Author Description

[Performed by a Full Cast starring Simon Russell Beale] A BBC Radio 4 Full Cast Dramatization of the final book in John le Carres Karla trilogy. Starring award-winning Simon Russell Beale as Smiley, and with a distinguished cast including Anna Chancellor, Lindsay Duncan, Maggie Steed, Alex Jennings, and Kenneth Cranham, this enthralling dramatization captures every nuance of le Carrés complex and compelling 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. When a Russian émigré is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, Smiley is called out of retirement to exorcise some Cold War ghosts from his clandestine past. What follows is Smiley the human being at his most vulnerable and Smiley the case officer at his most brilliant; and it takes to a thrilling conclusion his career-long, serpentine battle with the enigmatic and ruthless Russian spymaster Karla.