LE CARRE'S LONDON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640021-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: May 18, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640021-5
1
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18 May 1986
Le Carre's London
In the Footsteps of George Smiley
Smiley hesitated. "Come and dine
with me that evening... Quarter to
eight. Bywater Street, Chelsea, num-
ber 9A." Fielding wrote it down in
his diary. His hand was quite steady.
-from "A Murder of Quality,"
by John le Carre
By Allen Boyer
spKmi to The We hingtne Pest
Some real-life places belong
to fictional characters. No. 7
Eccles St., Dublin, is physi-
cally no more than a door in
a wall, but generations of English
majors remember it as the home of
James Joyce's Leopold Bloom. A
hundred years later, London post-
men still deliver mail addressed to
Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker St.
Perhaps the relative changeless-
ness o the British Isles leads eir
authors to choose real settings for
their stories. Certainly the tradition .
continues; and one of the latest
writers to follow it is John le arre,
author o such espionage novels as
" i iker Tailor, Soldier, mi-
ley's People" and "A erect py."
published just this month.
Le Carri has set his novels in
places as diverse as Indochina and
Beirut. "A Perfect Spy" even takes
in Washington, with a clandestine
rendezvous among July Fourth
crowds on the Mall and dead-drop
message exchanges in George-
town's Oak Hill Cemetery. Three
cities, however, figure most often in
his books. One is Berlin. Le Carre's
first spy novel, "The Spy Who Came
In From the Cold," began there,
exactly where "Smiley's People"
ends: with tired agents standing on
the western side of the border,
hoping the man they wait for will
make it through the searchlights
and barbed wire. Another is Oxford,
where a dying woman delivers-in
"Smiley's People"-le Carre's ver-
dict on espionage: "Half-angels
fighting half-devils. No one knows
where the lines are." But the city
that appears most often is London:
capital of post-Empire Britain, cen-
ter of British Intelligence, home of
master spy George Smiley.
Le Carre's novels share a solid
factual grounding. (As they s ou :
Their author, before the success of
"The pv Who am e In From the
Cold" freed him to write full time,
wore within the British m e i-
gence community. is characters
are fictional, but they live and work -4 111A aa a ng om one
t reovaions
spot to another as Smiley prefers
to do, provides a morning's tour of
London. Officially, Britain's secret
services are known as Military n
telli once. Smiley's branch, the Se-
cret me ence rvice is known
as.6. roughout the Smiley
novels. le arre s name the
Secret Intelligence Service is "the
s." A circus, in terms of Brit-
urban geography, is a major
ish
intersection. The Circus is named.
fo am ri ge circus, a traffic cir-,
cl_ n central London. In the world
o arre s fiction, that is where
itsXeadq iarters are.
8ambridge Circus marks the
nolhern end of London's theater
diakict. Streets fan out spokelike
frQt'(i it toward the British Museum,
Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar
cir'1e that contains an unlighted
lamppost and a locked-up public
reeroom. Heavy Victorian build-
ings line the intersection, their pon-
derous turrets and bay windows
stilling down on a steady stream of
trac.
Le Carre has never revealed
directly the location of Circus HQ.
Hints scattered throughout the nov-
els, however, suggest that it occu-
pies a triangular building-half hid-
den by hardy city trees and labeled
"Bill Lewington-Musical Instru-
ments"-whose narrow end barely
touches the traffic circle's north-
east corner. Smiley's office would
overlook the Cambridge Theatre,
where "Jesus Christ Superstar" first
opened. One can imagine him at
work: a short, heavy, aging, ungla-
morous man, cleaning his glasses on
the end of his tie. His desk would be
littered with folders and paper; he
would write, slowly and deliberate-
ly, on single sheets of paper laid on
a glass plate-leaving no trace of
his work. On the wall behind him
would be his photo of Karla, his
Russian counterpart and antagonist.
Directly across Cambridge Cir-
cus, another theater advertises it-
self with crimson stars and draper-
ies. The effect is to give Cambridge
Circus a touch of Red Square.
Doubtless Smiley would have no-
ticed it; doubtless it would have
appealed to his sense of irony.
.0na _quiet stretch of Curzon
Street, as far southwest of Piccad;i.
ly Circus as Cambridge Circa is
north of it, stands a very large,
un a led ui n 9-with no win-
dows on t e groan floor, one very
so i - oo ng door and antennas
scattered along t e roo This may
be the actual heal quarters of Brit-
ain s M.1.5-the Security Service,
which is responsible for internal
COUMMIntelfigence.. This IS its
n n e ouse.
k-Ifte ovation of important a ense
sites is closely guarded under Brit-
ain's system o D-notices, which
forbids the publication of such infor-
mation.) But whether it is based in
econ ie House or elsewhere,
headquarters does figure in l
Carre's fiction'. when Smiley first
appeared-in a arre s irs ve
"Call or the Dead"-he was with
MT5rving a o dWarstint in
cot nlerin a igence.
Walking home rom the Cir-
cus-slowly, but with method-
Smiley might pass through Curzon
Street. He would keep bearing
'southwest, cross Piccadilly and
walk down Knightsbridge. Hyde
Park Corner, where England's
soap-box orators vent opinions out-
rageous and eccentric, would be on
his right. Then Smiley would turn
left along Sloane Street, turn right
at Sloane Square. Then he would be
on King's Road, almost home, on
the fringe of Chelsea.
Chelsea has a well-earned reputa-
tion as the trendiest part of London.
Posh and punk mingle here. Har-
rods is a five-minute jaunt away.
Diana, princess of Wales, in the
days when she was a mere kinder-
garten teacher and earl's daughter,
shared a fiat in the neighborhood.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640021-5
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640021-5
So many brisk, upper-crust, tennis-
and riding-minded young English-
women frequent Sloane Square that
the type has become known as the
Sloane Ranger. They share the
streets with the other half of British
youth: teen-agers with spiky neon
colored hair, boys and girls dressed
alike in button-studded leather and
denim. And strolling past the rows
of boutiques are members of a third
British subculture. These are old
men in dark blue uniforms and caps,
their tunics brightened with cam-
paign ribbons: pensioned veterans
from the Chelsea Royal Hospital.
Bywater Street is a block-long,
dead-end lane leading off King's
Road. It looks ordinary. Two rows
of town houses, their porches orna-
mented with iron railings, face each
other across a quiet, car-lined
street. Perhaps le Carre chose it
because of its name. For Smiley,
forever being called from retire-
ment to run espionage missions or
hunt double agents, "Bywater" is a
fitting address.
In another sense it is a bywater:
As one rounds the corner, the
bustle of King's Road ceases. Both
sidewalks are empty. The only per-
sistent sound is the pecking of an
unseen typewriter. A young woman
and a little boy, both in jogging
suits, appear at one porch. "Number
9A?" she says. "That'd be across,
over there. The gray house.
They're always filming there."
No. 9 is a house like all the other
town houses. All that distinguishes
it from its neighbors is a coat of
gray paint-medium gray, the
shade the English call "dove grey."
At an upstairs window there is a
hint of curtains: white with a brown,
ornate pattern. The pattern would
be too rich for Smiley. It would fit
his faithless wife Ann, who carries
on her adulteries with aristocratic
coolness.
The doorbell buzzes, but no one
answers. No one answers the
knock. Nothing moves at the win-
dow. The panels of the door are
lined with dust. Whoever lives now
at 9A Bywater St., he (or she) has
been away some time.
Around Bywater Street, sur-
rounding Curzon Street and Cam-
bridge Circus, lies a living city.
London's roof lines have not
changed in a century; Dickens
would recognize their turrets and
quaint Victorian gables. He would
not recognize the storefronts,
where restraint and dignified aus-
terity have been replaced with plas-
tic signs and orange stickers pro-
claiming the latest bargains.
London no longer seems a purely
British city. Chinese and Indian
restaurants, dishing out fried rice
and curries to go, encroach on the
tradition of fish and chips. Black-
veiled women huddle outside phone
boxes. The Empire has come home
to London: Indians, Chinese, Jamai-
cans, Arabs. And Czechoslovaks,
and Estonian defectors, and Danzig
Poles who speak German-the peo-
ple with whom Smiley works.
A century ego, thf, Rritich Em?
pire was defended intell'
work-the mix of intrigue, recon-
naissance, analysis and action that-
p mg new as the Great Game.
On India's borders, British agents
sent out s ies and pondered the
to a ties and information they dealt
with-trying. to second-guess the
intentions of Russian aitents. The
mire's homecomin has not
changed the pattern. The Great
Game continues, with fresh play-
ers-on home terrain, m e arre's
Lam"
But time and reality do have a
way of changing things: 221B Baker
St. is now a bank. "A Perfect Spy"
shares no characters with le Carre's
earlier fiction; "the Circus" has even
been renamed "the Firm." The chill
world of espionage seems a little
more bleak with Smiley not present
to sort things out. But as Holmes
survives in the imagination, Smiley
is still there to be recalled, from the
room beyond the locked door,
where he sits completing his mono-
graph on 17th-century German lit-
erature.
Allen Boyer teaches law at the
University of Oklahoma.
41
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403640021-5