The Guinness Diaries

I should start this article with an apology for the radio silence. I could tell you that I have been 'burrowing in the files', and as you are about to discover that is true to an extent, but real life has also got in the way these last few months. Publishing new material has unfortunately taken a back seat I'm afraid but now I'm back on the beat.

One of the objectives of this website is to publish new content about the making of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People. New content requires new sources of information though and they can be difficult to come by with so much time having passed since these series were broadcast.

As a Doctor Who fan, I was aware of the amazing work undertaken by Richard Bignell to make material held in the BBC Written Archives Centre accessible to fans of the series. It set me thinking about what the BBC might hold in their archives for Tinker Tailor and Smiley's People. 

I managed to make an appointment to visit the archive in Reading as a private researcher back in 2019. Prior to my visit I was told by the archivist that there was no production file for Tinker Tailor. I couldn't believe they would have retained nothing about such an important production, so the archivist kindly agreed to do a broader search for me. Fortunately they found the production file - it had been mislabelled Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy!

I'm pleased to say I have been able to use some of the contents of the written archive to inform and supplement a number of articles I have have written for the website over the last few years. The BBC were also kind enough to include my production notes in a booklet with the recent blu-ray release of Smiley's People.

It may not be the most impressive building from the outside but if you have a passion for an old BBC series then the Written Archives Centre is a wonderful place to visit.

In 2021, Chris replied to one of my articles. I was so pleased that I'd found a collaborator. Like me he'd watched the original programmes and bought them on VHS and DVD. He'd recognised several locations and tried to identify the rest. He'd previously written up his research in the comments section of several YouTube videos but the videos had been subsequently removed. He had the 'gen' and I had the website - it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

And how well it all worked. We've been continuing to write original articles but looking out for possible new sources of Witchcraft material. And it was Chris who drew my attention to the fact that Alec Guinness's diaries were available to researchers at The British Library in London.

All of which led to me spending a very unusual day in October last year in the company of Alec Guinness. It honestly felt like it. As I set off for London and the British Library the late actor was very much on my mind. I’d made the appointment a couple of months earlier but on the journey up it struck me for the first time that I was going to be reading someone’s private diaries. That’s something you don’t do. 

I was obviously most interested in the diaries that covered the periods when Guinness was filming Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People, but I began to realise that I wouldn’t find details of the filming and production set out on their own. They would be mixed in with all the other events occurring in his life. And I started to feel a bit uncomfortable about it all.

I found myself wondering what he would have thought about a complete stranger travelling many miles to read his 40-year-old private diaries. I settled on ‘mildly disconcerted’.

As I exited Kings Cross Station and began the short walk up Euston Road to the British Library, I realised I was right in the heart of The Ladykillers territory and I couldn’t resist a detour up Argyle Street. Guinness seemed to be with me at every turn on this day. 

Argyle Street today (left) and how it looked in The Ladykillers (right) in 1955

On finding my way to the British Library I entered the silence of the reading room. I wasn’t allowed to take my bag into the reading room (just pencil and paper) and I thought of Peter Guillam having to leave his bag with Alwyn while locating the ‘Testify’ file at the Circus. At that point I actually began to hear the instrumental themes from Tinker Tailor and Smiley’s People playing in my head! 

I was presented with the diaries on a felt lined tray and I made my way to one of the tables to review them. I was allowed to take my mobile phone into the room but, for copyright reasons, I was not be allowed to photograph any entries in the diaries. (At least the photo on this page of the covers of the diaries gives the reader a sense of what I was looking at.)

As I couldn’t photograph any entries I decided to focus solely on the periods when filming took place and note down every and any entry related to both series. When I'd visited the BBC Written Archives Centre I had read several hand written letters from Guinness and remembered that his handwriting was not the easiest to read. As these were pocket diaries his writing was obviously quite small, which meant I often couldn’t quite make out what he had written! (To make things even more difficult his entries were in different colour felt tip pens, I think to differentiate work, social and religious appointments.) I decided to just write down what the content looked like on the page and try and make sense of the information later.

It did feel odd at first to be reading Guinness’s private diaries, to be holding the very books he carried around with him in the 1970s and 80s when filming was taking place. The content is a strange mixture of the mundane (he commented every day on the weather and his location) and the personal (his mood, his appointments, his frequent visits to church and confession). 

I spent about five hours reading and noting every scrap of detail about both series. In all that time I came across only one entry that most people would consider derogatory but I felt it had clearly been written in anger. Other than the aforementioned entry, Guinness wrote cordially and respectfully of others. 

I've read stories of Guinness complaining about his colleagues but in contrast, in his personal diaries, again and again he singled them out for praise, in particular Hywel Bennett, Michael Jayston, Beryl Reid, Michael Goff, Maureen Lipman, Michael Byrne and Bernard Hepton. He mentioned his dog, Walter, frequently. He mentioned his wife, Merula, just the once - and that was only to say she took Walter to the vets!

Alec Guinness with Walter

Altogether it was a fascinating and revealing day, which I genuinely felt I had spent in the company of Sir Alec Guinness. 

I went home, typed everything up and sent it straight over to Chris. From just one or two of Guinness's squiggles Chris has been able to piece together the clues to find previously unknown locations which we'll publish in a series of successive articles. And you can read the first of these articles shortly...