Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

RADIO 4 EXTRA, 10.00AM

In the Complete Smiley season this network is currently running, here’s Radio 4’s version of John le Carré’s 1974 novel where the retired George Smiley (beautifully played by Simon Russell Beale) is covertly called back from retirement to unmask the traitor within the British secret service. Next week, Radio 4 begins a special Cold War series of documentaries on real events in the post-war decades when tensions between the Russian and the west were acute and the real lives of spies turned out to be just as dramatic as le Carré portrayed them.