{"id":2403,"date":"2022-08-08T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T16:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=2403"},"modified":"2023-10-27T17:10:35","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T21:10:35","slug":"tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-john-le-carre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2022\/08\/tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-john-le-carre\/","title":{"rendered":"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy<\/i> – John Le Carre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Second Monday<\/a> selection. I had never read this before and loved it – I went on to watch the 2011 movie and also started the BBC miniseries<\/a> (which clearly inspired the wonderful Fry & Laurie “Control and Tony<\/a>” sketches).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked up just one thing: hibitane, a brand name for the disinfectant chlorhexidine<\/a> but genericized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Short quotes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  • “…the late Mr. Maltby, the pianist who had been called from choir practice to help the police with their inquiries, and as far as anyone knew was helping them to this day, for Maltby\u2019s trunk still lay in the cellar awaiting instructions.”<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Ricky Tarr: \u201c\u2018To possess another language is to possess another soul.\u2019 A great king wrote that, sir, Charles the Fifth.\u201d (It’s widely attributed to Charlemagne but I’d love to find an authoritative source).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Lacon: \u201cI once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn\u2019t. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one\u2019s aims are<\/em>, that\u2019s the trouble, specially if you\u2019re British.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Connie Sachs: \u201cHer formless white face took on the grandmother\u2019s glow of enchanted reminiscence. Her memory was as compendious as her body and surely she loved it more, for she had put everything aside to listen to it: her drink, her cigarette, even for a while Smiley\u2019s passive hand. She sat no longer slouched but strictly, her big head to one side as she dreamily plucked the white wool of her hair.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Connie again: \u201c\u2018Poor loves.\u2019 She was breathing heavily, not perhaps from any one emotion but from a whole mess of them, washed around in her like mixed drinks. \u2018Poor loves. Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves. All gone. All taken away. Bye-bye, world.\u2019\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • The Hotel Islay: \u201cThe traffic roared past it all night. But the inside, though it was a fire-bowl of clashing wallpapers and copper lampshades, was a place of extraordinary calm.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Control: \u201ca carcass of a man by then, with his lank grey forelock and his smile as warm as a skull.\u201d <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Allwyn: \u201can effeminate Marine who spoke only of weekends. Till Wednesday or so, he spoke of the weekend past; after that he spoke of the weekend to come.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • “‘I\u2019m Joy,’ she said, in a theatrical voice, like ‘I\u2019m Virtue’ or ‘I\u2019m Continence.’ It wasn\u2019t his coat she wanted but a kiss. Yielding to it, Guillam inhaled the joint pleasures of Je Reviens and a high concentration of inexpensive sherry.”<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Mendel to Guillam: \u201cCheer up, Peter, old son. Jesus Christ only had twelve, you know, and one of them was a double.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • \u201cin the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • \u201cI rather like Karla\u2019s description of committees, don\u2019t you? Is it Chinese? A committee is an animal with four back legs.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Guillam when Hayden\u2019s betrayal has sunk in: \u201cHaydon was more than his model, he was his inspiration, the torch-bearer of a certain kind of antiquated romanticism, a notion of English calling which—for the very reason that it was vague and understated and elusive—had made sense of Guillam\u2019s life till now. In that moment, Guillam felt not merely betrayed but orphaned.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • \u201cBill had loved it, too. Smiley didn\u2019t doubt that for a moment. Standing at the middle of a secret stage, playing world against world, hero and playwright in one: oh, Bill had loved that, all right.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A Second Monday selection. I had never read this before and loved it – I went on to watch the 2011 movie and also started the BBC miniseries (which clearly inspired the wonderful Fry & Laurie “Control and Tony” sketches). I looked up just one thing: hibitane, a brand name for the disinfectant chlorhexidine but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-second-monday-book-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2403"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3626,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403\/revisions\/3626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}