George Smiley in the film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

There’s a bit somewhere in the middle of the George Smiley spy trilogy where the characters reach a point where they know their place in the world is facing huge change, an era of cold war and Empire is coming to an end, and while their methods seem increasingly outdated they carry on regardless for want of anything else to do.

As bizarre as this may sound these amazingly atmospheric set of novels provided a nice parallel for two social media events that I went along to last month. Continue reading →