‘Don’t let the side down, old boy’: interrogating the traitor in the ‘radical’ television dramas of John le Carré and Dennis Potter

ABSTRACT

This article examines three British television plays which draw upon political and aesthetic radicalism to examine the Cold War traitor. John le Carré’s The End of the Line (1970) uses a traitor’s interrogation to create an absurdist vison of Cold War espionage whilst Dennis Potter’s Traitor (1971) uses experimental flashback techniques to explore the motives and moral ambiguities surrounding treachery. Although le Carré’s later novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) closes off radical possibilities offered by these plays, Potter’s Blade on the Feather can be read as a riposte, redeploying the former’s generic and heritage conventions to newly subversive ends.

KEYWORDS:

• John le Carré
• Dennis Potter
• traitor
• Kim Philby
• television

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Tony Shaw, “Introduction: Britain and the Cultural Cold War,” Contemporary British History 19, no. 2 (2005): 114.

² Michael Kackman, Citizen Spy: Television, Espionage and Cold War Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 81.

³ James Chapman, Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 5.

⁴ Andrew Pixley, Callan: Under the Red File (London: Network, 2014), 73.

⁵ John Hill, “Radical Television Drama: Introduction,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 10, no. 1 (2013): 108.

⁶ John Caughie, Television Drama: Realism, Modernism and British Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 57–87.

⁷ Carl Gardner and John Wyver, “The Single Play: From Reithian Reverence to Cost-Accounting and Censorship,” Screen 24, no. 4–5 (1983): 122–3.

⁸ Tony Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 59.

⁹ Bruce Page, David Leitch, and Phillip Knightly, Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation (London: Andre Deutsch, 1968), 27.

¹⁰ Simon Willmetts and Christopher Moran, “Filming Treachery: British Cinema and Television’s Fascination with the Cambridge Five,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 10, no. 1 (2013): 49–70.

¹¹ This accusation appeared in the article often credited with popularising the term ‘Establishment’: Henry Fairlie, “Political Commentary,” Spectator, 22 September 1955, 5–7.

¹² Toby Manning, John le Carré and the Cold War (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 2.

¹³ James Thomas, “Television by James Thomas,” Daily Express, 30 June 1970.

¹⁴ Adam Sisman, John Le Carré: The Biography (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 289.

¹⁵ Carol Smith at A. P. Warr to Shaun MacLoughlin, script editor, The Wednesday Play, 17 July 1969, Drama Writer’s File: John Le Carré, T48/368/1, BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC), Caversham, UK.

¹⁶ Tom Bower, The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War, 1935–90 (London: Heinemann, 1995), 270.

¹⁷ John le Carré, “Introduction,” in Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation, ed. Bruce Page, David Leitch, and Phillip Knightly (London: Andre Deutsch, 1968), 15–17.

¹⁸ John G. Cawelti and Bruce A. Rosenberg, The Spy Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 6–7.

¹⁹ Robert Gordon, Harold Pinter: The Theatre of Power (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013).

²⁰ Manning, John le Carré and the Cold War, 51–73.

²¹ John le Carré, The Secret Pilgrim (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991 [1990]), 258–319.

²² Audience Research Report VR/71/417, “Play for Today: Traitor,” 1, BBC (WAC).

²³ Le Carré, “Introduction,” 10 (my emphasis).

²⁴ Dennis Potter, Potter on Potter, ed. Graham Fuller (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), 43.

²⁵ Troy Kennedy Martin, “Nats Go Home: First Statement of a New Drama for Television,” Encore 48 (1964): 31.

²⁶ John R. Cook, Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen, 2nd ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 74.

²⁷ Le Carré, “Introduction,” 11–12.

²⁸ Manning, John le Carré and the Cold War, 128.

²⁹ Caughie, Television Drama, 167.

³⁰ Potter, Potter on Potter, 42.

³¹ Patrick Wright, On Living in an Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain (London: Verso, 1985), 86.

³² Humphrey Carpenter, Dennis Potter: A Biography (London: Faber, 1998), 260–1.

³³ John le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (London: Sceptre, 2011 [1974]), 419–20.

³⁴ Manning, John le Carré and the Cold War, 113.

³⁵ Glenn Everett, “Smiley’s Fallen Camelot: Allusions to Tennyson in John le Carré’s Cambridge Circus Novels,” Papers on Language and Literature 27, no. 4 (1991): 496–513.

³⁶ Wright, On Living in an Old Country, 55.

³⁷ Joseph Oldham, Paranoid Visions: Spies, Conspiracies and the Secret State in British Television Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), 93–7.

³⁸ For example, Chris Dunkley, “Potter’s Weal,” Financial Times, 22 October 1980; and Stanley Eveling, “Keep Your Eye on the Ball, Potter,” Scotsman, 25 October 1980.

³⁹ For example, Miles Kington, “Blade on the Feather,” The Times, 20 October 1980; and Herbert Kretzmer, “The Eton Boating Swansong,” Daily Mail, 20 October 1980.

⁴⁰ Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 2010), 503–21.

⁴¹ Le Carré, “Introduction,” 11.

⁴² Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert, Guy Burgess: The Spy who Knew Everyone (London: Biteback, 2016), 299–300.

⁴³ Gardner and Wyver, “The Single Play,” 121.

⁴⁴ Mark Hollingsworth and Richard Norton-Taylor, Blacklist: The Inside Story of Political Vetting (London: Hogarth, 1988), 115.

⁴⁵ Tom Mills, The BBC: Myth of a Public Service (London: Verso, 2016), 64.

⁴⁶ John le Carré, “John le Carré on The Night Manager on TV: They’ve Totally Changed My Book – but it Works,” Guardian, 20 February 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/john-le-carre-the-night-manager-television-adaptation (accessed 4 October 2018).

⁴⁷ W. Stephen Gilbert, Fight & Kick & Bite: The Life and Work of Dennis Potter (London: Sceptre, 1995), 248.

⁴⁸ Sisman, John le Carré: The Biography, 394.

⁴⁹ Cook, Dennis Potter, 195.

⁵⁰ Potter, Potter on Potter, 43.

⁵¹ Dennis Potter, Blade on the Feather: pre-production script (1980; script number: S6257), ref: SCR-4424, 16, 18, 19, BFI National Archive, London, UK.

⁵² Ibid., 16.

⁵³ Ibid., 20.

⁵⁴ Manning, John le Carré and the Cold War, 114.

⁵⁵ Alan Bennett, Writing Home (London: Faber & Faber, 1994), 211.

⁵⁶ Joseph Oldham, “‘The Trouble with Treachery Nowadays’: Revisiting the Age of Treason in Philby, Burgess and Maclean and Blunt,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 15, no. 3 (2018): 396–417.

⁵⁷ Manning, John le Carré and the Cold War, 2.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph Oldham

Joseph Oldham is a teaching fellow in American Studies at the University of Hull. He has published the monograph Paranoid Visions: Spies, Conspiracies and the Secret State in British Television Drama (2017) and articles in the Journal of Intelligence History, the Journal of British Cinema and Television, Adaptation and Spy Chiefs: Volume 1 (2018).