George Smiley is a fictional character created by John Le Carre.

Smiley is an agent working for MI6, the British overseas intelligence agency. He is the central character in the novels Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People, and a minor character in a number of others. He was played in two successful television adaptations by Sir Alec Guinness.

Biography

Although Smiley, as a fictional character, has no biography, as such, Le Carré does leave us tantalising clues in the novels.

Smiley was probably born in the years around 1906 to middle-middle class parents in the South of England, and attended a minor public school and an antiquated Oxford college of no real distinction, studying modern languages with a particular focus on German. In July 1928, while considering post-graduate study in that field, he was recruited into the Secret Intelligence Service by Jebeddee.

He underwent training and probation in Central Europe and South America, and spent the period from 1935 until approximately 1938 in Germany teaching as a cover, and recruiting networks. In 1939, with the commencement of World War II, he saw service not only in Germany, but also in Switzerland and Sweden.

In 1943, he was recalled to England to work at MI6 headquarters, and in 1945 successfully proposes marriage to Lady Ann Sercombe, a beautiful, aristocratic and libidinous young lady working as a secretary there. Ann would prove a most unfaithful and rather condescending wife. In the same year, Smiley left the service and returned to Oxford. However, in 1947, with the onset of the Cold War, Smiley is asked to return to the Service, and in early 1951 moves into counter-intelligence work, where he will remain for the next decade. During that period, Smiley first meets his Soviet nemesis, Karla in a Delhi prison. Karla proves impossible to crack and manages to filch Smiley's lighter, a gift from his wife.

We first encounter Smiley in Call for the Dead which is Le Carre's first novel. At the conclusion of this book, he retires from the "Circus". He is pursuing a sedate life of scholastic research in German literature when he investigates a murder at a famous prep school in Le Carre's next novel, A Murder of Quality.

The Spy who Came in from the Cold propelled Le Carre to international reknown. In this, his third novel, Smiley is back in the "Circus" and may already have become one of "Control's" top aides. The events in this book probably took place in 1962, although during this period Smiley's timeline becomes a little tangled. Smiley appears again in The Looking-Glass War, but only in a peripheral role. Smiley subsequently rises up the ranks of MI6 in the late 1960s and early 1970s until he is the right-hand man of "Control", only to be eased out in November or December 1972 after the Prideaux fiasco in Czechoslovakia and the death of 'Control'.

In September or October 1973, the events of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy take place, with Smiley successfully managing to expose the long-term Soviet agent, or, as the books have it, "mole", codenamed "Gerald". The investigation reveals that Gerald, who was actually a senior member of the anti-Control faction which took over the Service the previous year, has passed an enormous quantity of high-grade intelligence to the USSR. The anti-Control faction is discredited and Smiley becomes Chief of the Service in late November 1974 to clean up the resultant mess.

Sometime in 1975 or 1976, Smiley finally retires, although he is brought back from retirement in late 1977 to investigate the death of an elderly Estonian nationalist activist and MI6 agent, the trail of which leads Smiley to capture Karla in Berlin in December 1977.

Smiley pops up in various Le Carré novels as a bit player throughout the 1980s, lastly in 1989 when he appears in The Secret Pilgrim chairing the Fishing Rights Committee.

Smiley is sometimes considered the anti-James Bond in the sense that Bond is an unrealistic figure who relies on gadgets and is more a portrayal of typical male fantasy than actual government agent. George Smiley, on the other hand, is a quiet, mild-mannered man who lives by his wits and, unlike Bond, is a master of bureaucratic manoeuvering rather than gunplay. He is regularly depicted as an exceptionally skilled spymaster and student of espionage. Though he has a very strong moral conscience, he also understands the grisly and unethical aspects of his profession. Le Carre describes him as a somewhat short and fat man, who always wears expensive but badly fitting clothes. He also has a peculiar habit of cleaning his glasses on his necktie.