Photographed in a perpetually gloomy black-and-white, the film casts Richard Burton as a British agent who works an elaborate ruse in the wake of an operative’s shooting death by East German troops. The first le Carré adaptation in any medium set the tone for the others that followed, establishing the spy game not as a life of glamour and adventure, but as a world blanketed by paranoia and suspicion, populated by world-weary men with inscrutable motives.

‘The Spy Who Came in From the Cold’ (1965) These seven films and two mini-series give the flavor of le Carré’s uniquely jaundiced take on the spy thriller genre. Some go inside the not-so-fashionable lives of British agents while others follow outsiders - a bureaucrat, a hotel manager, an actress - as they’re brought into new worlds of intrigue and danger. While Alec Guinness’s definitive performance as George Smiley in the BBC mini-series versions of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (1979) and “Smiley’s People” (1982) are currently not available to stream in the U.S., there’s still a range of quality le Carré adaptations to sample over a half-century stretch. Coerced by British and American Intelligence, Blair journeys to Moscow to determine whether Bluebird’s manuscript contains the truth-or the darkest of fictions.At once poignant and suspenseful, John le Carré’s The Russia House is a captivating saga of lives caught in the crosshairs of history.Available for purchase at:Audible - Audiobook (Downloadable format)audiobooks.Few authors have had a better shake at the movies than John le Carré, whose sophisticated novels of Cold War atmosphere, moral ambiguities and wryly observed backroom machinations have long attracted talented filmmakers and leading actors. Or does she? The woman’s source (codename: Bluebird) will trust only Barley Blair, a whiskey-soaked gentleman publisher with a poet’s heart.

When a beautiful Russian woman foists off a manuscript on an unwitting bystander at the Moscow Book Fair, it’s a miracle that she flies under the Soviets’ radar. “The Soviet knight is dying inside his armour.”“Glasnost” is on everyone’s lips, but the rules of the game haven’t changed for either side.

The russia house john le carré