[In The Little Drummer Girl] Le Carré has moved right away from Smiley-land to the Middle East, from the Cold War to the passions of the Israeli-Arab conflict, from national security to national hate. Smiley himself is no great miss, still less his tiresome wife. The fascination of the Smiley books lay increasingly in what he did rather than what it did to him, and in Smiley's People we were given a splendid gala performance by the espionage circus, a sort of celebratory perhaps even valedictory climax to a life of deception and make-believe. The skill was breathtaking but you didn't lie awake afterwards wondering what the performers did when they went home. We'd come a long way from the focal humanity of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

Now in The Little Drummer Girl the human dimension tops the bill once more, though happily not...