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Published: 22 February, 2012

Good memories can be bad for you – in my case, warm recollections of the landmark 1970s BBC series of John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy overshadowed the recent film version.

So, while actor Gary Oldman, disappointed at Sunday’s Bafta awards, can still head for Hollywood in the hope of an Oscar for his role as spymaster George Smiley, I can only reflect on how bigger is not always better.

Back in 1979 I sat next to David Cornwell – le Carré’s real name – at the Bafta cinema preview of the first episodes of the acclaimed BBC TV series of the novel, scripted by Arthur Hopcraft, directed by John Irvin and starring Sir Alec Guinness.

Over many years, during my days as Editor of the Ham & High, the thriller writer – who made his name with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – was a personal friend, and I was always conscious of the demands he made on those who transpose his prose into film, TV and radio adaptations.

For example, the lame Polish colonel in Smiley’s People, partly shot on Hampstead Heath, uses his walking stick in the wrong hand – that did annoy him.

And I failed to spot his error about the specific trees in the bridleway avenue that runs alongside The Pryors, off East Heath Road, when he asked
me to read draft chapters.

Because, although he is writing fiction, Corn­well draws his fantasy out of fact, actual places – whether hothouse jungle or drinking dive – he has deliberately visited to ensure his scenario is correct.

It extends to real people, too, who have been part of his fascin­ating life and, especially, his time as a spy at the British Embassy in Bonn.

There was much speculation on whom he based Smiley until Cornwell revealed it to be an Oxford tutor.

Cornwell’s superb ability as a mimic in various languages is another part of the le Carré alchemy, his technique aimed at building up his intriguing complex stories from a slow start to a smash hit ending, one that leaves you breathless and full of wonderment.

Given those memories, the film by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson was a shock, not only because I found it tediously un-thrilling – often so dark as to be dreary – but because Cornwell had allowed his storytelling to be tamp­ered with, even tainted.

There is much to nag about for the le Carré cognoscenti, for whom subtle detail is all. What is Oldman’s Smiley doing swimming in the Hampstead ponds when he lives in Chelsea?

Why does he claim he doesn’t know what Karla, his Russian equivalent, looks like when the novel says the reverse?

Why has Peter Guillam, one of the Smiley suspects at the Circus, become a homosexual, and why has Istanbul been introduced into the plot?

And why has the vital scene where spy Jim Prideaux is trapped been changed from a forest in Czechoslovakia – for a very good reason – to a café in Budapest?

Worst of all is the portrayal of Connie Sachs, so brilliantly played by Beryl Reid in the TV series. She now ridiculously tells Smiley she is “seriously un****ed”, surely not a word used by le Carré.

The cast of the two productions don’t bear comparison, despite the presence of Colin Firth as Bill Haydon in the new film – previously played by the politely menacing Ian Richardson – at least not in my warm memory of the TV version.

Then there’s Smiley himself, the partly discredited spymaster brought out of cosy retirement to hunt down the Russian mole, leak­ing the Circus’s state secrets to Moscow. He first appeared in le Carré’s novel Call for the Dead and is described as a short and fat man with dishevelled clothing, dressed like a bookie and forever cleaning his glasses on his tie.

Indeed, when Wally Fawkes, the celebrated cartoonist Trog, met Cornwell at a dinner party at my Hampstead home, he produced such an image by request, but it was never published.

When I subsequently twice interviewed Sir Alec Guinness, the TV Smiley, he complained that the character had little to offer an actor to build on.

Inevitably, it was Guinness’s immaculate voice and the way he brilliantly modulates it with a raised eyebrow or glance, that brought Smiley to life.

Oldman makes no significant impact in the film – he is virtually silent for the first 20 minutes – and, apart from greying his hair, he sadly left me believing the film misguided and Oldman miscast.

Sour grapes? What’s wrong with a revival of a masterpiece?

Does it matter?

Probably not when you consider the commercial factors of making – and selling – a movie or TV series today.

There is another factor that may account for my discomfort.

Cornwell grew up with a conman father who paid for his education at Sherborne, Berne and Oxford by fleecing others, and he too has ended up as part of the conspiracy that has enabled him, so to speak, to write his personal past out of his system, almost like a long, aching confession.

Deception, moral and violent, is at the heart of the wicked world of spies and cheats, not to mention today’s dictators, bankers, politicians and the national press, whose deceit and greed has ruined lives and crashed the global economy. And reduced our faith in the future – along with my memories.

• The BBC TV’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is available for £8.49 on amazon.com