Smiley's People

JOHN LE CARRÉ Smiley's People FIRST EDITION HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON 1980 DESCRIPTION 327 pages. Book measures 225mm x 145mm approximately. Hardback book complete with dust jacket. CONDITION In overall very good general condition. The book is strong and tight and in very good condition. In superb clean condition throughout. Just one very minor 'dent' to a few of the top edge pages. Without any inscriptions. The dust jacket is in good condition. Dust jacket has a 3cm tear to rear top with a small section missing. There is a closed small tear to front top and a few smaller nibbles along top and to foot of spine section. Small split at lower front fold-in crease. Not price-clipped. Please always refer to photo images for a clearer indication of condition. We are always happy to provide further photo images if required. INTERESTING David John Moore Cornwell (born 1931), better known by his pen name John le Carré, is a British author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works. Following the success of this novel, he left MI6 to become a full-time author. Many of his books have been adapted for film or television. In 1950, he joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army garrisoned in Allied-occupied Austria, working as a German language interrogator of people who crossed the Iron Curtain to the West. In 1952, he returned to England to study at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he worked covertly for the British Security Service, MI5, spying on far-left groups for information about possible Soviet agents. Most of Le Carré's books are spy stories set during the Cold War (1945–91) and portray British Intelligence agents as unheroic political functionaries aware of the moral ambiguity of their work and engaged more in psychological than physical drama. The novels emphasise the fallibility of Western democracy and of the secret services protecting it, often implying the possibility of east–west moral equivalence. The recurring character George Smiley, who plays a central role in five novels was written as an "antidote" to James Bond, a character Le Carré called "an international gangster" rather than a spy and whom he felt should be excluded from the canon of espionage literature. In contrast, he intended Smiley, who is an overweight, bespectacled bureaucrat who uses cunning and manipulation to achieve his ends, as an accurate depiction of a spy. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People (The Karla trilogy) brought Smiley back as the central figure in a sprawling espionage saga depicting his efforts first to root out a mole in the Circus and then entrap his Soviet rival and counterpart, code named Karla. The trilogy was originally meant to be a long-running series that would find Smiley dispatching agents after Karla all around the world. Following the success of the BBC adaptation of Tinker Tailor, Le Carré no longer felt that he could properly write Smiley, feeling he had gone from a literary character to an English icon.