It’s a few weeks old, but I just came across this bit in the Guardian:
Francesca Martin
Wednesday June 4, 2008
John le Carré’s hit thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is to hit the big screen. The author, whose real name is David Cornwall, is at work with the scriptwriter Peter Morgan on a film adaptation of the novel, first published in 1974 as the first instalment in a trilogy about cold war spies. To be produced by Working Title - the production company behind most of the British film industry’s biggest hits - it will be the first feature-film version of the novel, which was made into a television series starring Alec Guinness in 1979. According to Morgan - whose other recent credits include the forthcoming films State of Play, Frost/Nixon and The Damned United - le Carré is full of sage advice: “‘When you return to earlier work,’ he cautioned, ‘you feel two rather unpleasant emotions. One is God, this is awful, and the other is how can I ever write something as good ever again?’”
the bookthe wonderful miniseries starring Alec Guinness
Tinker, Tailor
an interesting interview
… [F]rom the moment Alec’s voice became that music in my ear, I felt that I was hampered.
I cannot help voicing my characters and listening to them - that’s the failed actor in me - so I think that Alec must have accelerated my departure. I wanted to bury Smiley, I wanted to write about younger people, I wanted to be unencumbered. Alec made that happen faster.