John le Carré was a connoisseur of that brand of terror; all his spies lived with it at every moment, waking and sleeping; it was the kind of grit that caused pain but produced no pearl. From the start – even before The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Le Carré’s third novel – he displayed a genius for plotting. Although Le Carré would probably not claim to be an artist, his work, at its best, operates at a high literary level. Photograph: Allstar/Focus FeaturesThis long early scene, in which the veteran Guillam spars and feints with the pair of latter-day technocrats, is Le Carré at his gleefully contemptuous best. Smiley is “Le Carré man” in essence: a reluctant “cold warrior”, impossibly clever, wise to the world’s wickedness yet unshakeably decent at heart.

Source: The Guardian September 07, 2017 06:22 UTC