The Secret Pilgrim

John Le Carré's novel The Secret Pilgrim isn't really a Smiley novel, even though the Great Man features in the framing story. Rather it's a series of connected picaresque adventures featuring Smiley's former protégé Ned, the disgraced former head of the Circus's Russia House.

Counting down his remaining days, Ned has been shuffled off to the head the training academy at Sarratt. On a whim he decides to invite Smiley to give the final address to the graduating class, certain that the old spook will refuse. But Smiley, unexpectedly, accepts and, in a long evening, works his magic, enchanting and enthusing the newest generation of British spies. Prompted by Smiley's words, Ned finds himself musing on his career in the Service, from the first crisis that requires him to choose between friendship and duty to his final run in with a particularly noxious capitalist intent on betraying everything he knows about the secret world.

The stories are light on action but heavy on character. Ned is almost always unhappy in one way or another, at odds with his wife, estranged from his son, constantly trying to convince himself that might actually be in love with his latest mistress. He constantly worries that every time he has been tested by life's great decisions, he has been found wanting. He becomes infatuated with his best friend's cousin but does nothing about it; he allows himself to be convinced that his Latvian girlfriend is a spy; he becomes caught up in a con but fails to persuade his superiors. Constantly baffled by the absurdities of life and painfully aware that he has trapped himself in unhappiness, Ned often finds himself empathising with the people he has been sent to deal with: a former Jesuit who has, Kurtz-like, gone rogue in the jungles of Cambodia; an intense German terrorist with connections to Northern Ireland; and a lonely civil service nobody seduced by simple friendship.

While some of the stories are more successful than others, the standard is generally pretty high and the world weary, slightly baffled, tone works rather well. There are cameos from handful of characters from the Karla trilogy, with Peter Guillam and Toby Esterhase the most frequent visitors, and a rather touching final farewell from George as he takes his final leave of Sarratt, the Circus, four generations of spies, and, finally, of Le Carré's readers.