Banished

I’ve written many times about my favourite book, which I am re-reading at the moment, and the 1979 BBC tv series, and I’ve written once about the 2011 film. I’m on social media and I am in the Facebook book devoted to the author and I’ve recently been involved in a very interesting discussion about the book and the film.

To find out more, read what I wrote about the film :

I wonder how many times I have read my favourite book – I know I first read it when it was dramatised and a friend and I followed the TV series and the book at the same time as it was so complex, so clever, so intriguing, that we had to have a reference to follow it. The book it was based on was published in 1974 but I didn’t read it until five years later when the BBC series was shown. I think I started watching it because it starred Alec Guinness (does that give you a clue?) but I was soon impressed by the truly stellar cast.  I have a feeling that once the series finished, and I had finished reading the novel over the weeks it was shown, I read it again straight away, all the way through.  I think that was the first time – despite studying English literature through O-levels (yes, I’m old) A-levels, and my degree – that I really understood what great writing was. A few years later, I went through a very difficult period for a number of reasons, and I read this novel again and again, it took me away from all the unhappy things I was struggling with. Since then, now I’m in happy times, I still read it frequently, for the sheer pleasure, and in fact I’m rereading it now, and I am still discovering things I’d never noticed or realised before.

The book? It’s ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ by the incomparable John le Carré. A film was made in 2011 and I was very excited at the prospect of seeing it, although I did wonder how it might be condensed into a few hours as the story-line is so complicated and intricate. I went along, taking my daughter, assuring her that she would enjoy it – but good grief! What a crashing disappointment!!! It was a travesty!!! Essential and key aspects of character, plot, intrigue were changed for no real reason which made the whole thing ludicrous and just plain silly! It had good reviews, I cannot imagine why, it was praised and awarded and highly acclaimed… It was a completely different plot, with different characters, set somewhere else but with the same title. It was embarrassing!!! How could Gary Oldman possibly be George Smiley? Too young, too slim, two-dimensionable!  I shall banish it from my memory.