I was at the wrap-up dinner for the adult reading program a couple of weeks ago, and we touched briefly on Tinker, Tailor..., which we all agreed could be somewhat confusing as it starts close to the end and is told in a very nonlinear fashion, so I declared, with much grandiosity, that I would undertake to write a timeline of the story told in a chronologically linear fashion. Well, I started that last week, and it started to be almost as long as the actual book, so I am starting over with a much less detailed timeline pulled from my memory. There are bound to be gaps which you can help me fill in at the discussion. There will be spoilers. In fact, the biggest spoiler shows up right at the beginning, so I am going to put the type in a light color that you have to select to read in order to not give anything away to those who haven't finished the book. You have to select it to read it.
John Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Outlined Chronologically
Before World War II: Bill Haydon and Jim Prideaux are at university together. Percy Alleline is at university, and Control is a professor. Karla is in London for a while (cover unknown). Bill Haydon is recruited into a group of pro-communist spies.
In the early post-war period: Smiley, Prideaux, Alleline, Haydon, and Control are all working for "the Circus," Smiley has also recruited Roy Bland and is soon to recruit Toby Esterhase. Karla is caught in the US and shipped back to Russia via India. Smiley goes to India to try to turn Karla and loses a key piece of information to Karla, along with his cigarette lighter.
At the height of the Cold War in the 1960's: Somewhere along the line, Bill Haydon has an affair with Smiley's wife, Ann. Percy Alleline comes up with an unbelievably fruitful source of Soviet intelligence, Source Merlin, whose product is dubbed "Witchcraft." From the beginning, Control believes that Witchcraft is a fraud and sets out to prove it. Witchcraft gains support among various ministries and is given a huge budget and its own safe-house, location unknown to even Control. Connie Sachs, who is working in the research department, partly through sources in the Netherlands and Japan, identifies a cultural attaché at the Soviet embassy, Polyakov, as "a six-cylinder Karla-trained hood if ever I saw one." This "hood" has a legman who is working under the cover name of "Lapin." Connie communications up the chain of command to Percy Alleline, and is shoved out of the Circus into enforced retirement.
Sometime in the late 60's after the Soviet crackdown in Czechoslovakia (1968): Control is approached by someone offering him a defector, a disillusioned Czech general, who has some important information about a high-level spy within the Circus. Control requisitions the services of Jim Prideaux to go to Brno, Czechoslovakia, to contact and retrieve the general. Control tells Prideaux about his suspicions of top officers in the Circus, The night before he leaves, Prideaux tries to reach the two men he trusts, Smiley and Haydon. According to Jerry Westerby, meanwhile, near Brno, in the woods around the farmhouse where Prideaux is to contact the Czech general, Russian and Czech troops are massing, with the Russians running everything, even before Jim arrives. As soon as he arrives in Brno, Prideaux realizes his cover is blown but tries to shake his surveillance and go through with the assignment anyway. He is shot, captured, tortured, accused of trying to assassinate a Czech general, and then swapped back to the British. Control is exposed and disgraced, forced out of the service along with anyone close to him, including Smiley. Sam Collins, the man who was on duty at the Circus the night of Prideaux's capture, calls Smiley's house when the spit hits the spam. Smiley is not there, but Bill Haydon shows up shortly, saying he got the news on the wire at his club
In 1973, at the present time of the story: Control is dead. Jim Prideaux has recovered from his wounds and is working as French instructor at a private boys school. Smiley is in retirement and at loose ends. He is commandeered by his former protegee, Peter Guillam, and taken to meet with the government overseer of intelligence matters, Oliver Lacon, and one of the Circus' former shady operatives, Ricki Tarr, who had disappeared, presumed defected, 6 months earlier in Hong Kong. Tarr tells Smiley of a potential Soviet defector who was hustled back to Russia to be tortured and shot as soon as Tarr contacted London about her. Irina had left behind a diary where she named a former lover of hers, Ivlov, as "Lapin" former dogsbody in the London Soviet embassy, names Polyakov as a General Viktorov, known graduate of Karla's spy school, and tells of a mole, "Gerald," a high-ranking official within the circus, who is being handled by Polyakov/Viktorov. From there, Smiley follows the clues to expose Bill Haydon as the mole. (You can finish the rest for me; I have to get ready for work).
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