We Are All Smiley’s People My wife, Susan, and I lost our minds. For more than two weeks at the beginning of February, we were locked in a ritual that became the center of our day, the center of our conversation—watching first the six-hour original 1979 BBC version of John le Carré’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (not to be confused with the competent but muffled new movie version), and then its six-hour sequel from 1982, “Smiley’s People.” We would watch one episode each evening after dinner. I know there are millions of people who adore mystery novels as a pleasurable brain-tease, reading one book after another with full absorption and then quickly forgetting it.
How to make professional lined curtain panels I’ve got loads of photos (too many probably!) so hopefully you’ll see just how easy it really is to sew your own curtains. To start, spread your fabric out on a large flat surface (the {clean} floor works great), measure it, and cut each panel about 10″ longer than you’d like your curtains. Once your fabric is cut, it’s time to iron! I ironed the reverse of the fabric just to be safe. If you don’t like to iron, you might as well give up now. I ironed the entire curtain panel first, then I ironed both of the length-wise edges (sides). To iron the edge, fold the raw edge over about 1/2″ and press. Once your edge is ironed, fold it over again and iron a 2nd time. Once your edge is ironed, you’ll need to iron the opposite edge as well. Both edges should now be ironed about 1/2″, then folded over and ironed about a 1/2″ again to create a finished edge. Now iron the TOP of the curtain fabric about 1/2″ over. From here, leave your curtain fabric alone. Now un-stitch the top edge of the sheet.
Fuck Yeah Smiley's People atropabelladonna1120: “It isn’t Fawn anymore, Peter. You can let her go.”I’m incredibly excited to share the second illustration created by the talented kitmallsdraws for my BBC Sherlock-Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy crossover/AU fanfic, The Fraternity. (The first one, for Chapter 6, is here.)The illustration above is one of several that I commissioned for the story. (via fuckyeahtinkertailorsoldierspy) 6:02 pm • 27 February 2013 • 193 notes mafiaofvodka: “We have a rotten apple, Jim, right at the top of the Circus.”Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. (via rainrix) 5:05 pm • 15 February 2013 • 426 notes “He starts out as a very cold, smooth operator. Benedict Cumberbatch, on what drew him to his character Peter Guillam, Total Film interview, September 2011 (x) (Source: shitbenedictsays, via fuckyeahtinkertailorsoldierspy) 4:28 am • 2 February 2013 • 314 notes On set photography from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by Gary Oldman. (Source: desirfatale, via boothrat)
How to make a cheap, awesome, professional Curtain Rod First off, thank you so much for being so kind about my new curtains in the dining room! I am taken aback daily by how many genuinely nice people there are in this blogging community. Thank you for loving the curtains along with me, and also thank you for just being plain ol’ nice. Now, shall we get down to bid-ness? Let’s talk Curtain Rods. I should dedicate an entire post just to curtain rods and best above ground pool, because after this experience, I think I know every single option of inexpensive curtain rod options in the greater Austin area. DIYing a Curtain Rod: I headed to Home Depot on a mission to find a practical inexpensive solution to my curtain rod dilemma. At Home Depot I found a variety of objects that could work, but in the end the heavens parted and I stumbled on Electrical Conduit. Bless the person that invented this light weight, sturdy, and extremely inexpensive product! But let me back up for a sec. I bought the conduit that was 1/2″ x 10′. Curtain Rings and Finials:
Smiley’s People, John LeCarré (Penguin Books, 1979 {Penguin Audio, Narrator: Michael Jayston) | The Archaeologist's Guide to the Galaxy.. by Thomas Evans Grade: Α — Great book, must read regardless of what Genres you enjoy. Makes you think of things beyond the scope of the book In brief: Smiley’s People is the last installment in the Karla Trilogy, and the penultimate volume (to date and likely ever) involving John LeCarré‘s master spy: George Smiley. While not quite up to the level of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy[1] it is a masterpiece of espionage fiction. Tense, intriguing and wonderfully written, this book pits Smiley directly against his nemesis in a tale of cold war spying at its best. Setting: The UK, Paris, Hamburg, other bits of Germany and Switzerland at the height of the Cold War in the 1970′s. In Depth: “Tell Max, that it concerns the Sandman…” Smiley’s People, John LeCarré’s final installment in the Karla Trilogy, brings the epic espionage battle of George Smiley to a close. It begins with a Russian émigré and dissenter who is contacted by a thug of a Soviet official regarding her long lost daughter. Like this: Like Loading...
Smiley's People (1982) Synopsis Warning: screenonline full synopses contain 'spoilers' which give away key plot points. Don't read on if you don't want to know the ending! Episode 1 Madame Ostrakova, a Russian émigré, has been living in Paris for over twenty years. Ostrakova asks a friend to contact General Vladimir, a former high-ranking officer in the Soviet army who defected to work for British Intelligence. Now living in London, Vladimir receives a letter. Vladimir tries to get in touch with George Smiley, his last case officer at the British Secret Service, unaware that Smiley retired three years earlier. Smiley is contacted when Vladimir's murdered body is found on Hampstead Heath, shot in the face at point blank range.
Ian Hamilton reviews ‘Smiley’s People’ by John le Carré · LRB 20 March 1980 Smiley’s People by John le Carré Hodder, 327 pp, £5.95, February 1980, ISBN 0 340 24704 5 The thing about John le Carré used to be that he was a brilliantly ingenious spyhack but couldn’t really write; and one way of getting back at him for being rich and famous was to mock at his almost lovably transparent wish to have this judgment changed. He had said one or two testy things about the arrogance of highbrow critics, their unwillingness to see quality in the so-called lower genres, and he would regularly pepper his spy books with quotations, literary references, browfurrowing Germanic aphorisms and the like. And after a bit, he even went so far as to serve up a whole novel (The Naive and Sentimental Lover) which had scope, depth, acres of fine, angsty writing and not a whiff of the old commercial tradecraft. This, needless to say, was a bad miscalculation. Looking back on all that disdain, Le Carré must now be enjoying an ironic chuckle. You are not logged in Letters
Lance Mannion: Speaking of spies The blonde and I have been working our way through the television adaptation of John le Carre's Smiley's People starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley, thank you Netflix. It's been a very long time since I read the original trilogy of Smiley novels---Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honorable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People---so I can't remember what I thought Smiley was like before Alec Guinness turned him into Alec Guinness. I might have imagined him as a little bit younger, a little less of an old granny, with a bit more of the adventurer left in him. My idea of spies back then was still based on James Bond, Allistair MacLean novels, and whatever I'd read about Wild Bill Donovan and the OSS during World War II. Le Carre wiped all that out of my head, but it took all three books to do it, I think, so I probably started reading them with a more heroic and virile Smiley in my mind's eye. (The glasses were Guinness's own; he had very bad eyes at that time.
Top 10 Spy Films | Movie Mail UK By Barry Forshaw Inspired by the release of The Kremlin Letter, we delve into the murky world of spying. Like their battered protagonists, spy films are relatively few in number. A rarefied breed, they combine the darkness and ambiguous morality of film noir with the gunplay of the action thriller. Of course, Bond is the most visible agent of the genre, but he wasn’t the first and, though he’s recently had some introspective moments, others go far deeper into their heroes’ troubled psyche. NB. The Films Countdown, with clips Forget about the workaday Richard Chamberlain adaptation; this pared-to the bone and kinetic piece reinvented Robert Ludlum’s novel (with a low-key Matt Damon as the tough-as-nails, cut-adrift agent). 9. Le Carré’s ‘Karla’ trilogy was a key literary document of the Cold War, and its apogee is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - one the greatest espionage novels of the last century. Buy the DVD for £6.99 8. Buy the DVD for £6.49 7. Buy the DVD for £5.99 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
The spy who came in from the typhoon Every year I buy a used paperback of John le Carré’s The Honourable Schoolboy (1977) and take it to Hong Kong with me, to be left for someone else when I pack up to leave. One year I left a copy, then returned the following year to the same hotel. The desk clerk remembered my name and ran to the back room, where last year’s copy had been carefully retained. During my first trip in spring of 1995, I found The Honourable Schoolboy remaindered in a Silvercord bookshop that has long since vanished. The particular enjoyment I get from this novel during my visits owes a lot to its evocation of a city in the seventies that remains recognizable today. Star Heights was the newest and tallest apartment block in the Midlevels, built on the round, and by night jammed like a huge lighted pencil into the soft darkness of the Peak. Yet the pleasures go far beyond acute observation of local detail. Our unidentified chronicler has the omniscience of an urbane insider. A page along we read: