tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6984067990467963645.post3235379880589627127..comments2024-03-21T22:22:59.425-07:00Comments on Vintage Pop Fictions: John le Carré’s Smiley’s Peopledfordoomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02306293859869179118noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6984067990467963645.post-35210972301282598752017-07-23T13:15:06.624-07:002017-07-23T13:15:06.624-07:00And there is an amazingly good BBC radio version o...And there is an amazingly good BBC radio version of "The Complete Smiley" which dramatized "Call for the Dead", "A Murder of Quality", "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold", "The Looking Glass War", The Karla Trilogy and "The Secret Pilgrim" in about 18 hours altogether.thingmakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14011048675050396438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6984067990467963645.post-56954838750452641462017-06-21T19:05:54.697-07:002017-06-21T19:05:54.697-07:00"I think he'd realised that for all the s...<em>"I think he'd realised that for all the sound and fury, communism was no longer really expanding; that it had reached its limits. For all his - often valid - criticisms of Britain, the US and the modern world, it was always communism that Le Carre really HATES."</em><br /><br />Yes, that's true. The Soviet Union under Brezhnev was definitely a lot less menacing than the Soviet Union under Stalin or Khrushchev.dfordoomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02306293859869179118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6984067990467963645.post-45384306271529767852017-06-21T12:18:40.692-07:002017-06-21T12:18:40.692-07:00"his 70s spy fiction strikes me as being slig..."his 70s spy fiction strikes me as being slightly less defeatist than his 60s work"<br /><br />I think he'd realised that for all the sound and fury, communism was no longer really expanding; that it had reached its limits. For all his - often valid - criticisms of Britain, the US and the modern world, it was always communism that Le Carre really HATES.<br /><br />Smiley does turn up in a later book, Secret Pilgrim, which is a series of short stories told by another Circus operative. Le Carre's new book, A Legacy Of Spies, is supposed to be about Smiley's protege/sidekick, Peter Guillam - the blurb on Amazon suggests it's a sort of Smileys People for Guillam.tom j joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13108887693320361796noreply@blogger.com