The Secret Pilgrim

Simon Russell Beale stars in this BBC Radio full-cast dramatization by Robert Forrest of John le Carre’s last Smiley novel.

George Smiley is one of the most brilliantly realized 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 down and the Cold War is over, but the world s second oldest profession is very much alive. Smiley accepts an invitation to dine with the eager young men and women of the Circus latest intake, and over coffee and brandy, by flickering firelight, he beguilingly offers them his personal thoughts on espionage past, present, and future. In doing so, he prompts one of his former Circus colleagues into a searching examination of his own eventful secret life.

Starring the award-winning Simon Russell Beale as Smiley, and with a distinguished cast including Patrick Malahide as Ned, this engrossing dramatization brings le Carre’s masterful novel vividly to life.