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Small, podgy and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London’s meek who do not inherit the earth.
He affected buttonholes and pale suits, and he pretended on the flimsiest grounds to an intimate familiarity with the large backrooms of Whitehall.
Martindale spoke in a confiding upper-class bellow of the sort which, on foreign holidays, had more than once caused Smiley to sign out of his hotel and run for cover.
He hated everywhere except Surrey, the Circus and Lord’s Cricket Ground.
There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one’s own generation. And
an upright piano littered with musical scores, old portraits of clerics in gowns, a wad of printed invitations. He looked for the Cambridge University oar and found it slung over the fireplace. The same fire was burning, too mean for the enormous grate. An air of need prevailing over wealth.
‘“To possess another language is to possess another soul.” A great king wrote that, sir, Charles the Fifth. My
It’s the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
‘Burn the lot,’ Ann had suggested helpfully, referring to his books. ‘Set fire to the house. But don’t rot.’
‘There are always a dozen reasons for doing nothing,’ Ann liked to say – it was a favourite apologia, indeed, for many of her misdemeanours – ‘there is only one reason for doing something. And that’s because you want to.’ Or have to? Ann would furiously deny it: coercion, she would say, is just another word for doing what you want; or for not doing what you are afraid of.
I hate the real world, George. I like the Circus and all my lovely boys.’
for Connie was of an age where the only thing a man could give her was time.
‘If it’s bad, don’t come back. Promise? I’m an old leopard and I’m too old to change my spots. I want to remember you all as you were. Lovely, lovely boys.’
‘An artist is a bloke who can hold two fundamentally opposing views and still function: who dreamed that one up?’ ‘Scott Fitzgerald,’ Smiley
The boy had invented a game. He had laid the table on its side and was rolling an empty bottle on to the gravel. Each time he started the bottle higher up the table top. Smiley left before it smashed.
The boy had invented a game. He had laid the table on its side and was rolling an empty bottle on to the gravel. Each time he started the bottle higher up the table top. Smiley left before it smashed.
That in the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery? And
‘There weren’t any dependants,’ Smiley said. ‘Apart from Bill, I suppose,’ he added, half under his breath.
By the by, he is virgin, about eight foot tall and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge. Do not be alarmed.’
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor. Alleline was Tinker, Haydon was Tailor, Bland was Soldier and Toby Esterhase was Poorman. We dropped Sailor because it rhymed with Tailor. You were Beggarman,’ Jim said.
Learn the facts, Steed-Asprey used to say, then try on the stories like clothes.
Survival, as Jim Prideaux liked to recall, is an infinite capacity for suspicion. By
he wondered whether there was any love between human beings that did not rest upon some sort of self-delusion; he
There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur. For
