A retired missionary and his daughter, a Hong Kong policeman, an Italian orphan, an English schoolmaster, an American narcotics agent, a slovenly Kremlinologist, a mad bodyguard, the quite splendid Craw -- all are burned on the brain of the reader. If they are not marooned in loneliness, their cynicism corrodes or they go blank when there are no explanations, only helicopters. Loneliness, in fact, rather than betrayal, is the leitmotif. It is the leper's bell around their necks. They have only themselves to be true to, and they are no longer sure who they are. Not a page of this book is without intelligence and grace. Not a page fails to suggest that we carry around with us our own built-in heart of darkness.

The Honourable Schoolboy brings the second sequence to a heavy apotheosis. A few brave reviewers have expressed doubts about whether some of the elements which supposedly enrich le Carré later manner might not really be a kind of impoverishment, but generally the book has been covered with praise - a response not entirely to be despised, since The Honourable Schoolboy is so big that it takes real effort to cover it with anything. At one stage I tried to cover it with a pillow, but there it was, still half visible, insisting, against all the odds posed by its coagulated style, on being read to the last sentence...

Smiley's fitting opponent is Karla, the KGB's chief of operations. Smiley has Karla's photograph hanging in his office, just as Montgomery had Rommel's photograph hanging in his caravan. Karla, who made a fleeting physical appearance in the previous novel, is kept offstage in this one - a sound move, since like Moriarty he is too abstract a figure to survive examination. But the tone of voice in which le Carré talks about the epic mental battle between Smiley and Karla is too sublime to be anything but ridiculous. 'For nobody, not even Martello, quite dared to challenge Smiley's authority.' In just such a way T. E. Lawrence used to write about himself. As he entered the tent, sheiks fell silent, stunned by his charisma.