Free Thinking at the Sage

Saturday November 3^rd 2012 will not be remembered as the day itself but because of events that occurred, a BBC radio broadcast at the Sage Gateshead, a Newcastle Walkabout in warm afternoon sunshine and the most engaging of the Montalbano episodes throughout the two series this year.

The day commenced with uncertainty about what I should take with me and how long I would remain out. I had debated baking a baguette for salami and olives for lunches as I had only a few minutes between two planned events at midday. I decided against taking a bag with me although did put a small umbrella in my coat together with the ticket information and a notebook. I also failed to provide myself with as much time as appropriate after deciding on a little Wii exercise of some 15 minutes as it felt cold and indeed I had to zip up the double layered black Winter’s coat. I must make sure I have a woolly hat to hand.

It was just before 10.30 when I arrived at the Gateshead Metro Interchange station and I lost several minutes trying to find out the bus and stand for the Sage missing one and with close to 20 minutes for the next bus, twice the advertised every ten minutes painted on the side of some of the buses I decided to walk, a good decision. I went passed the new shopping development being created on the Get Carter Car park site and then the old Town Hall building which was used for the Tyneside Film Theatre while that was we being extended and refurbished, and then across a succession of pedestrian crossings to get to the entrance of the concert halls.

Since my last visit to the Sage there has been a major change with the ending of the splendid music listening library and Internet centre provided by Gateshead Leisure. This is now a second cafeteria restaurant. There has also been a major switching around with the ticket office outside Hall 2 and a shop outside Hall one. The cafeteria and the Brassiere are where they were. I had time for a coffee at £1.50 after collecting my tickets from the special BBC Free Thinking weekend desk. There was a separate bookstall related to the weekend speakers as well as a couple of screens showing one of the events already in progress. I had started the journey frustrated because I had brought a notebook but left a pen and was horrified at being asked to £2 for a Sage product, later when I purchased a pack of six pens for 99 pence at Rymans I found I had left the notebook at the Sage and ended up writing the notes on the way home on the back of the leaflet info about the event I had experienced.

The first recording of the morning was by Charlotte Blease a new Generation thinker providing a fifteen minute talk about the real nature of General Practice and medical diagnosis in general. She identified that there were a number of problems including those symptoms identified could match more than one problem and that the diagnostician was dependent to a great extent on what the patient was able to explain. My own experience is that without keeping records it is often difficult to remember when a change was noted or that a change occurs in such a way to suggest it needs to be reported or is considered part of the aging process or other natural imbalances which occur from time to time.

The talk was not an attack on medical practice being made but an attempt to place medical diagnosis in perspective. A current example is that even with a proven screening technique such as for breast cancer which is estimated to save 3000 to 4000 lives a year, for every one individual prescribed treatment a number were found not to have required it because what was detected did not lead to a malignant tumour yet without early detection women died unnecessarily.

There was no time for a comfort break between this talk and the first two major events with a panel approach to Rewriting History which was undertaken recently by Andrew Marr with his series on the history of human kind and which he reminded was part of a legacy with Bronowski The Ascent of Man. James Burke’s Connection and a series on Civilization which concentrated on the European cultures in the days of early Television. Anthony Beever is a leading military Historian who is completing or has completed a history of World War II from the World perspective which could argue that the World War commenced prior to 1939 with the Japanese attack and colonization of China. One memorable point made was that for 200 years Japan closed its borders and concentrated on it own development in terms of feeding its people and political and social government playing no part in the rest of the world, trading, politics, economics and this strengthened and led to self sufficiency. The third speaker Maria Misra was a Modern Historian whose primary subject was India while the chair for the session Rana Mitter background was Chinese History. What struck and a point briefly made later in the discussion is that the study of human kind is not the same as the study of the earth planet and that environmental changes, a la Hurricane superstorm Sandy can have more devastating consequences than the great wars, earthquakes, famines and floods etc against national and civil wars.

My point and one not made in the discussion is that given the potential mismatch between resources and population growth it can be argue that major disasters and wars are a way of stopping the population becoming too great for the planet‘s resources to sustain and that war also has proved to be a period of innovation and the rebuilding also becomes a time for economic growth as happened post second world war in Japan and Germany in particular.

Marr said that his work was leading up to the choice facing mankind was blowing themselves up or destroying the planet environmentally, or working towards the conquest of space and the unlimited possibilities and opportunities of that but also the threats given that the overwhelming populations of the Americas was destroyed by the importing of old world illnesses rather than through aggressive conquest. He said he was optimistic. I am not remembering the Ice Age and what happened to the indigenous Americans and is happening to the Africans.

I had to leave the discussion briefly when I knew I was going to have coughing fit so went out of some bottled water at an outrageous £1.60. Does anyone learn from History? Is there anything to learn? Karl Marx attempted to predict from selected historical events and circumstances while Hitler was enamoured by the ability of the British go control their empire was so few troops.

There was only 20 minutes before needing to queue for a good seat for the second discussion on Is Social Mobility overrated? There as time for a comfort visit and some sea salt and black pepper crisps 90p bring the total expenditure for the three events only £6.25 (I bought a ham and Cheese baguette from the Quayside Greggs on my walkabout),

The panel this time included the Guardian Polly Toynbee whose background includes the creator of Toynbee Hall in the East end of London always left of centre and currently President of the British Humanist Society and Treasurer of the Fabian Society. Lawrence Goldman is an Oxford Historian. The two other speakers were an obnoxious management consultant originally from New Zealand and a rational and practical woman from the North East who represented all types of schools in the region.

This was the least successful of the three events I attended. The problem was the vastly different perspectives, personalities and lifestyles on the panel looking at the problem from both of the telescope. On one hand the management consultant appeared to believe that individuals should be left to cope with their nature and nurture without state intervention and everything should be privatised and that it was in the natural order of things to be poor and the rich and for some people to move or down according to the decisions taken and the time and circumstances of their lives, while Toynbee appeared to believe that everyone should be able to achieve the best from their innate and acquired activities and the state should intervene to ensure an equality of opportunity.

I thought a better construction to the programme would have been to consider the extent which we are a class ridden society and its consequences or an examination of the obstacles to providing an equality of opportunity. The basic of living will always be food, warmth and shelter with work part of it and income associated with work a major factor. Education is good in itself but is usually associated with furthering opportunity while the arts and culture are and expression of what people feel about their lives and their society. Do I really want to encourage people to make more money that they need and then misuse their power or become aggressive and violent and social mobility is usually associated with people getting power and wealth to do what they want without regard to their obligations and duties to each other their families neighbourhood and communities.

The discussion on the day appeared to fix on Education while the current big issue is employment where capitalism and international capitalism are the governing factors together with the problem of allowing hordes in from European countries to come and work the jobs on low pay, mainly service and also other manual this creating an inter generational underclass. The third is shelter was not touched in the discussion.

The BBC Smiley The Looking Glass War

I have listened to Le Carré The Looking Glass War, having previously seen the excellent film with Anthony Hopkins and Ralph Richardson. The radio play as the film which I have on DVD lacks the emotional punch of the Spy who came Back from the Cold. It is also the story of how the individual may be sacrificed for the national advantage and sometimes for the national good, although at other times just to save face.

It is also the story of those who having experienced the tensions and the challenges of wartrime or some other difficult, at times threatening experience, then find it difficult to impossible to cope with the everyday of normal times. In this instances it is those left from military intelligence during World War II who participated in dangerous and vital operations, risk their won lives or the lives of others asnd who are now restricted to making assessments and reporting information for others, the Circus, professional spying in Cold War peace time for the State.

When a former contact located in East Germany provides a photos of what appears to be Soviet rockets being moved into East Germany of a type similar to those which were attempted to be located in Cuba, instead of passing the information to the Circus the aging Director of the Department’s agency sees the opportunity to return to the old days of glory and arranges for the pilot of charter plane on its way to Scandinavia to fly over East Germany by mistake and take aerial photos of the alleged site area. Unfortunately his contact unable to get a taxi back to his hotel is knocked down and killed.

The decision is taken to send an office man to take responsibility for the body and personal effects in the hope of retrieving the film. The chosen individual is a young man who is already having difficulties with his wife because of his inability to share all the details of his work with her. She feels isolated at home caring for a young child and resentful oft his freedom which he husband appears to have, especially as he appears to enjoy and be satisfied by his work and role in life. It is not an uncommon situation and when he announces he is going off on a trip this only reinforces her feeling of being left out.

The trip is not success and no film is found although this only fuels the paranoia of the head of the department that their man was not killed in an accident and that the film was taken by the enemy. He therefore convinces the Minister that they should send in someone to check out the allegations but because this should be the responsibility of the Circus all that the Circus is official told is that the project is a training one just as the visit to Scandinavia had been, keeping their hand in so to speak in the event of being required to provide an operational service again. I am guessing that in reality the military retained their full operation role after the World War and if anything it remained as professional and more reliable than what happened to the British Circus, so named because of its location although apt given what was subsequently revealed.

The decision is taken to use someone who was sussful in the War but is long since retired with a liking for gin basd cocktails and women and for a training house to be established with the departmental the link which means he has to live in an and away from home, another divide which becomes unbridgeable.

Thus far there is close similarity between radio play and film although the operative is involved in a sexual adventure when he is contacted and if I rememebr correctly the location of the training house is on the coast and not Oxford as in the book,

The Circus with its Control are consulted and their passive help arranged with George Smiley the link pretending to know less than they do although they do not then know precisely what the Department is up to. When there is a request for the ltest radio communicatiosn device in the hope that direction finders can be avoided, Smiley explains that the technical boys will not pass out equipment over which they cannot maintain full control, but they let them have a war time radio one where the crystal has to be changed at regular intervals to enable some difficulties for the direction finders.

The operation is doomed of course and soon after crossing into East Germany the operative encounters a young border guard and instead of knocking him out kills him thus alerting the entire nation to be on the look out for the intruder. Worse is to come become because Smiley’s lot have analysed the photos and found them to be false. In the film the Operative goes to meet the contact who is also like the rest of Departmental team wanting to relive past times and be regarded as important and also well paid

The enemy becomes quickly aware of the travels of the agent via his use of the radio, forgetting to change the crystals and in order to mislead they arange for troops to enter the area so as to give the oeprative something to report and help them to identify his precise location. In the film he is given a lift and kills the driver adding to the deaths of the innocent of what is a wild goose chase. In both the novel and the film the agent meets up with a girl at bar in the town where the rocket (rockets) were reported as being seen.

While the net closes in the decision is taken back home to cut their loses so that when the operatuve is caught and put on a show trial it will be claimed this is a stunt and that a war time radio was found in possession illustrates the absurdity of the claims. This horrifies and angers the young man in the department having established a close relationship with the operative he cannot understand the betrayal, the abandonment, in the context of having managed a couple of days home between the training and preparing for the departure, his wife has announced she will not be there when he returns.

In the book the fate of the operative is uncertain as he hides out with the girl to make what is his final radio call adn in film there is a post script where some children playing in what is now a summer field by the roadside come across the roll of film which is opened and cast to the winds. There is also the implication in the film there was reality, albeit unknown to the contact, at the deployment of missiles.

　

　

　

　

The BBC Smiley The Spy who came in from the Cold

The Spy who Came in from the Cold

and which has Brian Cox in the role portrayed by Richard Burton in the film. It was as consequence of watching a TV showing of the Spy that I embarked on getting the DVD’s of the Smiley series to add some other Le Carré books and DVD’s I had already acquired after the

Disappointment of the film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I have the film now ion DVD but have not viewed until doing with the sound turned off while I listened to the radio play which is provided on three DVDs. I then decided to also watch the film with the sound so as to establish the differences if any between the two as well as to reappraise the emotional and intellectual impact of both. Had I not such a long reading list before I would add the Spy such is the importance previously given to this work and reinforced by my experiences overnight.

The Spy who came in from the Cold provided audiences in the 1960 with reality of this work in the Cod War. There is an important discussion early on about the nature of the occupation in which unknowingly the main character Alec Leamas a wartime hero and until recently head of the Berlin Station is told by Control (head of service) that although while the soviets and others are aggressive in their approach to international relations, in the UK the policy is a defensive one, that the reality of the situation meant that the UK was required to adopt methods which at times were little different from those of our enemies. While as the book, and Radio play progresses it is evident that Leamas is told the full nature of the part he is to play or believes he has been told the part in full, we only know at the end that he has not and it is his reaction to this which stunned and affected cinema audience at the time and I assume those who had read or who went to read the book.

The Spy was a great success for Richard Burton as Alec Leamas and his co star Claire Bloom as the 23 year old communist who works for a small private library in which Burton is assigned by the Unemployment office after he leaves the service to go under cover in attempt to track down Hans Dieter Mundt who beat up Smiley in the first book to Call of the Dead Hans-Dieter Mundt and who turned out to be the assistant of his former friend and spy who dies when confronted by Smiley who then retires from the service.

Smiley is still retired but referred to at the commencement of the Spy and appears to play little part although there are confusing references and differences to his role between film and play which I would like resolved, for after all this book is part of the George Smiley series.

The first difference between film and radio play which I assume follows the book(s) more closely is that Leamas talks to the woman who we see drive over Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall when he is expecting his organising agent to arrive and who is the lover of the married woman who with her husband is able to cross over for stated reasons not remembered. It is conversation with her we learn that Mundt and Fiedler his number two of Soviet Security in East Germany have been systematically rounding up and killing all his agents. She says her lover will come over later and I found the radio play more intense and dramatic a description of his arrival part way across and being shot than in the film although both rank highly in terms of film openings. It is only later that we learn that his organiser in the East German network was a member of its Presidium and that he had provided us with the highest level of information about the governing Party and through membership of the security committee on security matters,

Leamas comes home and reports back and is asked if he feels burnt out or is willing to stay out in the cold longer and go after Mundt something he is only too willing to do given that Mundt was responsible for the deaths of all his network members in East Berlin, It is at this point Control admit that while the policy is not aggressive sometimes it is necessary to adopt methods like those of the enemy and therefore he has a plan to go after Mundt not through assassination but by discredit and making him look to be a British agent but letting the Soviets come to this conclusion through his deputy Fiedler, a Jew with Mundt was a former Nazi and both known to detest each other.

In the play we learn that the descent of Leamas officially out of the service is carefully planned and executed over a long period of time so that anyone checking would not be able to see that it was designed although whether because of the lapse of time the Soviets would see him as worthwhile approaching know to care about him was a gamble.

At the moment as I write and listen the evidence is that his placement in Library and meeting the young assistant member of the Communist Party CND supporter is not planned and indeed his handler repeatedly tells him not to get involved as he does himself realising that any intimate relationship makes him more vulnerable. It is when reminded of this after the young woman becomes his lover and after she cares for him when he become ill that the decision is taken for him to get himself arrested and sent to prison for three months.

There is a significant difference between the radio play and I assume the book text and the film. In the film Leamas is net by the girl who brings him a packet of sandwiches and says he will be staying her place when she his case. He will be there when she returns from work. There is no contact between him and the girl after he leaves prison.

The second difference is that in the film Michael Horden plays the Soviet contact posing as a representative for the After Care Charity the Link giving the impression of having official contact with the prison authorities and knowing he had refused to be helped by the Prison After Care association or speak to a prisoner. In the play he addresses Leamas by name and it is evident that he is contact on behalf of the Soviets. In both he plays a homosexual although while Horden’s manner is a give away this is not so in the play.

In the film Leamas is taken to lunch visits Control at Smiley’s home to report the contact Horden again for his £5 in case help and to meet his contact played by Robert Hardy as Carlton at a Soho girlie and drink club which is less seedy that reality and with a touch of the Windmill in style of presentation. When he accepts the offer of £15000 for his memoirs and £5000 retainer for availability for a further 12 months he insist on a visit to the girl for his suitcase refusing the demand for immediate availability and this also enables him to go to Smiley‘s House in Chelsea where George is there with control and confirms the plan and also demands that there is no contact between the service and the girl and that all records of her involvement should be removed. He tells he that he has to go away but plans to return and for them to be together.

In the radio play there is no contact between Leamas and the girl at all after he goes to prison although he had warned her that he had to do or finish something and that he would return to her. While he does go to a Soho club it is to meet Peters played in the film by Sam Wannamaker and by Michael Feast, the play who his Soviet contact to tell his story at a beach house somewhere in Holland.

When he visit the House in Chelsea he is told that Smiley is not there because he does not approve of the particular plan to get Mundt.

There is a long sequence which takes up the greater part of the second BBC CD in which the long term plots to get Mundt is first played out. His inquisitor appears to know everything there is about him but the one area of special interest is his role in thee banking section and the two field trips he made to Denmark and Sweden to take money paid into accounts there. He meets Fiedler number two to Mundt and realises that Fiedler is trying to prove that Mundt is a British spy.

The case is that after Mundtler beat up George Smiley and left him for dead in Call of Dead, he somehow managed to escape capture and was back in East Germany within a few days. The case is that during this time he was captured by the British and cut a deal. This is the weakest part of the ploy because turning someone into a traitor who is also professional trained, experienced and become and a senior operative take time as well as skill. Control has explained that the visits to Copenhagen and Stockholm( I passed through in train the first and stayed a few days in the latter) were part of the plan and where it emerges the money was paid and then withdrawn coinciding with visits to both cities by Mundt. Leamas is asked to sign letters to the banks seeking statements and one of these returns to show the amount was withdrawn when Mundt was there. This is the tipping proof for which Fiedler has searched over the previous three years that is from before Leamas agents were killed by Mundt. Leamas lays the role of a sceptic brilliantly Exclaiming that as head of he Berlin station eh would have known if Mundt or anyone had been a British agent above his man and team. Control had gone to Berlin to meet his agent to thank him and they had together for some 15 minutes, 10 in one version during which Leamas had not been present. It then becomes necessary for Leamas to move to East Germany, someone close to the Polish Border because his picture has been placed in he British press as a wanted man for breaking his parole, released after serving two months of his sentence. This was not happen in normal circumstances and still playing the traitor for money Leamas blames the Soviets as a means of forcing him behind the Iron curtain. What Leamas does not know is that Smiley has never left the service but author of the plan to get Mundt) or so it still seemed) and he had visited the girlfriend and offered her support on behalf of Leamas. She had then found that the lease on her flat was paid at a cost of £1000 by a charity which meant she no longer had to pay rent from her small salary.

Dramatically this part of the BBC serial ends as Mundt arrives and arrests Leamas beating him and asking his men to soften him up further before bringing to interrogation.

There is opportunity for Mundt to put his allegations that Leamas is part of a Smiley plot to discredit him before Fiedler arrives with authority for the release of and that a Tribunal is to be convened to hear his case against his boss. It is a persuasive case which eh outlines before calling Leamas as is witness backed up by a file of statements and the circumstantial evidence that Mundt is a traitor and should be executed. In the film the girl friend is approach and congratulated for her work as secretary of the small branch which as she has admitted to Leamas was because the member who proposed her fancied her and the branch only comprised seven members in total. She seeks. We hen see her gaining a holiday from her employer having been offered am exchange visit to East Berlin, The manager says she will not mention the travel is to East Germany to their employer. There is more conversation between her and Ashe from Party with no mention of the Link in the radio play but in both mediums she is not told about being called as a witness for Mundt until finding herself in the Tribunal and seeing Leamas also there. He is emotionally outraged that she has become involved and is warned more than one that further outburst will lead him to being removed and worse. The young woman is confused, afraid more for Leamas than herself and does not know what to say. Given the predicament he knows she is now in he decides to try and rescue her by admitting the truth that he is part of a plot to discredit Mundt. The case against Mundt is dropped and Fiedler is told there will now be an investigation into his conduct.

In the film all Fiedler can do is protest that this is the plan all along and that the traitor is to go unpunished. In the radio play there a calmer talk between Fiedler and Leamas because he has realised that Fiedler is right and that he has been set up not to catch Mundt who is working for the British but to discredit Fiedler because Mundt was turned by Control and Smiley and with their blessing he got rid the East German network in order top protect himself.

In both mediums Leamas is the first to find himself free by Mundt and in the play he has to plead for the girl to be released with him. In both they are given a car and instructions where to go and where they will meet and shown how to get over the wall. In both Leamas is told to go first and both are told not to stop or look back whatever happened and to remember that only some people have been told of the plan to get placements into the West and if there are any problems and delays they will find themselves being shot at by guards under instruction and without knowledge of their protected position.

This leads to one of the most moving powerful final scenes in the a motion picture as the girl is shot down on orders and then Leamas turns back down and is killed with her. In the play there is a conversation involving Control and Smiley over the decision of Leamas not to escape by leaving the girl when he had opportunity. It is Smiley I think who comments that this was his way of coming out of the Cold. Smiley is asked how long will Mundt be kept in place to which the reply is for as long as it serves the British purpose.

BBC George Smiley A Murder of Quality

On impulse I decided to listen to another of the BBC radio plays on the Le Carré books on George Smiley A Murder of Quality written I suspect when Le Carré was unsure which direction his character would take as it does not concern the world of spies and the London Circus but a who dun it in which the plot is fairly stock and at times difficult to take in a first hearing. Gorge had required and living alone when he is contacted by a war time circus colleague who edits a religious newspaper and who has received a letter from a woman fearing her husband was trying to kill her who is the wife of a master at a public school called Calne (the spelling is mine) and where the brother of another former colleague also teaches. His contact sounds rather like Connie of later books

In addition to Simon Russell Beale in the role of George Smiley it features Geoffrey Palmer as the master at a public school called Fielding whose brother George regarded as a friend.

He agrees and telephones Fielding only to find that the woman has been battered to death and that a local lunatic is suspected and has gone on the run. He then contact the police who pouts him touch with a local Inspector who he meets the following day to hand over the letter that had been received. The inspector as in the first book where he meet Inspector Mendal is more than willing to seek the advice of George and then his direct help as the public school is a closed community with little contact with the outside world.

The first problem is to determine motive but as the play progresses it emerges that the dead woman although religious was more than harmless gossip but someone who enjoyed hurting and controlling people, with a temper and as it emerges capable of blackmail where she realises that one of the masters at the school, George’s contact no less had been involved in a homosexual offence appearing before magistrates one of whom was her father although how she was able to make the connection is not disclosed. While the attention of the police does switch to the husband who is arrested when comes to see George whom is amazingly free with giving his address in addition to phone number to strangers.

The local woman described a lunatic is indeed funny peculiar and frightening to those who do not understand and mental illness and to some who do. She appears implicated where she has possession of costume jewellery belonging to the deceased and a coat which the woman had collected for a charity proving clothing to Hungarian refugees, a cause which the white was closely associated and sent regular parcels of those she had collected. She is not involved.

The man responsible for the death her is in fact Fielding. He was brought back to the school at the end of the end of World War II by the head on the basis of being temporary without a contract and this had remained the position which meant he would not receive a pension. The woman and tormented him and he had planned to get rid of her and implicate the mad woman unaware that she written the letter about her husband.

He was also responsible for the death of senior school boy academically struggling but a cellist with promise. He had looked into a music case and seen clothing which the murderer and used had used and then sent to the Refugee Committee in the hope.

There was some philosophy about the relatively of truth and the way UK society was changing from an era when gentlemen had worn evening dress and ladies special dresses and social behaviour was clearly defined and the subject for comment if individuals failed to conform or appreciate standards. The more I have reflected on the play the more I find it is of no consequence as I suspect the book. The only interest is the involvement of George as an interlude when it appears he too little to do other than reflect on his past life and the failed marriage.

　

　

　

To contact and find that the woman was battered to death after having a meal with her husband with Fielding. Through a contact he is put in contact with an Inspector Rigby appointed to investigate the case. A senior officer at the station attended the school and is interested and there are various oddness, including that although she said she had not contact someone at her local church she mentioned her fears but not more two weeks before she had written to the journal edited by Georges former friend.

He takes the letter to the Inspector and agrees to give advice because the school is a closed community to the local community. Who hated this woman to kill her? He muses to his former colleague

　

The BBC Smiley Call of the Dead

The greater part of a year has passed since immersing myself in the world of John Le Carré and the opportunity to acquire the BBC broadcast plays of all the George Smiley novels as plays has provided the opportunity to engage again and yesterday I experienced the two disk 90 minute Call for the Dead and which I had previously appreciated as the 1966 film the Deadly Affair with James Mason as Smiley, Harriet Anderson as his ex wife, Simon Signoret at the wife the allegedly Foreign Office suicide Samuel Fennan and Maximillan Schell as his former spy and friend Dieter Frey. Given such an outstanding cast which also included Lynn Redgrave, Roy Kinnear and Harry Andrews as Mendal it was difficult to imagine that the BBC production could match the film where I have the 2006 produced DVD and believe I saw the original in Theatre as well as subsequently on TV. It is good especially the performance of Eleanor Bron as Mrs Fennan and Kenneth Graham as Inspector Mendal. No one can compare with the Alec Guinness interpretation of George Smiley but Simon Russell Beale does as good job as does Harry Goodman as Dieter Frey.

The story was therefore familiar rather like a classical music symphony such as the New World or the Beethoven Choral but enjoyable for a Friday night nevertheless reminding of Radio days long long ago.

George is asked to interview Fennan following receipt by his masters of a letter denouncing the civil servant as a spy. They walk in St James Park and George is impressed with the man who he likes and has no reservations about dismissing the letter without further investigation. The man is then reported to have committed suicide and his wife claims that the interview with George was the cause. George is under fire from his masters, (as usual) and when he visits the widow he takes a phone call, expecting one for himself and this sets the trail which leads to uncovering what really happened as well as to his own past as a field agent in post war and wartime Germany and the problems he had with marrying a woman who in the days of the forties to sixties would be described as free and then liberated as well as a minor aristocrat and who had the social class background that George lacked.

He enlists the help of local police man Inspector Mendal due to retire and thus commences the start of their relationship when he turns to the Inspector for refuge when an attempt is made on his life.

The story? Well Fennan was as George believed innocent and had in fact sent the letter provoking the investigation himself because he suspected that his wife was taking copies of his papers and passing them to someone. I am not sure if he tied this in with her regular visit to the local theatre company where she always sat in the same seat bringing a violin case with her and sitting with a gentleman who also occupied the same seat.

It was when George made the mistake of going for the walk that he was spotted by a former agent of his that the decision was taken for Fennan to die and for the attempt on life of George. It is the early morning alarm phone call that triggers the uncovering because Mendal establishes that it was made by the husband and not the wife as she claimed because she found it difficult to sleep and lost track of time as a consequence.

In the film we learn that Dieter was one of the men with whom his wife had an affair when he came to the UK after the War and it was one of his men Munk who had been the regular contact with the wife recruited after her experiences with the Nazi’s and who had killed her husband when they realised what was happening. Dieter had established a trading company in London as a cover for his operation. In the BBC Play I thought the closeness of the relationship between Smiley and Dieter was brought out more strongly as well as their mutual respect as the best of the best at their black art. It also brilliantly expresses the anguish felt by both men as Dieter presses Smiley to walk away than be killed and Smiley’s sense of loss and failure when it is Dieter than dies. His wife is an image in his mind throughout until the end with flashbacks in the film and as someone to talk to. A living conscience as well as memory, in his single loneliness in the radio play. In both as I assume the original book text, she contacts him saying her latest fling has not worked out and wants him back and he goes to collect her, as well as brining his career as a spook to an end and along with Mendal going to retirement of a kind. I almost forgot that he sets up a trap for the wife and Dieter at a production of a Shakespeare play in the West End during which they realise the position and the wife is killed within sight of the audience and the players.