ĭavid Cornwell, who wrote under the pseudonym John le Carré, worked as an intelligence officer for MI5 and MI6 (SIS) in the 1950s and early 1960s. It is also set against a theme of decline in British influence on the world stage after the Second World War, with the USSR and the USA emerging as the dominant superpowers during the Cold War. The book, based on the premise of uncovering a Soviet double agent in the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), offers a novelisation of this period. The five had risen to very senior positions in branches of the British government. Guy Burgess, Donald Duart Maclean, and Kim Philby, later known as members of the Cambridge Five, had been exposed as KGB spies. When Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was published in 1974, revelations exposing the presence of Soviet double agents in Britain were still fresh in public memory. In 2022, the novel was included on the ' Big Jubilee Read' list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. The novel has been adapted into both a television series and a film, and remains a staple of the spy fiction genre.

The novel has received critical acclaim for its complex social commentary-and, at the time, relevance, following the defection of Kim Philby.

It follows the endeavours of taciturn, aging spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 1974 spy novel by British-Irish author John le Carré.

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