… He heard a voice in English from the Western side of the wall:
“Jump, Alec ! Jump, man !”
Now everyone was shouting, English, French and German mixed: he heard Smiley’s voice from quite close:
“The girl, where’s the girl?”
Shielding his eyes, he looked down at the foot of the wall…
   In 1963, John Le Carre picked up the baton dropped by Graham Greene and set about continuing the task of trying to turn spy thrillers into literature. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold wasn’t such a bad start. Certainly, the lonely, isolated figure of Leamus, wandering the frigid streets, head bent and hands in the pockets of his overcoat, is profoundly memorable. Curiously, it is a novel about an inert man who doesn’t do much other than wander about sadly, but still it is riveting. And then, in the end, when he finally takes independent action, it promptly leads him to the doom for which he was always heading. This little book with a funny title was a huge bestseller, and a few years later was made into a grim, black-and-white film. Richard Burton—who on screen had continually failed to live up to his reputation as a great actor—finally showed his power, able to make this colourless, ineffectual man into a truly fascinating character.