Le Carré created Smiley as an intentional contrast to James Bond, a character who he believed depicted an inaccurate and damaging version of espionage.

[2] Short, overweight, balding, and bespectacled, Smiley is polite and self-effacing and frequently allows others to mistreat him, including his serially unfaithful wife; these traits mask his inner cunning, excellent memory, mastery of tradecraft, and occasional ruthlessness.

"[6] In contrast to other fictional spies of the era, Smiley is described as being short, overweight, balding, and middle aged, and he is frequently compared to either a toad[7] or a mole.

[9][11] He wears thick, round glasses (Le Carré does not describe the style or nature of the spectacle frames) and tends to clean the lenses on the 'fat' end of his tie while contemplating something of great significance; the gesture is ubiquitous enough that other characters consider it to be something of a trademark.

[14] Smiley's wife Ann calls him "breathtakingly ordinary", which Polmar and Allen wrote was an advantage for a spy, the very nature of their profession which requires them to be as inconspicuous as possible.

He ages into his sixties during the subsequent two novels, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People, the latter of which depicts him in declining physical health as he grows older and heavier.

Smiley underwent training and probation in Central Europe and South America, and spent the period from 1935 until approximately 1938 in Germany recruiting networks under cover as a lecturer.

It is reported with a reference to the real life Gouzenko affair that "the revelations of a young cipher clerk in Ottawa had created a new demand for men of Smiley's experience".

Although the Circus offers him his job back as a reward, Smiley declines, instead leaving England for a tentative reunion with Ann, who had earlier left him for a racing car driver.

Smiley spends much of the story bemoaning the loss of the talented agents who were his mentors prior to the war, and their replacement by such talentless bureaucrats as the current head of service, Maston, who is widely, if secretly, mocked.

It's revealed that, following the events of Call for the Dead, Smiley and Guillam succeeded in turning Mundt, the sole survivor of the spy ring, into a British double agent, and sent him back to East Germany.

Although Liz's unwitting role ultimately ensures the mission's success, it also results in her death, prompting a grief-stricken Leamas to give up and let himself be shot dead at the Berlin Wall as Smiley attempts to extricate him.

Smiley plays a small but pivotal role in The Looking Glass War, le Carré's fourth novel, occupying the "North European desk" at the Circus.

He appears sporadically throughout the book as a liaison to The Department, a military intelligence agency, which attempts to surreptitiously conduct a dangerous and unnecessary operation without the Circus' knowledge.

During this period, Smiley's position in the Circus comes to be threatened by his contemporary Bill Haydon, proteges Toby Esterhase and Roy Bland, and ambitious newcomer Percy Alleline.

Smiley is installed by Whitehall as the new head of the Circus and tasked with both tying up loose ends left by Haydon's treachery and launching a successful espionage mission to prove the organisation's viability.

The Honourable Schoolboy, set in 1974, finds Smiley having assembled a new team, made up of former colleague Connie Sachs; Doc di Salis, a Jesuit priest who is an expert on communist China; Guillam; and a rehabilitated Esterhase.

After learning that Karla has been making exorbitant payments to a heretofore unknown Chinese source, Smiley tasks agent Jerry Westerby with going to Hong Kong disguised as a reporter and identifying the spy.

Ned reveals that, shortly before the events of the book, he temporarily returned to the Circus to chair the "Fishing Rights Committee", a body set up to explore possible areas of co-operation between British and Russian intelligence services.

[20] It has been suggested that le Carré subconsciously took the name of his hero from special forces and intelligence officer Colonel David de Crespigny Smiley.

[26] In an introductory essay dated March 1992, le Carré wrote: And it is no surprise to me that, when I came to invent my leading character, George Smiley, I should give him something of Vivian Green's unlikely wisdom, wrapped in academic learning, and something of Bingham's devious resourcefulness and simple patriotism also.

[33] This was a joint send-up of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Professionals TV series, with Ronnie Corbett playing a bungling version of Martin Shaw's Doyle.

A series of sketches in The Fast Show star John Thomson as a Smiley-like interrogator who finds it incredibly easy to prompt the interrogatee to reveal his crimes, usually simply by introducing himself.

Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse performed a sketch in 2012 about there being two George Smileys: a reference to the vastly different portrayals in the filmed versions of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.