Same-old, same-old Curzon Street

  Violating my holiday from

  care, Heywood Hill wrote

  in to announce their new

  website, and I summarily

  offer the penalty of hot

  publicity in the same me-

  dium. We've visited them

  before from this address,

  but this time I leave it

  all up to John le Carré,

  in a well-recollected in-

  stance of intrusion upon

  a fellow's private time.

.. he solemnly set off for

Heywood Hill's bookshop in

Curzon Street, where he oc-

casionally contracted friend-

ly bargains with the prop-

rietor. On the way he became

even more irritable, and from

a call-box sought an appoint-

ment with his solicitor for

that afternoon.

"George, how can you be so vulgar?

Nobody divorces Ann. Send her flow-

ers and come to lunch."

This advice bucked him up and he

approached Heywood Hill with a mer-

ry heart only to walk slap into the

arms of Roddy Martindale emerging

from Trumper's after his weekly

haircut.

Martindale had no valid claim on

Smiley either professionally or

socially. He worked on the fleshy

side of the Foreign Office and his

job consisted of lunching visiting

dignitaries whom no one else would

have entertained in his woodshed ..

He affected buttonholes and pale

suits, and pretended on the flim-

siest grounds to an intimate famil-

iarity with the large back rooms 

of Whitehall.

With due regard for my shameless

fondness for Trumper's Portugal -

a happy evocation of another Age

in California - I credit the nov-

elist for a withering appreciation

of that very same fateful juxtapo-

sition we've all experienced, of

the sublime bookstore and the tem-

ple of vanity. Here was Tillman

Place, there Tiffany; here was

Scott Martin, opposite Wilkes.

This lent many a fanciful jaunt

the flatulence and bad company of

a supererogatory lunch, and not

a reader has lacked for Smiley's

regret of Martindale.

Hurrah for HH, as ever.

John le Carré

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Penguin Books, 1974©