'The Circus' - Inside and Out - Tinker Tailor Locations

POSTED BY CHRIS

Everybody seems to have their opinion about where 'The Circus' is. For those who came to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy through the film, it's Blythe House. 

For those of us who started with the BBC's adaptations it's Cambridge Circus and those that read the novels go along with that but are quick to point out that there has to be a turreted room at the top. But we're all missing the one that came first and fortunately here's John le Carré himself getting out of his taxi (at 16:53) and doing his own location report:

The location of David Cornwall's Circus is 50 Broadway, London SW1.

In our conversations, Control and I often wish that we'd started Guinness Is Smiley earlier. Perhaps le Carré might have enjoyed our sometimes irreverent look at his creation and been willing to act as a resource - sadly we'll never know.

Establishing shots show that the BBC filmed in Cambridge Circus, London WC2:

...and in the final episode the suspense is heightened through observing Tinker, Tailor and Soldier arriving (and one of them getting away first) from Mendel's lookout in the turret room at the top of 138 Shaftesbury Avenue opposite.

There's much for the location enthusiast in this shot. The welcoming light spilling onto Shaftesbury Avenue from the entrance to 'The Circus' shown on the right is the door to 115 Shaftesbury Avenue, which in Streetview looks like this:

It appears to be the side entrance to McDonalds. 

Then there is the ground floor where a door is visible. That was the location of Marks & Co, 84 Charing Cross Road and then there's the letters O-I-D-S that can be made out on the shop front to the extreme left. That's STAMINOIDS as in Staminoids Corner that 'aphra' referred to in the old BritMovie Forum in 2009. Whilst the shops retain their addresses on Charing Cross Road, the whole building is in fact 24 Cambridge Circus and as shown above, some lights are on and some aren't. I can't be sure, but I presume that's not just by chance. As le Carré writes in his novel:

Only on the fourth floor, out of the second window from the left, a pale glow issued. And Mendel knew it was the duty officers room; Smiley had told him....then down a floor to the four blackened windows of the radio section.

Gerhard Schreurs describes Cambridge Circus today:

24 Cambridge Circus currently houses a restaurant in its ground floor (with the side entrance still being in place). This address is featured in Google's Street View, which allows you to have a lookaround. The top floors of the Palace Theatre (from which the opening scene of TTSS was shot) and the top turret room in 138 Shaftesbury Ave can also be seen. The sycamore trees around number 24 have grown considerably since 1979 and 1982; at present they obscure most of the building, if the BBC were to use the same camera standpoint. Cambridge Circus was changed from a rather cramped roundabout into the crossroads which it now is, in the latter 80s, as it was a notorious source of traffic congestion during rush hours.

And at this point the challenge for the location enthusiast gets much harder. Obviously, without an outside view or a first hand account, locating a room in a building is difficult. And in the case of both adaptations it's definitely a building, a location. (Only one small scene in Tinker Tailor was filmed on a set, but that's another story!)

There's also such an interest in the real secret services. The internet has so many websites that discuss the locations of real government departments and some of them consider the location of fictional ones in the same article.

Readers in London may like to tear themselves away from this article to try the Spies and Spycatcher's London guided walk. I joined them several times when it was led by Alan Tichard and I'm sure that fact and fiction are still represented in equal measure.

In this article, pulling together what's available on-line and also through original research, we will prove where the BBC filmed the Circus interiors in 1979. Firstly, Gerhard Schreurs refers to the old Britmovie forum again, this time from member 'automotivehistorian':

'The Circus shots were filmed in Cork Street, London W1 opposite the car park. I worked at 3 Cork Street and before the crew took over and installed scaffolding and lighting it was an MI6 building. Green MoD plated Leyland Sherpas used to pull up and drop off items and there was an MoD PC on the door. The offices were on the first and second floors. I recognised the inside shots as it was very similar to our offices 

which also had a gated lift.'

Interviewed by The British Entertainment History Project, from 1:13:00, Marcia Wheeler, Production Unit Manager for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, describes their use of the Department of the Environment offices in Cork Street, London where the BBC filmed the series in 1978-79.

Marcia refers to the difficulty of operating in London. Even 40 years ago they couldn't park a catering truck outside but had the advantage of the kitchen facilities in the building. Filming Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy took 18 months all told, such was the disruption caused through industrial action. 

Writing in the Washington Post in 1979, Michael Kernan reports as Tinker Tailor is filmed live:

A man stands in an office doorway glaring balefully down a dingy corridor. He looks straight through the seven people clustered around him, through the floodlights, the tangle of cables, the huge camera.

"Red light and bell, please!" someone calls firmly. "No one to use the lift. Nice and quiet, now.

Everyone settle down. Action!"

The man stares for a long moment, hatred radiating from his aristocratic face. Then he steps back into the office and closes the door.

"Cut. Thanks very much. This shot ends this sequence. K'you!"

Everybody claps a bit. A makeup woman in jeans picks up her tray and goes away. The soundman unhooks a mike. Chatter resumes. There will be champagne downstairs in half an hour, for the crew has been shooting in this building for six weeks and everyone is sick to death of it. Director John Irvin talks quietly with the actor, Ian Richardson.

And we can go one better than that with Alec Guinness's own account of filming.

"The building in Cork Street - not very distinguished - had once been a government office. Almost certainly it had been an actual branch of the Circus," said Guinness. "Some of the signs were still there. The shopkeepers in the street said they knew all about it, of course: the dark, unmarked vans pulling up at all hours and men vanishing into the building with angled mirrors in all the corridors, steel shutters and signs where the radio equipment had been. They said they knew. Or it may have been hindsight because we were there."

Roy Smith assures us that Cork Street was ''C'' Branch, Protective Security. Alec Guinness says that some of the signs were still there. Well, what about this one, I don't think that Austen Sprigg's art department would go to the trouble of painting a number on a glass door.

But none of these excellent accounts reveal the actual number in Cork Street but we do have two clues. Firstly, James Mayor suggests the possibility of number 18 which looks like this today.

...but it looks too modern and secondly there's this entrance to the car park at number 30 (below) that 'automotivehistorian' refers to above.

Opposite that is number 3 and (because Cork Street's buildings are numbered consecutively) adjacent to his place of work is Clarebell House at 5 - 6 Cork Street.

In the most recent streetview above, the door to Clarebell House is obscured by building works, however, a view in 2012 shows the leaded light above the double doors.

Which can be positively matched to this screenshot from episode 3 at 2:28 as Peter Guillam walks into London Station.

In back of shot we can see the lower part of the decorative leadwork and below that we can look out onto Cork Street. Bearing in mind that the lens of Tony Pierce-Robert's Eclair NPR foreshortens just like Kenneth Macmillan's does in the later adaptation, isn't that Automotivehistorian's garage door at number 30 opposite.

So that's a 100% positive match, that scene was filmed at Clarebell House. Now what about the rest of the London Station scenes in Tinker Tailor.

Let's list them first:

Can we prove that all of these scenes were shot in Clarebell House? The building is very much in existence and the Stephen Friedman Gallery on the ground floor is open to the public 5 days a week. (That's right, you can actually walk through those hallowed doors - go visit 'The Circus'!)

Buildings in London are constantly being renewed or renovated and when I visited it was impossible to identify any traces of the original entrance that Guillam used or the location of Bryant's reception desk or the creaking lifts. 

However the view back out onto Cork Street confirmed it must be the right place because of the garage at number 30 opposite. The staff on duty knew nothing about the building's history and unfortunately didn't have any access to the offices above. Neither were there any details of which businesses are based there and on-line searches were inconclusive. However, even a cursory glance at the sash windows from the street confirms that this must be the BBC's location. And we can go one better because the three by three panes top and bottom only exist on the first floor. Those on the second floor are only three by two panes top and bottom. From the street today, the first floor appears to be a well lit open plan office but we can't get access. But we know what the windows looked like and beyond perhaps being exchanged for PVCu units of an identical design they haven't changed. Clarebell House doesn't appear to be listed.

I'm sure that if those windows weren't opaque we'd see Cork Street in 1978-79 - they were blanked out like that so we can't. Series Cinematographer, Tony Pierce-Roberts explains:

[I]n those days film stocks were pretty, pretty slow. So what you would do is you'd put tracing paper on the window. You'd put all your lights outside [...] and the camera was right at the furthest, as far back in the room you could possibly get, on the longest lens you could possibly get [...] and any movement just came from having to pan the camera with the actor. (Pierce-Roberts 2010a)

I'm sure the viewer had always assumed that all the shots look like that for dramatic purposes. Fortunately they are also not entirely unauthentic when compared to real photographs of the service's offices.

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Despite not being able to gain access to the upper floors we can consult the architectural plans. I am indebted to the staff of Westminster Libraries and Archives at St James's Park, just around the corner from 50 Broadway where David Cornwall worked.

Despite referring variously to 5, 5a, 5 - 6, and 6 Cork Street it's all the same building with it's front on Cork Street at the foot of the drawing and at the top, the back of the building on Cork Street Mews, the cul-de-sac behind. The earliest drawings are dated the 8th of May 1926 and the architect is Gervase Bailey

He, together with his spouse Ruby Levick were sculptors which may explain the elaborate decoration on the front of the building. Later drawings concern re-modelling to accommodate Collins the publisher and drawings from 1977 detail alterations to the ground floor for a hairdressers.

The drawings are contained in A4 manilla envelopes, show floor plans (concerning drainage or electrical provision) or architectural details and are either tracings or dyeline prints like this one of the first and second floors. (If you click on the image below you can view a higher quality image of the plan.)

The Capital I layout of the corridors is instantly recognisable from the adaptation and in Episode 3 at 3.27, Guillam meets Lauder Strickland by the barrier to the lift, it being impossible to differentiate on which floor they filmed. (Incidentally the room numberings are the same on the second and third floors.)

Behind them is a beverage machine of the type typical in the 70's.

Guillam and Strickland walk towards the front of the building, turn left and encounter Haydon in the corridor between rooms 8 and 4 with the lens foreshortening the view towards room 6 in the distance, where someone is sitting.

At 4.49 Strickland enters Roy Bland's office and this time, whilst it's hard to identify the room, because the window only has three by two panes we can conclude it was filmed on the second floor or higher. 

I can't authenticate the rest of the action in Episode 3. Either there's not enough evidence or, in the case of the toilets, the configuration doesn't exactly match.

And it's the same for much of the rest of the adaptation. The conference room changes its appearance. In Episode 1's cold open, in Episode 4 and at the end of Episode 7, a desk, table and cabinet are present.

Whereas in episode 3 a much larger table appears which is arranged parallel to the windows. Footage reveals it's filmed on the first floor and because there's three windows it must be rooms 11 or 12. 

I wish I could locate the Circus Archives where Guillam steals the Testify File but there's insufficient landmarks, no sash windows at all. Of course le Carré remarked in his video at the start of this article that no one ever got searched anyway. Unfortunately it's much the same with Sam Collins's spell as Duty Officer on the night of Saturday the 25th of November 1978.

From a location bashing point of view, the most revealing sequence is when Haydon arrives from 20.52. He exits the lift.

He goes round the corner to the left, through the corridor door and then arrives where the radio room and night duty officers rooms are. But in fact there's three rooms.

And I can't see three rooms arranged like that in the plans.

Nonetheless, we know many of the key interior scenes featuring 'The Circus' in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy were filmed at Clarebell House. In future articles we'll consider other office locations, including for Smiley's People.

As always we are delighted to receive additional information or research about our articles. We would particularly like to hear from anyone with knowledge of, or access to, the upper floors of Clarebell House. Feel free to get in touch at guinnessissmiley@icloud.com