George Smiley was simply doing a favour for an old friend, Miss Ailsa Brimley, who edited a small religious newspaper. Miss Brimley had received a letter from a worried woman reader: 'I'm not mad. And I know my husband is trying to kill me.' The writer of the letter was one Stella Rode, wife to an assistant master at Carne School, Dorset, and by the time it arrived, she was dead. Carne was an ancient, self-regarding Church foundation, proud of its proper standards of social distinctions. George Smiley went there to listen, take sherry, ask questions and think. And thus uncover, layer upon layer, the complexities, skeletons and hatreds that comprised this little English institution.
- ISBN10 0340527307
- ISBN13 9780340527306
- Publish Date 21 June 1990 (first published 1 September 1964)
- Publish Status Transferred
- Out of Print 8 January 2003
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
- Imprint Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
- Edition New edition
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 192
- Language English