge Five, the most famous of whom was Kim Philby, who the mole in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is loosely based on. Of course, in reality, the Cambridge Five all either escaped or simply got away with their treachery. Although Le Carré never actually met Philby, Philby passed Le Carré’s name to his Russian controllers. Le Carré said that his detestation of Philby’s treachery was an inspiration for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Also, in an ironic twist, real spy agencies have adopted many of Le Carré’s colourful terms for aspects of espionage—for example, the word ‘mole’ for a long-term penetration agent.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Alternative Cover
The inspiration for this one came from the idea that espionage is like a game of chess. I also liked the way the letters of the title fitted in the chessboard’s squares. And the grey square in the centre hints at the way not everything is black and white in the novel.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: My Verdict
The best spy novel ever written. Really.
Related Novels
The Quest for Karla
Le Carré followed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy up with two sequels, making a trilogy known as The Quest for Karla.
The two other novels in the trilogy are The Honourable Schoolboy, in which Smiley tries to put the Circus back together after the revelations of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Smiley’s People, in which he gets a chance for revenge on his nemesis, Karla.
Both are extremely good novels, and while Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the best of the trilogy, each novel expands the story as a metaphor for the Cold War. “Tinker Tailor” shows the West on the defensive. The Honourable Schoolboy shows it fighting back, and Smiley’s People shows it winning, but at the cost of abandoning the principles it was fighting to defend.
A Legacy of Spies
In 2017, Le Carré wrote a sequel to both The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy called A Legacy of Spies. In it, the Circus recalls Peter Guillam, a minor character in the previous novels, to London where he discovers the Circus’s victims are suing over the actions portrayed in the novels. Guillam then spends most of the novel telling the back story of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy from his point of view.
A Legacy of Spies is not a patch on the classic novels, but Le Carré was eighty-six when he wrote it (he died three years later). It’s a shame, because the idea of a now retired member of the Circus being recalled to defend its Cold War actions to an audience with modern sensibilities is a good premise for a novel.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: The TV Series
The BBC filmed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in 1979 with Alec Guinness as George Smiley.
The TV series sticks closely to the novel and centres on a superb central performance from Alec Guinness. Sadly, they gave The Honourable Schoolboy as miss as it’s mostly set in Southeast Asia, and they couldn’t afford to film there, but they did film an adaptation of Smiley’s People, also starring Guinness.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: The Movie
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was filmed in 2011 with Gary Oldman as George Smiley.
Also very good, but obviously compressed compared to the TV series, let alone the novel.
Want to Read or Watch It?
Here’s the movie trailer:
The Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy novel is available on Amazon US here and Amazon UK here.
The Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy TV series is available on Amazon US here and Amazon UK here.
And the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy movie is available on Amazon US here and Amazon UK here.
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