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153-473: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 1974 spy novel by the author and former spy John le Carré . It follows the endeavours of the taciturn, ageing spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service . The novel has received critical acclaim for its complex social commentary —and, at the time, relevance, following the defection of Kim Philby . It

306-463: A Czech operative who served as a legman for Prideaux on the operation, who tells Smiley that Prideaux gave him instructions to leave Czechoslovakia any way he could if Prideaux didn't surface at the rendezvous at the appointed time. Smiley next visits Jerry Westerby, who tells Smiley about the trip to Prague when a young army conscript insisted that the Russians were in the woods waiting for Prideaux

459-632: A double agent , transmitting false intelligence to Imperial Germany on the eve of the Great War. The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) by Baroness Orczy chronicled an English aristocrat 's derring-do in rescuing French aristocrats from the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution (1789–99). But the term "spy novel" was defined by The Riddle of the Sands (1903) by Irish author Erskine Childers . The Riddle of

612-712: A gulag by the Stalinist regime , and reveals that Karla turned down an offer from Smiley in India to defect, even though his return to the USSR in 1955 was to face a likely execution. During his attempt to obtain Karla's defection, Smiley plied him with cigarettes and promises that they could get Karla's family out to the West safely. Smiley suspects that this only revealed his own weakness, his love for his unfaithful wife, Ann. Smiley offered Karla his lighter,

765-474: A "total war" campaign to mobilise society for the war. As part of the "total war" campaign, the state warned people to be vigilant at all times for spies; alongside this campaign went a mania for spy stories, which likewise warned people to be vigilant against spies. Novels and films with a counterespionage theme became ubiquitous in Manchukuo from 1937 onward. Despite the intensely patriarchal values of Manchukuo,

918-564: A MI6 agent's attempts to uncover a mole in apartheid -era South Africa . Greene had worked as a MI6 agent in Freetown, an important British naval base during World War Two, searching for German spies who would radio information about the movements of ships to the Kriegsmarine , experiences which inspired The Heart of the Matter . Greene's case officer during World War Two was Harold "Kim" Philby, who

1071-466: A Mossad spy in Greece. The book was published as a novel, but Roth insisted that the book was not a novel as he argued that the book was presented only as a novel in order to give it deniability. At the end of the book, the character of Philip Roth is ordered to publish the account as a novel, and it ends with Roth the character saying: "And I became quite convinced that it was my interest to do that...I'm just

1224-674: A Pale Horse (1984). Manning Coles published Drink to Yesterday (1940), a grim story occurring during the Great War, which introduces the hero Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon . However, later novels featuring Hambledon were lighter-toned, despite being set either in Nazi Germany or Britain during the Second World War (1939–45). After the War, the Hambledon adventures fell to formula, losing critical and popular interest. The events leading up to

1377-603: A Soviet official stationed at the embassy in London called Polyakov. Shortly after Tarr relayed this to the Circus, Irina was forcibly returned to the Soviet Union, leading Tarr to suspect that the mole was real, and now knew his identity. Tarr went into hiding, resurfacing to contact Guillam. Lacon reasons that neither Smiley nor Guillam can be the mole, due to their respective dismissal and demotion, and so requests that Smiley investigate

1530-598: A Spy (1938), The Mask of Dimitrios (US: A Coffin for Dimitrios , 1939), and Journey into Fear (1940) feature amateurs entangled in espionage. The politics and ideology are secondary to the personal story that involved the hero or heroine. Ambler's Popular Front –period œuvre has a left-wing perspective about the personal consequences of "big picture" politics and ideology, which was notable, given spy fiction's usual right-wing tilt in defence of establishment attitudes. Ambler's early novels Uncommon Danger (1937) and Cause for Alarm (1938), in which NKVD spies help

1683-671: A book later in 1969. In Seventeen Moments of Spring , the story is set in the Great Patriotic War as Isayev goes undercover, using the alias of a Baltic German nobleman Max Otto von Stierlitz to infiltrate the German high command. The plot of Seventeen Moments of Spring takes place in Berlin between January–May 1945 during the last days of the Third Reich as the Red Army advances onto Berlin and

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1836-538: A critique of the philosophy of platonic love which was popular at Charles I 's court. The play was derived from the concept in Plato's Symposium of a person's love for the idea of good, which he considered to lie at the root of all virtue and truth. For a brief period, platonic love was a fashionable subject at the English royal court, especially in the circle around Queen Henrietta Maria , the wife of King Charles I. Platonic love

1989-673: A daring spy. In His Last Bow , Holmes himself acts as a double agent , providing Germany with a lot of false information on the eve of WWI . The major themes of a spy in the lead-up to the First World War were the continuing rivalry between the European colonial powers for dominance in Asia, the growing threat of conflict in Europe, the domestic threat of revolutionaries and anarchists, and historical romance. Kim (1901) by Rudyard Kipling concerns

2142-438: A deeper and more profound emotional connection than friendship. Julie Sondra Decker writes that queerplatonic love often "looks indistinguishable from romance when outside the equation", but should not be "assigned a romantic status if participants say it is not romantic". She also notes that it can also be misread by observers as close friendship in circumstances where overtly romantic gestures are socially expected. For Decker,

2295-704: A detective, Joseph Rouletabille , engages in espionage. After the Russian Revolution (1917) , the quality of spy fiction declined, perhaps because the Bolshevik enemy won the Russian Civil War (1917–23). Thus, the inter-war spy story usually concerns combating the Red Menace, which was perceived as another "clash of civilizations". Spy fiction was dominated by British authors during this period, initially former intelligence officers and agents writing from inside

2448-605: A failed attempt to bomb the Greenwich Observatory in the hope that the revolutionaries will be blamed. Conrad's next novel, Under Western Eyes (1911), follows a reluctant spy sent by the Russian Empire to infiltrate a group of revolutionaries based in Geneva . G. K. Chesterton 's The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) is a metaphysical thriller ostensibly based on the infiltration of an anarchist organisation by detectives, but

2601-700: A fictionalised account of the amateur spy work of four women, including Elizabeth Van Lew , during the American Civil War, is named Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War, after le Carré 's Cold War thriller. Spy novel Commentator William Bendler noted that "Chapter 2 of the Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua might count as the first Spy Story in world literature. (...) Three thousand years before James Bond seduced Pussy Galore and turned her into his ally against Goldfinger ,

2754-565: A field agent; he reprised the role in the sequel The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1987). Other important American authors who became active in spy fiction during this period include Robert Littell , The Defection of A. J. Lewinter (1973); James Grady , Six Days of the Condor (1974); William F. Buckley Jr. , Saving the Queen (1976); Nelson DeMille , The Talbot Odyssey (1984); W. E. B. Griffin ,

2907-514: A form of linguistic relativity . Some modern authors' perception of the terms "virtue" and "good" as they are translated into English from the Symposium are a good indicator of this misunderstanding. In the following quote, the author simplifies the idea of virtue as simply what is "good". "... what is good is beautiful, and what is beautiful is good ..." The Ladder of Love is a metaphor that relates each step toward Being as consecutive rungs of

3060-469: A full day before he was ambushed. Finally, Smiley tracks down Prideaux. Prideaux tells him Control believed there was a mole in the Circus, and had whittled it down to five men, Alleline (Tinker), Haydon (Tailor), Bland (Soldier), Esterhase (Poorman), and Smiley himself (Beggarman), and that his orders were to obtain the identity from a defector in Czech intelligence who knew. He tells Smiley he almost didn't make

3213-405: A full-fledged Soviet spy partly for political reasons, partly in frustration at Britain's rapidly declining influence on the world stage, particularly on account of the failings at Suez . He is expected to be exchanged with the Soviet Union for several of the agents he betrayed, but is killed shortly before he is due to leave England. Although the identity of his killer is not explicitly revealed, it

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3366-570: A good Mossadnik". Platonic friend Platonic love is a type of love in which sexual desire or romantic features are nonexistent or have been suppressed, sublimated , or purgated, but it means more than simple friendship . The term is derived from the name of Greek philosopher Plato , though the philosopher never used the term himself. Platonic love, as devised by Plato, concerns rising through levels of closeness to wisdom and true beauty, from carnal attraction to individual bodies to attraction to souls, and eventually, union with

3519-417: A handful of senior operatives playing operational roles, but admits that this "works very well at moving the story along in print." However, the idea that a major counter-intelligence operation could be run without the knowledge of counter-intelligence professionals, an allusion to Smiley's investigation progressing in an undetected manner, is deemed an "intellectual stretch." John Powers of NPR has called it

3672-562: A ladder. Each step closer to the truth further distances love from beauty of the body toward love that is more focused on wisdom and the essence of beauty. The ladder starts with carnal attraction of body for body, progressing to a love for body and soul. Eventually, in time, with consequent steps up the ladder, the idea of beauty is eventually no longer connected with a body, but entirely united with Being itself. "[...] decent human beings must be gratified, as well as those that are not as yet decent, so that they might become more decent; and

3825-637: A long-haired, hashish -smoking fop in the novels The Dolly Dolly Spy (1967), The Great Spy Race (1968), The Bang Bang Birds (1968) and Think, Inc. (1971); James Mitchell 's 'David Callan' series, written in his own name, beginning with Red File for Callan (1969); William Garner 's John Morpurgo in Think Big, Think Dirty (1983), Rats' Alley (1984), and Zones of Silence (1986); and Joseph Hone 's 'Peter Marlow' series, beginning with The Private Sector (1971), set during Israel's Six-Day War (1967) against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In all of these series

3978-444: A mixed Russian-Han heritage; the implication being that people of "pure" descent from one of the "five races" of Manchukuo would not betray it. In "A Mixed Race Woman", the villain initially appears to Mali, the eponymous character who has a Russian father and a Han mother, but she ultimately is revealed to be blackmailed by the story's true villain, the foreign spy Baoerdun, and she proves to be loyal to Manchukuo after all as she forces

4131-567: A moral human being, who remains sociable and kind to all people, including the citizens of the state that his country is at war with. Unlike Bond, Isayev is devoted to his wife who he deeply loves and despite spending at least ten years as a spy in Germany and having countless chances to sleep with attractive German women remains faithful towards her. Through Isayev is a spy for the NKVD as the Soviet secret police

4284-602: A mortal achieving immortality. In the Middle Ages, new interest in the works of Plato, his philosophy and his view of love became more popular, spurred on by Georgios Gemistos Plethon during the Councils of Ferrara and Firenze in 1438–1439. Later in 1469, Marsilio Ficino put forward a theory of neo-platonic love, in which he defined love as a personal ability of an individual, which guides their soul towards cosmic processes, lofty spiritual goals and heavenly ideas. The first use of

4437-416: A myth." In this sense, Stafford considers Smiley and Haydon to exist as classic foils to each other: Like Philby, [Haydon] betrays his colleagues, his friends, his country, and his class [...] Smiley, on the contrary, lives by loyalty — to his faithless wife, Ann, his subordinates, his colleagues, and his country. In the end, integrity triumphs over corruption. Tom Maddox wrote that Smiley's conflict with

4590-502: A mythologised reimagining of the Philby affair. He noted that, "far from receiving his just desserts," the real-life mole ended up alive and well in Moscow, thanks to the incompetence of his superiors and the wilful ignorance of his colleagues. "That Philby was protected by a conspiracy of class is true enough, but that he was unmasked by a Smiley is not... Tinker Tailor is a fantasy; George Smiley

4743-713: A newspaper correspondent where he met Lansdale who appears in The Quiet American as Alden Pyle while the character of Thomas Fowler, a cynical, but goodhearted British journalist in Saigon was partly based on himself. MI6 was outraged by Our Man In Havana with its story of James Wormold, a British vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba, recruited to work for MI6 who bamboozles his employers by selling them diagrams of vacuum cleaners, which he persuades MI6 are really diagrams of Soviet missiles. MI6 pressed for Greene to be prosecuted for violating

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4896-446: A novel and the TV mini-series that has offended Westerners who are more accustomed to seeing spy stories via the prism of the fast-paced Bond stories is the way that Isayev spends much time interacting with ordinary Germans despite the fact these interactions do nothing to advance the plot and are merely superfluous to the story. However, the point of these scenes are to show that Isayev is still

5049-403: A perception for the colour of human beings: a swift, feminine sensitivity to their characters and motives. He knew mankind as a huntsman knows his cover, as a fox the woods. For a spy must hunt while he is hunted, and the crowd is his estate. He could collect their gestures, record the interplay of glance and movement, as a huntsman can record the twisted bracken and broken twig, or as a fox detects

5202-506: A present from Ann, to light a cigarette, but Karla rose and left with it. Smiley suspects a link between Merlin and the botched Operation Testify. Sam Collins, who was duty officer that night, tells Smiley that Control ordered him to relay the report of the Czech operation only to him, but that when he did so, Control froze up, and that Bill Haydon's sudden arrival was the only reason the hierarchy didn't fall apart that night. Smiley then visits Max,

5355-497: A result of their operation. Smiley tells Guillam that he suspects a Soviet intelligence officer named Karla is linked in some way to the operation, and reveals what he knows about him. Karla is believed to have followed his father into espionage, getting his start during the Spanish Civil War posing as a White Russian émigré in the forces of General Francisco Franco , recruiting foreign, mainly German, operatives. After this

5508-551: A ruthless oligarchy wears the mask of the "serene republic". In nineteenth-century France, the Dreyfus Affair (1894–99) contributed much to public interest in espionage . For some twelve years (ca. 1894–1906), the Affair, which involved elements of international espionage, treason , and antisemitism , dominated French politics. The details were reported by the world press: an Imperial German penetration agent betraying to Germany

5661-510: A spy novel review column. Nevertheless, counting on the aficionado, publishers continued to issue spy novels by writers popular during the Cold War era, among them Harlot's Ghost (1991) by Norman Mailer . In the US, the new novels Moscow Club (1991) by Joseph Finder , Coyote Bird (1993) by Jim DeFelice, Masquerade (1996) by Gayle Lynds , and The Unlikely Spy (1996) by Daniel Silva maintained

5814-569: A thinly disguised version of the CIA while posing as a journalist. Writing under the pen name Trevanian , Roger Whitaker published a series of brutal spy novels starting with The Eiger Sanction (1972) featuring an amoral art collector/CIA assassin who ostensibly kills for the United States, but in fact kills for money. Whitaker followed up The Eiger Sanction with The Loo Sanction (1973) and Shibumi (1979). Starting in 1976 with his novel Saving

5967-434: A tiny scale, at close range" and complained that he has seen too many "people cheated and misled, whole lives thrown away, people shot and in prison, whole groups and classes of men written off for nothing". Le Carré's middle-class hero George Smiley is a middle-aged spy burdened with an unfaithful, upper-class wife who publicly cuckolds him for sport. The American scholars Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen described Smiley as

6120-505: A very low status. One consequence of the French influence on Russian culture was that the subject of espionage was usually ignored by Russian writers during the Imperial period. Traditionally, the subject of espionage was treated in the Soviet Union as a story of villainous foreign spies threatening the USSR. The organisation established to hunt down German spies in 1943, SMERSH, was an acronym for

6273-455: Is Polyakov himself. Smiley suspects that the Circus does not realise the flow of information is going the other way, with the mole "Gerald" passing important British secrets ("gold dust") in return for low-grade Soviet material ("chicken feed"), which would make "Witchcraft" simply a cover for the mole. Smiley also discovers that the log from the night Tarr reported in from Hong Kong has been removed, and Guillam starts to suffer from paranoia as

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6426-401: Is an affectionate relationship into which the sexual element does not enter, especially in cases where one might easily assume otherwise." "Platonic lovers function to underscore a supportive role where the friend sees [their] duty as the provision of advice, encouragement, and comfort to the other person ... and do not entail exclusivity." One of the complications of platonic love lies within

6579-413: Is full of vivid character sketches of secret agents and bureaucrats from all levels of British society, and the dialogue catches their voices well." He praised the novel's realism, calling the detailing of "the day to day activities of the intelligence service at home and abroad" convincing. He noted that the "scale and complexity of this novel are much greater than in any of Le Carré's previous books," while

6732-495: Is going on in the "secret world" of intelligence-gathering affected both non-fiction and fiction books about espionage. The Cold War and the struggle between Soviet intelligence-known as the KGB from 1954 onward-vs. the CIA and MI6 made the subject of espionage a popular one for novelists to write about. Most of the spy novels of the Cold War were really action thrillers with little resemblance to

6885-501: 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. But this fear, this servility, this dependence had developed in Smiley

7038-590: Is presented as the authentic insider-speak of British Intelligence. Le Carré noted that, with the exception of a few terms like mole and legend , this jargon was his own invention. In some cases, terms used in the novel have subsequently entered espionage parlance. For example, the terms mole , implying a long-term spy, and honey trap , implying a ploy in which an attractive person lures another into revealing information, were first introduced in this novel, and have only subsequently entered general usage. The television adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy also uses

7191-632: Is set against a theme of decline in British influence on the world stage after the Second World War, with the USSR and the USA emerging as the dominant superpowers during the Cold War . Mark Fisher said the notion of "postcolonial melancholia" hangs over the novel, arguing that both the protagonists and antagonists are motivated by what they see as Britain's "irreversible decline." These themes are particularly found in

7344-459: Is strongly implied to be Prideaux, due to the method of execution echoing the way he euthanises an injured owl earlier in the book, Prideaux's implied threat to execute a driver in Czechoslovakia in the same way that Haydon is killed, and a sense Smiley has of someone with Prideaux's background observing some of his later interrogations. Smiley is appointed temporary head of the Circus to deal with

7497-415: Is the speech of Socrates , who attributes to the prophet Diotima an idea of platonic love as a means of ascent to contemplation of the divine, an ascent known as the "Ladder of Love". For Diotima and Plato generally, the most correct use of love of human beings is to direct one's mind to love of divinity . Socrates defines love based on separate classifications of pregnancy (to bear offspring); pregnancy of

7650-439: Is usually considered the first American modern (glamour and dirt) spy thriller weighing action and reflection. Richard Helms , the director-general of the CIA from 1966 to 1973 loathed le Carré's morally grey spy novels, which he felt damaged the image of the CIA, and encouraged Hunt to write spy novels as a rebuttal. Helms had hopes that Hunt might write an "American James Bond" novel, which would be adopted by Hollywood and do for

7803-550: The Men at War series (1984–); Stephen Coonts , Flight of the Intruder (1986); Canadian-American author David Morrell , The League of Night and Fog (1987); David Hagberg , Without Honor (1989); Noel Hynd, False Flags (1990); and Richard Ferguson, Oiorpata (1990). The culture of Imperial Russia was deeply influenced by the culture of France, and traditionally spy novels in France had

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7956-576: The Anglo – Russian " Great Game ", which consisted of a geopolitical rivalry and strategic warfare for supremacy in Central Asia , usually in Afghanistan . The Secret Agent (1907) by Joseph Conrad examines the psychology and ideology motivating the socially marginal men and women of a revolutionary cell. A diplomat from an unnamed (but clearly Russian) embassy forces a double-agent, Verloc, to organise

8109-516: The USSR , masterminding the Witchcraft/Source Merlin operations supporting the mole Gerald in the Circus. Karla possesses a cigarette lighter given to Smiley by his wife, which he took during Smiley's interrogation of him. In a review for The New York Times written upon the novel's release in 1974, critic Richard Locke called Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy "fluently written," noting that "it

8262-450: The civil servant who oversees the Circus. There they meet Ricki Tarr, an agent recently declared persona non grata due to suspicion of having defected. Tarr defends himself by explaining that he was informed of a Soviet mole at the highest level of the Circus – codenamed Gerald – by Irina, the wife of a trade delegate, while in Hong Kong . Irina claimed that the mole, Gerald, reports to

8415-502: The "characterisation too has become much richer." An article published in in-house Central Intelligence Agency journal Studies in Intelligence , presumably written by agents under pseudonyms, called it "one of the most enduring renderings of the profession". It does question the "organisational compression" involved in the form of a large organisation, which the SIS would be, being reduced to

8568-495: The "mole" Esterhase, and in fact remains Karla's agent. Tarr is sent to Paris, where he passes a coded message to Alleline about "information crucial to the well-being of the Service". This triggers an emergency meeting between Gerald and Polyakov at the safe house, where Smiley and Guillam are lying in wait. Haydon is revealed to be the mole, and his interrogation reveals that he had been recruited several decades ago by Karla and became

8721-554: The "secrets" that he was selling them was merely information culled from the newspapers. The bumbling vacuum cleaner salesman Wormold in Our Man in Havana seems to been inspired by Herbert Greene. In The Human Factor , Greene portrayed MI6 again in a highly unsympathetic light, depicting the British government as supporting the apartheid regime of South Africa because it was pro-Western while

8874-412: The 1950s and early 1960s. Senior SIS officer Kim Philby's defection to the USSR in 1963, and the consequent compromising of British agents, was a factor in the 1964 termination of Cornwell's intelligence career. Le Carré also drew from the paranoid atmosphere created by CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton , who after Philby's defection became convinced that there were other moles operating at

9027-451: The 1950s, inspired an even more popular series of films starting in 1962. The success of the Bond novels and films has greatly influenced popular images of the work of spies even though the character of Bond is more of an assassin than a spy. Despite the commercial success of Fleming's extravagant novels, John le Carré , himself a former spy, created anti-heroic protagonists who struggled with

9180-906: The Anglo–American theft of a superior Soviet jet aeroplane. Other important British writers who first became active in spy fiction during this period include Ian Mackintosh , A Slaying in September (1967); Kenneth Benton , Twenty-fourth Level (1969); Desmond Bagley , Running Blind (1970); Anthony Price , The Labyrinth Makers (1971); Gerald Seymour , Harry's Game (1975); Brian Freemantle , Charlie M (1977); Bryan Forbes , Familiar Strangers (1979); Reginald Hill , The Spy's Wife (1980); and Raymond Harold Sawkins , writing as Colin Forbes, Double Jeopardy (1982). Philip Gooden provides an analysis of British spy fiction in four categories: professionals, amateurs, dandies and literary types. During

9333-536: The Brain (1933) by former intelligence officer Compton Mackenzie was the first successful spy novel satire . Prolific author Dennis Wheatley also wrote his first spy novel, The Eunuch of Stamboul (1935) during this period. In the sham state of Manchukuo , spies often featured in stories published in its government-sponsored magazines as villains threatening Manchukuo. Manchukuo had been presented since its founding in 1931 as an idealistic Pan-Asian experiment, where

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9486-458: The British ruling class itself, which has become directionless and self-seeking. Central to the novel is the theme of betrayal. Melvyn Bragg wrote that le Carré sought to illustrate that "the public or institutional default is always more excusable than the personal betrayal of faith." Haydon's betrayal of the Circus to Karla comes as a reaction to a postwar world that "[deprived] him of the Empire he

9639-425: The Cheka. The frequent name changes for the secret police made no impression with the Russian people who still call any secret policeman a Chekisty . Semichastny felt that the legacy of the Yezhovshchina ("Yezhovz times") of 1936-1939 had given the KGB a fearsome reputation that he wanted to erase as wanted ordinary people to have a more favorable and positive image of the Chekisty as the protectors and defenders of

9792-431: The Christmas party scene as the older man in the grey suit who stands suddenly to sing the Soviet anthem. The film received numerous Academy Award nominations, including a nomination for Best Actor for Gary Oldman for his role as George Smiley. The film also stars Colin Firth as Bill Haydon, Benedict Cumberbatch as Peter Guillam, Tom Hardy as Ricki Tarr, and Mark Strong as Jim Prideaux. Karen Abbott 's 2015 novel,

9945-415: The Circus lost track of Karla, but he resurfaced during Operation Barbarossa , directing partisan operations behind German lines. Smiley explains his belief that somewhere in the gap between these two conflicts, Karla travelled to England and recruited Gerald. Smiley points out that Karla is fiercely loyal to both the Soviet Union and communism, highlighting Karla's current rank despite his internment in

10098-450: The Circus, past and present, represents the idealistic virtues of the Second World War that are "at odds" with the inhumanity, sophistry, and careerism of the spying profession. "The secret service seeks to dispense with that humanity, the consensus on high being that humane virtues have outlasted whatever limited usefulness they might have had. So Smiley comes and goes, comes and goes." Fisher noted Smiley's characterisation as an outsider to

10251-457: The FBI was as "coolly efficient super-cop" who always successful in performing his duties. The FBI director, J.E. Hoover , had long cultivated the American press and Hollywood to promote a favorable image of the FBI. In 1955, Edward S. Aarons began publishing the Sam Durell CIA "Assignment" series, which began with Assignment to Disaster (1955). Donald Hamilton published Death of a Citizen (1960) and The Wrecking Crew (1960), beginning

10404-422: The Ladder of Love, they would essentially transcend the body and rise to immortality—gaining direct access to Being. Such a form of love is impossible for a mortal to achieve. What Plato describes as "pregnancy of the body" is entirely carnal and seeks pleasure and beauty in bodily form only. This is the type of love, that, according to Socrates, is practiced by animals. "Now, if both these portraits of love,

10557-414: The Nazis grew more desperate. In 1973, Semnadtsat' mgnoveniy vesny was turned into a television mini-series, which was extremely popular in the Soviet Union and turned the Isayev character into a cultural phenomena. The Isayev character plays a role in Russian culture, even today, that is analogous to the role James Bond plays in modern British culture. As aspect of Seventeen Moments of Spring , both as

10710-421: The Official Secrets Act, claiming that he revealed too much about MI6's methods in Our Man in Havana , but it decided against charging Greene out of the fear that prosecuting him would suggest the unflattening picture of MI6 in Our Man in Havana was based on reality. Greene's older brother, Herbert, a professional con-man had briefly worked as a spy for the Japanese in the 1930s before his employers realised that

10863-441: The Palestinians, against the backdrop of continuing Cold War tensions, and the increasing use of terrorism as a political tool. The end of the Cold War in 1991 mooted the USSR , Russia and other Iron Curtain countries as credible enemies of democracy, and the US Congress even considered disestablishing the CIA . Espionage novelists found themselves at a temporary loss for obvious nemeses . The New York Times ceased publishing

11016-489: The Queen , the conservative American journalist and former CIA agent William F. Buckley published the first of his Blackford Oakes novels featuring a CIA agent whose politics were the same as the author's. Blackford Oakes was portrayed as a "sort of an American James Bond" who ruthlessly dispatches villainous KGB agents with much aplomb. The first American techno-thriller was The Hunt for Red October (1984) by Tom Clancy . It introduced CIA deskman (analyst) Jack Ryan as

11169-611: The Sands described two British yachtsman cruising off the North Sea coast of Germany who turned amateur spies when they discover a secret German plan to invade Britain. Its success created a market for the invasion literature subgenre, which was flooded by imitators. William Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim became the most widely read and most successful British writers of spy fiction, especially of invasion literature. Their prosaic style and formulaic stories, produced voluminously from 1900 to 1914, proved of low literary merit . During

11322-710: The Second World War, and the War itself, continue to be fertile ground for authors of spy fiction. Notable examples include Ken Follett , Eye of the Needle (1978); Alan Furst , Night Soldiers (1988); and David Downing , the Station series, beginning with Zoo Station (2007). The metamorphosis of the Second World War (1939–45) into the Soviet–American Cold War (1945–91) gave new impetus to spy novelists. Atomsk by Paul Linebarger (later known as Cordwainer Smith ), written in 1948 and published in 1949, appears to be

11475-429: The Soviet Union instead of torturers and killers. As such, Semichastny encouraged the publication of a series of spy novels that featured heroic Chekisty defending the Soviet Union. It was also during Semichastny's time as KGB chairman that the cult of the "hero spies" began in the Soviet Union as publications lionised the achievements of Soviet spies such as Colonel Rudolf Abel, Harold "Kim" Philby, Richard Sorge and of

11628-586: The Soviet writer Yulian Semyonov published a novel set in the Russian Civil War featuring a Cheka agent Maxim Maximovich Isaуev as its hero. Inspired by its success, the KGB encouraged Semyonov to write a sequel, Semnadtsat' mgnoveniy vesny ("Seventeen Moments of Spring"), which proved to one of the most popular Soviet spy novels when it was serialized in Pravda in January–February 1969 and then published as

11781-507: The United States, where the achievements of Anglo-American intelligence during the Second World War were to a certain extent publicized soon after the war such as the fact that the Americans had broken the Japanese naval codes (which came out in 1946) and the British deception operation of 1943, Operation Mincemeat (which was revealed in 1953), there was nothing equivalent in the Soviet Union until

11934-433: The War, John Buchan became the pre-eminent British spy novelist. His well-written stories portray the Great War as a "clash of civilisations" between Western civilization and barbarism . His notable novels are The Thirty-nine Steps (1915), Greenmantle (1916) and sequels, all featuring the heroic Scotsman Richard Hannay . In France Gaston Leroux published the spy thriller Rouletabille chez Krupp (1917), in which

12087-477: The Western powers were betraying their values by supporting the white supremacist South African government. Much controversy ensued when shortly after the publication of The Human Factor it emerged that such a plan had in fact been carried out, which led to much speculation about whether this was a coincidence or whether Greene had more access to secret information than he let on. There was also much speculation that

12240-463: The actual work of spies. The writer Malcolm Muggeridge who had worked as a spy in World War Two commented that thriller writers in the Cold War took to writing about espionage "as easily as the mentally unstable become psychiatrists or the impotent pornographers". The city that was considered to be the "capital of the Cold War" was Berlin, owing to its post-war status as the city was divided between

12393-436: The affairs the Circus, representing an archetypical Englishness that is both "stolid" and "voyeuristic". Fisher likens Smiley in the novel to both King Arthur — a "perpetually cuckolded" figure "returning to save his ailing kingdom" — as well as T. S. Eliot 's figure of J. Alfred Prufrock , who is at once self-conscious and "pathologically self-blinding" to his weaknesses. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy employs spy jargon that

12546-527: The amateur protagonist survive, are especially remarkable among English-language spy fiction. Above Suspicion (1939) by Helen MacInnes , about an anti-Nazi husband and wife spy team, features literate writing and fast-paced, intricate, and suspenseful stories occurring against contemporary historical backgrounds. MacInnes wrote many other spy novels in the course of a long career, including Assignment in Brittany (1942), Decision at Delphi (1961), and Ride

12699-468: The body, pregnancy of the soul, and direct connection to existence. Pregnancy of the body results in human children. Pregnancy of the soul, the next step in the process, produces " virtue "—which is the soul (truth) translating itself into material form. "... virtue for the Greeks means self-sameness ... in Plato's terms, Being or idea."(106) Pausanias, in Plato's Symposium (181b–182a), defines two types of

12852-470: The book's protagonist, the MI6 officer Maurice Castle, married to a black South African woman, provides information to the KGB to thwart MI6 operations. Much of the plot of The Human Factor concerned a secret plan by the British, American and West German governments to buy up South African gold in bulk in order to stabilise the economy of South Africa , which Greene presented as fundamentally amoral, arguing that

13005-443: The carnal limitation of human beings to the pregnancy of the body to be a form of tragedy, as it separates someone from the pursuit of truth. One would be forever limited to beauty of the body, never being able to access the true essence of beauty. Diotima considers the idea of a mortal having direct access to Being to be a comic situation simply because of the impossibility of it. The offspring of true virtue would essentially lead to

13158-401: The character of Bill Haydon, who is modelled off the upper-class double agent Kim Philby. After his unmasking and capture, Haydon voices both a latent hostility towards the United States and a mourning of Britain's lack of "relevance or moral viability in world affairs." The novel is emblematic of a British "rottenness," according to critic David Monaghan, and le Carré locates it with a failure of

13311-734: The character of Maurice Castle was inspired by Philby, but Greene consistently denied this. Other novelists followed a similar path. Len Deighton 's anonymous spy protagonist of The IPCRESS File (1962), Horse Under Water (1963), Funeral in Berlin (1964), and others, is a working-class man with a negative view of " the Establishment ". Other notable examples of espionage fiction during this period were also built around recurring characters. These include James Mitchell 's 'John Craig' series, written under his pseudonym 'James Munro', beginning with The Man Who Sold Death (1964); and Trevor Dudley-Smith 's Quiller spy novel series written under

13464-603: 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. When Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was published in 1974, revelations exposing

13617-487: The counter-spy campaign targeted women who were encouraged to report anyone suspicious to the police with one slogan saying, "Women defend inside and men defend outside". The spy stories of Manchukuo such as "A Mixed Race Woman" often had female protagonists. In "A Mixed Race Woman", it is two ordinary women who break up the spy ring instead of the Manchukuo police as might be expected. The South Korean scholar Bong InYoung noted stories such as "A Mixed Race Woman" were part of

13770-421: The dismissal of Control , Smiley, and allies such as Connie Sachs and Jerry Westerby , and their replacement by a new guard consisting of Percy Alleline, Toby Esterhase , Bill Haydon , and Roy Bland. Control has since died, and Smiley's former protégé, Peter Guillam , has been demoted to the " scalphunters ". Guillam unexpectedly approaches Smiley and takes him to the house of Under-Secretary Oliver Lacon,

13923-678: The early 1960s. Soviet novels prior to the 1960s to the extent that espionage was portrayed at all concerned heroic scouts in the Red Army who during the Great Patriotic War as the war with Germany is known in the Soviet Union who go on dangerous missions deep behind the Wehrmacht's lines to find crucial information. The scout stories were more action-adventure stories than espionage stories proper and significantly always portrayed Red Army scouts rather than Chekisty ("Chekists") as secret policemen are always called in Russia as their heroes. The protagonists of

14076-431: The ethical issues involved in espionage and sometimes resorted to immoral tactics. Le Carré depicted spies as living a morally grey world having to constantly make morally dubious decisions in an essentially amoral struggle where lies, paranoia and betrayal are the norm for both sides. In le Carré best known novel, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1963), the hero Alec Leamas views himself as serving in "...a war fought on

14229-555: The failure of an operation codenamed Testify in Czechoslovakia which ended in the capture and torture of agent Jim Prideaux . Control , chief of the Circus, had suspected that one of the five senior intelligence officers at the Circus was a Soviet mole, and had assigned them code names for Prideaux to relay back to the Circus, derived from the English children's rhyme " Tinker, Tailor ": Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief. The failure resulted in

14382-435: The fallout, and is still head at the start of the second book of The Karla Trilogy , The Honourable Schoolboy . 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 fictionalised intelligence agency of "the Circus." Two of

14535-428: The fictional spy most likely to be successful as a real spy, citing le Carré's description of him in A Murder of Quality : "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

14688-480: The film ended with disillusioned British spy Alec Leamas and his lover, the naïve young woman Liz Gold being shot down while trying to cross the Berlin Wall from East Berlin into West Berlin. With Secret Ministry (1951), Desmond Cory introduced Johnny Fedora , the secret agent with a licence to kill , the government-sanctioned assassin . Ian Fleming , a former member of naval intelligence, followed swiftly with

14841-408: The first espionage novel of the dawning conflict. The "secret world" of espionage allowed a situation when writers could project anything they wanted onto the "secret world". The author Bruce Page complained in his 1969 book The Philby Conspiracy : "The trouble is that a man can hold almost any theory he cares to about the secret world, and defend it against large quantities of hostile evidence by

14994-642: The glamorous James Bond , secret agent 007 of the British Secret Service, a mixture of counter-intelligence officer, assassin and playboy. Perhaps the most famous fictional spy, Bond was introduced in Casino Royale (1953). After Fleming's death the franchise continued under other British and American authors, including Kingsley Amis , Christopher Wood , John Gardner , Raymond Benson , Sebastian Faulks , Jeffery Deaver , William Boyd and Anthony Horowitz . The Bond novels, which were extremely popular in

15147-570: The greatest spy story ever told, noting that it "offers the seductive fantasy of entering a secret world, one imagined with alluring richness." Le Carré himself considered the novel to be among his best works. A TV adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was made by the BBC in 1979. It is a seven-part serial and was released in September of that year. The series was directed by John Irvin , produced by Jonathan Powell , and stars Alec Guinness as George Smiley, with Ian Richardson as Bill Haydon. Ricki Tarr

15300-401: The gun out of Baoerdun's hand at the story's climax. However, Ding's story also states that Baoerdun would not dare to have attempted his blackmail scheme against a Han woman and that he targeted Mali because she was racially mixed and hence "weak". When Japan invaded China in 1937 and even more so in 1941, the level of repression and propaganda in Manchukuo was increased as the state launched

15453-418: The highest levels of Western intelligence agencies. The title alludes to the nursery rhyme and counting game Tinker Tailor . "It's scarce wonder that Smiley has become almost as legendary a figure as [Kim] Philby, for Tinker, Tailor with all its outward verisimilitude, constructs a potent and appealing myth for the class-ridden and post-imperial angst of Britain in the 1970s." Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

15606-487: The image of the CIA what Fleming's Bond novels did for the image of MI6. In the 1970s, former CIA man Charles McCarry began the Paul Christopher series with The Miernik Dossier (1973) and The Tears of Autumn (1978), which were well written, with believable tradecraft. McCarry was a former CIA agent who worked as an editor for National Geographic and his hero Christopher likewise is an American spy who works for

15759-472: The local concerns in order to defeat the Communists until the modernization process was completed. The Nick Carter-Killmaster series of spy novels, initiated by Michael Avallone and Valerie Moolman, but authored anonymously, ran to over 260 separate books between 1964 and the early 1990s and invariably pitted American, Soviet and Chinese spies against each other. With the proliferation of male protagonists in

15912-402: The love known as "Eros": vulgar Eros, or earthly love, and divine Eros, or divine love . Pausanias defines vulgar Eros as material attraction towards a person's beauty for the purposes of physical pleasure and reproduction, and divine Eros as starting from physical attraction but transcending gradually to love for supreme beauty, placed on a similar level to the divine. This concept of divine Eros

16065-409: The love of the decent must be preserved." (187d, 17) - Eryximachus' "completion" of Pausanias' speech on Eros Plato's Symposium defines two extremes in the process of platonic love; the entirely carnal and the entirely ethereal. These two extremes of love are seen by the Greeks in terms of tragedy and comedy. According to Diotima in her discussion with Socrates, for anyone to achieve the final rung in

16218-569: The men and women who served in the Rote Kapelle spy network. Seeing the great popularity of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels in Britain and the United States, Soviet spy novels of the 1960s used the Bond novels as inspiration for both their plots and heroes, through Soviet prurience about sex ensured that the Chekisty heroes did not engage in the sort of womanising that Bond did. The first Bond-style novel

16371-583: The modern sense of platonic love is considered to be by Ficino in one of his letters. Though Plato's discussions of love originally centered on relationships which were sexual between members of the same sex, scholar Todd Reeser studies how the meaning of platonic love in Plato's original sense underwent a transformation during the Renaissance , leading to the contemporary sense of nonsexual heterosexual love. The English term "platonic" dates back to William Davenant 's The Platonick Lovers , performed in 1635,

16524-460: The mole. Smiley confronts Toby Esterhase, stating that he is aware that Esterhase has been posing as a Russian mole, with Polyakov as his handler, in order to provide cover for Merlin's emissary Polyakov. Smiley compels Esterhase into revealing the location of the safe house, through making him realise that not only is there a real Soviet mole embedded in the SIS, but also that Polyakov has not been "turned" to work in British interest pretending to run

16677-673: The nickname to gain greater credibility for his books. The part of Moscow Centre most often referred to in Le Carré's novels is the fictional Thirteenth Directorate headed by Karla , the code name for a case officer who has risen and fallen from political favour several times and was at one point "blown" by the British in the 1950s. Karla and George Smiley meet while Karla is in prison in Delhi, with Smiley trying to persuade Karla to defect during an interrogation in which Karla gives nothing away. Karla refuses these advances and eventually returns to favour in

16830-424: The novel La Mal Jaune (1965) by the French writer Jean Lartéguy . The Ugly American was written as a rebuttal to The Quiet American under which the idealistic Colonel Barnum operating in the fictional Vietnam-like Southeast Asian nation of Sarkhan shows the way to defeat Communist guerillas by understanding local people in just the same way that Lansdale with his understanding and sympathy for ordinary Filipinos

16983-479: The novel was included on the " Big Jubilee Read " list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II . As the tension of the Cold War is peaking in 1973, George Smiley , former senior official in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (known as "the Circus" because its London office is at Cambridge Circus ), is living unhappily in forced retirement, following

17136-408: The officially designated "five races" of the Japanese, Han Chinese, Manchus, Koreans and Mongols had come together to build a utopian society. Manchukuo also had a substantial Russian minority who initially been considered as the "sixth race", but had been excluded. The spy stories of Manchukuo such as "A Mixed Race Woman" by the writer Ding Na often linked the willingness to serve as spies with having

17289-471: The other can never be possessed without being annihilated in its status as the other, at which point both desire and transcendence would cease ... (84) In the Symposium , Eros is discussed as a Greek god—more specifically, the king of the gods, with each guest of the party giving a eulogy in praise of Eros. Virtue, according to Greek philosophy , is the concept of how closely reality and material form equates good, positive, or benevolent. This can be seen as

17442-514: The persistence of the use of the title itself "platonic love" versus the use of "friend". It is the use of the word love that directs us towards a deeper relationship than the scope of a normal friendship . Some in the aromantic and asexual communities, within the broader LGBT community , have coined the term "queerplatonic" to refer to formal intimate relationships between significant others that do not involve romance. Queerplatonic feelings are often described, like romance, as involving

17595-466: The presence of Soviet double agents in Britain were still fresh in public memory. Guy Burgess , Donald Maclean , and Kim Philby , later known as members of the Cambridge Five , had been exposed as KGB spies. The five had risen to very senior positions in the British diplomatic service. John le Carré, whose real name was David Cornwell, worked as an intelligence officer for MI5 and MI6 (SIS) in

17748-598: The presence of the mole in total secrecy to avoid another PR scandal for both the Government and the Circus. Smiley cautiously agrees, and forms a team consisting of himself, Guillam, Tarr, and retired Scotland Yard Inspector Mendel. Smiley is also given access to Circus documents, and begins by examining Alleline's restructuring, discovering the ousting of Jerry Westerby and Connie Sachs, as well as slush fund payments to Jim Prideaux. Smiley visits Sachs, discovering that she confronted Alleline about her discovery that Polyakov

17901-1065: The pseudonym 'Adam Hall', beginning with The Berlin Memorandum (US: The Quiller Memorandum , 1965), a hybrid of glamour and dirt, Fleming and Le Carré; and William Garner 's fantastic Michael Jagger in Overkill (1966), The Deep, Deep Freeze (1968), The Us or Them War (1969) and A Big Enough Wreath (1974). Other important British writers who first became active in spy fiction during this period include Padraig Manning O'Brine , Killers Must Eat (1951); Michael Gilbert , Be Shot for Sixpence (1956); Alistair MacLean , The Last Frontier (1959); Brian Cleeve , Assignment to Vengeance (1961); Jack Higgins , The Testament of Caspar Schulz (1962); and Desmond Skirrow , It Won't Get You Anywhere (1966). Dennis Wheatley 's 'Gregory Sallust' (1934-1968) and 'Roger Brook' (1947-1974) series were also largely written during this period. Notable recurring characters from this era include Adam Diment 's Philip McAlpine as

18054-462: The real-life experiences of his creator"'. John Le Carré described Ashenden stories as a major influence on his novels as praised Maugham as "the first person to write anything about espionage in a mood of disenchantment and almost prosaic reality". At a more popular level, Leslie Charteris ' popular and long-running Saint series began, featuring Simon Templar, with Meet the Tiger (1928). Water on

18207-459: The rendezvous with Max because he noticed he was being tailed, and that when he arrived to meet the defector, he was ambushed, taking two bullets to his right shoulder. During his captivity, both Polyakov and Karla interrogated him, focusing solely on the extent and status of Control's investigation. Prideaux suggests that the Czech defector was a plant, contrived by Karla to engineer Control's downfall through Testify's failure, all conceived to protect

18360-491: The scout stories always almost ended being killed at the climax of the stories, giving up their lives up to save the Motherland from the German invaders. In November 1961, Vladimir Semichastny became the chairman of the KGB and sent out to improve the image of the Chekisty . The acronym KGB ( Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti -Committee of State Security) was adopted in 1954, but the organisation had been founded in 1917 as

18513-690: The secrets of the General Staff of the French Army ; the French counter-intelligence riposte of sending a charwoman to rifle the trash in the German Embassy in Paris, were news that inspired successful spy fiction. At least two Sherlock Holmes stories have clear espionage themes. In The Adventure of the Naval Treaty , Holmes recovers the text of a secret Naval Treaty between Britain and Italy, stolen by

18666-706: The series featuring Matt Helm , a CIA assassin and counter-intelligence agent. Major General Edward Lansdale , a charismatic intelligence officer who was widely credited with having masterminded the defeat of the Communist Huk rebellion in the Philippines inspired several fictional versions of himself. Besides for The Quiet American , he appeared as Colonel Edwin Barnum in The Ugly American (1958) by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick and as Colonel Lionel Teryman in

18819-559: The signs of danger". Like Le Carré, former British Intelligence officer Graham Greene also examined the morality of espionage in left-wing, anti-imperialist novels such as The Heart of the Matter (1948), set in Sierra Leone , the seriocomic Our Man in Havana (1959) occurring in Cuba under the regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista before his deposition in the Cuban Revolution (1953–59), and The Human Factor (1978) about

18972-465: The simple expedient of retreating behind further and further screens of postulated inward mystery. Secret services have in common with Freemasons and mafiosi that they inhabit an intellectual twilight-a kind of ambiguous gloom in which it is hard to distinguish with certainty between the menacing and the merely ludicrous. In such circumstances the human affinity for myth and legend easily gets out of control". This inability to know for certain about what

19125-449: The spies sent by General Joshua into the city of Jericho did much the same with Rahab the Harlot. " Spy fiction as a genre started to emerge during the 19th Century. Early examples of the espionage novel are The Spy (1821) and The Bravo (1831), by American novelist James Fenimore Cooper . The Bravo attacks European anti- republicanism , by depicting Venice as a city-state where

19278-476: The spy fiction genre, writers and book packagers also started bringing out spy fiction with a female as the protagonist. One notable spy series is The Baroness , featuring a sexy female superspy, with the novels being more action-oriented, in the mould of Nick Carter-Killmaster. Other important American authors who became active in spy fiction during this period include Ross Thomas , The Cold War Swap (1966). The Scarlatti Inheritance (1971) by Robert Ludlum

19431-512: The spy novel in the post– Cold War world. Other important American authors who first became active in spy fiction during this period include David Ignatius , Agents of Innocence (1997); David Baldacci , Saving Faith (1999); and Vince Flynn , with Term Limits (1999) and a series of novels featuring counter-terrorism expert Mitch Rapp. In 1993, the American novelist Philip Roth published Operation Shylock , an account of his supposed work as

19584-458: The state's campaign to take over "...the governance of private and family life, relying on the power of propaganda literature and the nationwide mobilization of the social discourse of counterespionage". At the same time, she noted "A Mixed Race Woman" with its intelligent female protagonists seemed to challenge the patriarchal values of Manchukuo which portrayed women as the weaker sex in need of male protection and guidance. However, Bong noted that

19737-532: The story is actually a vehicle for exploring society's power structures and the nature of suffering. The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes , created by Arthur Conan Doyle , served as a SpyHunter for the British government in the stories " The Adventure of the Second Stain " (1904), and " The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans " (1912). In " His Last Bow " (1917), he served Crown and country as

19890-455: The television adaptation. In 2009, BBC Radio 4 also broadcast new dramatisations, by Shaun McKenna , of the eight George Smiley novels by John le Carré, featuring Simon Russell Beale as Smiley. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was broadcast as three one-hour episodes, from Sunday 29 November to Sunday 13 December 2009, in BBC Radio 4's Classic Serial slot. The producer was Steven Canny . The series

20043-464: The term "burrower" for a researcher recruited from a university, a term taken from the novel's immediate sequel The Honourable Schoolboy . Moscow Centre is a nickname used by John le Carré for the Moscow central headquarters of the KGB , especially those departments concerned with foreign espionage and counterintelligence . It arises from use by Soviet officers themselves, and Le Carré likely just used

20196-580: The trade. Examples include Ashenden: Or the British Agent (1928) by W. Somerset Maugham , which accurately portrays spying in the First World War, and The Mystery of Tunnel 51 (1928) by Alexander Wilson whose novels convey an uncanny portrait of the first head of the Secret Intelligence Service , Mansfield Smith-Cumming , the original 'C'. In the book Literary Agents (1987), Anthony Masters wrote: "Ashenden's adventures come nearest to

20349-422: The tragic and the comic, are exaggerations, then we could say that the genuine portrayal of Platonic love is the one that lies between them. The love described as the one practiced by those who are pregnant according to the soul, who partake of both the realm of beings and the realm of Being, who grasp Being indirectly, through the mediation of beings, would be a love that Socrates could practice." Diotima considers

20502-471: The true heroine of "A Mixed Race Woman", Shulan is presented as superior to Mali as she is Han and the story is one "...of female disempowerment in that Mali is completely subordinate to the racial order Shulan sets". The growing support of fascism in Germany, Italy and Spain , and the imminence of war, attracted quality writers back to spy fiction. British author Eric Ambler brought a new realism to spy fiction. The Dark Frontier (1936), Epitaph for

20655-541: The truth. Platonic love is contrasted with romantic love . Platonic love is examined in Plato's dialogue, the Symposium , which has as its topic the subject of love, or more generally the subject of Eros . It explains the possibilities of how the feeling of love began and how it has evolved, both sexually and non-sexually, and defines genuine platonic love as inspiring a person's mind and soul and directing their attention towards spiritual matters. Of particular importance

20808-411: The two German states while Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States all had occupations zones in Berlin. As a result, Berlin was a beehive of espionage during the Cold War with the city full of American, British, East German, French, Soviet and West German spies; it was estimated that there was an average of about 8,000 spies in Berlin at any given moment during the Cold War. Because Berlin

20961-563: The war E. Howard Hunt wrote his first spy novel, East of Farewell (1943). In 1949 he joined the recently created CIA and continued to write spy fiction for many years. Paul Linebarger , a China specialist for the CIA, published Atomsk , the first novel of the Cold War, in 1949. During the 1950s, most of American spy stories were not about the CIA, instead being about agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who tracked down and arrested Soviet spies. The popular American image of

21114-444: The wartime slogan Smert shpionam! ("Death to Spies!"), which reflected the picture promoted by the Soviet state of spies as a class of people who deserved to be killed without mercy. The unfavorable picture of spies ensured that before the early 1960s there were no novels featuring Soviet spies as the heroes as espionage was portrayed as a disreputable activity that only the enemies of the Soviet Union engaged in. Unlike in Britain and

21267-486: The writing is literary and the tradecraft believable. Noteworthy examples of the journalistic style and successful integration of fictional characters with historical events were the politico-military novels The Day of the Jackal (1971) by Frederick Forsyth and Eye of the Needle (1978) by Ken Follett . With the explosion of technology, Craig Thomas , launched the techno-thriller with Firefox (1977), describing

21420-630: Was The Zakhov Mission (1963) by the Bulgarian writer Andrei Gulyashki who had commissioned by Semichastny and was published simultaneously in Russian and Bulgarian. The success of The Zakhov Mission led to a follow-up novel, Zakhov vs. 007 , where Gulyashki freely violated English copyright laws by using the James Bond character without the permission of the Fleming estate (he had asked for permission in 1966 and

21573-411: Was a center of espionage, the city was frequently a setting for spy novels and films. Furthermore, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 made the wall into a symbol of Communist tyranny, which further increased the attraction for Western writers of setting a Cold War spy novel in Berlin. Perhaps the most memorable story set in Berlin was The Spy Who Came In From The Cold which in both the novel and

21726-415: Was actually a Soviet Colonel called Gregor Viktorov, but he ordered her to drop the subject. She also mentions rumours of a secret Soviet facility for training moles, and makes allusions to Prideaux and Bill Haydon's relationship being more than just platonic friendship . Smiley examines Operation Witchcraft, an operation in which Soviet intelligence was obtained through a key source known as "Merlin", which

21879-438: Was credited with defeating the Communist Huk guerrillas. The Ugly American was greatly influenced by the modernization theory, which held Communism was something alike to a childhood disease as the modernization theory held that as Third World nations modernized that this created social-economic tensions which a ruthless minority of Communists exploited to seize power; what was required from the United States were experts who knew

22032-509: Was denied). In Zakhov vs. 007 , the hero Avakoum Zakhov defeats James Bond, who is portrayed in an inverted fashion to how Fleming portrayed him; in Zakhov vs. 007 , Bond is portrayed as a sadistic killer, a brutal rapist and an arrogant misogynist, which stands in marked contrast to the kindly and gentle Zakhov who always treats women with respect. Zakhov is described as a spy, he more of a detective and unlike Bond, his tastes are modest. In 1966,

22185-403: Was followed by The Honourable Schoolboy in 1977 and Smiley's People in 1979. The three novels together make up the " Karla Trilogy ", named after Smiley's long-time nemesis Karla, the head of Soviet foreign intelligence and the trilogy's overarching antagonist. The novel has been adapted into both a television series and a film , and remains a staple of the spy fiction genre. In 2022,

22338-573: Was known from 1934 to 1946, it is stated quite explicitly in Semnadtsat' mgnoveniy vesny (which is set in 1945) that he left the Soviet Union to go undercover in Nazi Germany "more than ten years ago", which means that Isayev was not involved in the Yezhovshchina . The June 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and its neighbours introduced new themes to espionage fiction - the conflict between Israel and

22491-472: Was later revealed in 1963 to be a long time Soviet spy, who had been recruited by Soviet intelligence in the early 1930s while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge. Greene's best known spy novel The Quiet American (1955), set in 1952 Vietnam featured a thinly disguised version of the real American intelligence officer, Major General Edward Lansdale as the villain. Greene had covered the Vietnam war in 1951-52 as

22644-405: Was later transformed into the term "platonic love". Vulgar Eros and divine Eros were both considered to be connected, and part of the same continuous process of pursuing perfection of one's being, with the purpose of mending one's human nature and eventually reaching a point of unity where there is no longer an aspiration or need to change. "Eros is ... a moment of transcendence ... in so far as

22797-579: Was played by Hywel Bennett . In the US, syndicated broadcasts and DVD releases compressed the seven-part UK episodes into six, by shortening scenes and altering the narrative sequence. In 1988, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a dramatisation, by Rene Basilico, of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in seven weekly half-hour episodes, produced by John Fawcett-Wilson. It is available as a BBC audiobook in CD and audio cassette formats. Notably, Bernard Hepton portrays George Smiley . Nine years earlier, he had portrayed Toby Esterhase in

22950-546: Was repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra in June and July 2016, and has since been released as a boxed set by the BBC. Swedish director Tomas Alfredson made a film adaptation in 2011, based on a screenplay by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan . The film was released in the UK and Ireland on 16 September 2011, and in the United States on 9 December 2011. It includes a cameo appearance by Le Carré in

23103-603: Was the theme of some of the courtly masques performed in the Caroline era , though the fashion for this soon waned under pressures of social and political change. Throughout these eras, platonic love was slowly categorized into seven different classical definitions. These were: Despite the variety and number of definitions, the different distinctions between types of love were not considered concrete and mutually exclusive, and were often considered to blend into one another at certain points. "Platonic love in its modern popular sense

23256-453: Was trained to rule." Monaghan notes that le Carré (in Smiley's People ) refers to Haydon as a "born deceiver," who betrays his colleague (Smiley), his lover (Ann and/or Prideaux) and his country. Nevertheless, Haydon's exact motivations are left vague – unlike Philby, who espoused a deep ideological commitment to communism." Historian David A.T. Stafford considered Haydon's eventual capture to be

23409-430: Was treated with suspicion by both Smiley and Control. Alleline obtained ministerial support to circumvent Control's authority, and his post-Testify promotion supporters Haydon, Esterhase, and Bland have sponsored it. Smiley also learns that this "Magic Circle" has obtained a safe house somewhere in London where they obtain information from a Merlin emissary posted in London under a diplomatic cover, who – Smiley concludes –

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