Tinker Tailor Smiley Carré
Review of the Bolinda Publishing Ltd. abridged audiobook anthology (2022) collecting 5 John le Carré novels from 1961 to 1979 as first narrated by the author in the 1980s.

The abridged audiobook recording has gone the way of the dodo bird in this present day of streaming and digital file downloads. Once upon a time though, it was the only practical medium for audiobook availability when it was first invented by producer Graham Goodwin. As co-producer and abridgement editor Suleika Dawson relates in her memoir The Secret Heart: John le Carré: an intimate memoir, Goodwin...

had started the whole trade. He devised the two-cassette, three-hour abridged reading as a product that was marketable at the price of a paperback and would suit factory requirements in production – C90 cassettes being the longest that were reliable for copying from the master tapes – then pitched the first six titles to EMI in the late seventies.

As it happened, Goodwin and Dawson lucked into having David Cornwell (who wrote using the penname of John le Carré) himself come into the studio to narrate the abridgements of several of his novels. This acquaintance also led into the long-term affair of Dawson with the author which she writes of in her memoir.

As I have been in the midst of a le Carré binge since seeing the film adaptation of his memoir The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life at TIFF earlier this year, I was curious to see if I could still find those narrations. Fortunately Bolinda Publishing has collected them in 2 anthologies. This present one uses a movie tie-in cover photo from the 2011 film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy which featured Gary Oldman in the role of UK spymaster George Smiley. It was not even listed, reviewed or rated on Goodreads until I added it recently.

See cover photo at https://www.brainfoodaudiobooks.co.uk/user/products/large/20150821_122706.jpg
The cover of the original 1982 abridged recording of Smiley's People as released on 2 cassette tapes by EMI Listen for Pleasure. Image sourced from Brainfood Audiobooks.

The performances by Cornwell are excellent throughout and the abridgements by Dawson are very efficiently done. I've read all of these books several times since the 1970s/80s and I did not feel that any significant sections were missing. This was even though the anthology of 13 hours is probably only 1/3rd of the likely 39 hours that full unabridged readings would require. Only the recording of the 2nd Smiley novel A Murder of Quality (1962) showed any audio artifacts from its 1980s recording era with some dropouts & changes in ambience, which were not very disruptive.

Overall these were very authoritative readings by the author and I enjoyed them immensely.

Trivia and Link
You can read the 1st chapter of the 1st George Smiley novel Call for the Dead (1961) titled A Brief History of George Smiley at The Guardian, May 22, 2009.

The 2nd anthology collection of abridged John le Carré novels is The Little Drummer Girl and Other Stories (2022). Not yet listed on Goodreads/Library Thing, the link goes to Audible. ( )