The Secret Pilgrim

PLAYAWAY: George Smiley is one of the most brilliantly realised characters in British fiction. Bespectacled, tubby, eternally middle-aged, and deceptively ordinary, he has a mind like a steel trap and is said to possess 'the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin'. The Berlin Wall is toppled, the Iron Curtain swept aside. The Secret Pilgrim is Ned, a decent, loyal soldier of the Cold War, who has been in British Intelligence all his adult life. Now, at the end of his career, he is forced to revisit his secret years. Ned illuminates the brave past of his hero and mentor George Smiley who, in one unforgettable evening, gives back to him the dangerous edge of memory to frame the questions that have haunted him for thirty years.