SMILEY

 JOHN LECARRE

 

ENGLISH blokes make good pirates an better spies. They are trained from boyhood to hide their feelings, so they become experts in the art of stealth and simulation. I lived in South Kensington as a neighbour of the big thills Lecarré and Smiley the character created by him meant a real person no fiction for me as a young journalist dispatching chronicles to Madrid.

 Alec Guiness made a tour the force giving flesh and bone to the hero of Lecarrés´s novels. I learned a lot from the Circus in the pubs of Kings Road and Chelsea. Smiley was a sergeant major grinning at me though in the sentry box. A sentinel of the West the entrance of the British headquarters of Berlin was he? He did not speak, he crowed going about Point Charly.

But the Cold War is Over, Berlin Wall is fallen. Since 1981 Big Brother is watching you. And all the power for the Israelis. Putin who was also a spy in those seems to have surrendered too.

 We lived in a crystal ball of Internet, all is transparent and apparent, and in a way indecent. That is hard for the British masters of deception; they bloody awful but I loved them. I had a few drinks in the pubs of South Kensignton. Those were the days, my dear friends.