George Smiley
George Smiley OBE is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Smiley is a career intelligence officer with The Circus. He is a central character in the novels Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People. The character has also appeared in a number of film, television, and radio adaptations.
About George Smiley in brief
George Smiley OBE is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Smiley is a career intelligence officer with \”The Circus\”, the British overseas intelligence agency. He is a central character in the novels Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People, and a supporting character in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. The character has also appeared in a number of film, television, and radio adaptations. Le Carré created Smiley as an intentional foil to James Bond, a character whom he believed depicted an inaccurate and damaging version of espionage life. He wears thick, round glasses, and tends to clean the lenses on the ‘fat’ end of his tie while contemplating something of great significance. The novels describe his clothing as being’really bad’, with other characters remarking that he ‘dresses like a bookie’ Smiley was born to middle-class parents in the South of England in the early part of the 20th century. He attended a minor public school and an antiquated Oxford college of no real distinction, studying modern languages with a particular focus on Baroque German literature. He was recruited into the Circus by his tutor, Jebedee. In 1939, Smiley underwent cover as a cover for Germany in Central Europe and South America. In 1945, he successfully proposed to Lady Ann Sercomb, a beautiful, aristocratic and libidinous young lady working as a secretary.
She left him after the initial excitement of the marriage ended, but always returned to him. In the same year, he was recalled to England to work at Circus headquarters. He has no concrete biography beyond that offered briefly at the beginning of Call for The Dead, but he does leave clues in his novels. Although Smiley ages through his appearances over a half-century, Le Carre has frequently retconned elements of his backstory so that he exists on something of a floating timeline. He does not appear to be substantially older than he was in his last appearance in 2017’s A Legacy of Spies, although he should be at minimum 102 years old during the events of the book. This has led Dwight Garner of The New York Times to observe that Smiley seems to be permanently 60 years old. The Guardian has called him ‘the sort of spy believes it ought to have: a bit shabby, academic, basically loyal, and sceptical of the enthusiasms of his political masters. He is frequently compared to either a toad or a mole. He has become a pop-culture icon on par with Bond, and is held in high esteem in Britain, where he has been described as having the conscience of a virgin. He spent the period from 1935 until 1938 in Europe and America, and saw active service not only in Germany, but also in Switzerland and Sweden. He eventually married Lady Sercomb in 1943, but she left him entirely after leaving him.
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This page is based on the article George Smiley published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 20, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
