Looking for Le Carré in Oxford - A Visitor's Guide

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There has been quite a bit of press coverage over the last few weeks about the opening of a new John le Carré exhibition in Oxford. 'Tradecraft' explores the way le Carré worked and draws on content from the huge archive of his personal papers and correspondence that are held at the Bodleian Library.

Myself and my fellow correspondent, Chris, set off to Oxford to explore the exhibition when it opened a few weeks ago. The purpose of this short article is to share some useful information for those considering a visit and to highlight the Tinker Tailor filming locations that are close by.

If you are arriving by car you will need to make your way to one of the 'Park and Ride' services on the outskirts of the city. From there, it is a fifteen minute journey to Magdalen Street in the city centre and then just a short walk to the exhibition at the Weston Library.

I'm not going to detail the content of the exhibition as I do not want to spoil it for anyone who intends to visit - in any event there are plenty of reviews online. If you enjoy the full breadth of le Carré’s work then there is much to immerse yourself in - I'd allow at least an hour to fully digest the content. 

As you walk out of the exhibition, you are a stones throw away from the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy filming locations identified in previous articles. Just around the corner near the Bridge of Sighs is the location of the end credits sequence and directly in front of you, is the Bodleian Library where we see Smiley before he visits Connie. (You will have to venture out a bit further to see Connie's Flat in Northmoor Road.)

All of these locations are marked on the map below - if you click on the image you can view a larger version of the map. More detail about these locations can be found in the links to the articles we have highlighted in the paragraph above.

If you are looking for a nearby place to eat, Chris and I can recommend the King’s Arms, which is a few yards from all the central locations - other excellent hostelries can be found close by.

We now know more about the dates that filming took place in Oxford. The scenes of Smiley walking through the Bodleian and to Connie's flat were filmed on Monday 19th February 1979. The interior scenes in the flat were originally filmed on the 19th and 20th February. Unfortunately, fogging occurred on the negative for these interior scenes, which necessitated a reshoot. The production team returned to Oxford on Tuesday 6th and Wednesday 7th March 1979 to reshoot the Smiley/Connie scenes. The end credits shot was also filmed on Wednesday 7th March.

In our article about the end credits, we speculated as to why Oxford was chosen as the closing shot for the television series:

We know that Oxford was where Haydon and Prideaux met and likely became lovers. Bland and Smiley also went to Oxford and Smiley actually worked in the Bodleian Library for a time. Perhaps this shot of the University buildings bathed in warm, sepia tones is looking back on those halcyon days. 

One of Smiley's unanswered questions in the novel is when and how Haydon was recruited by Karla. Smiley tells Guillam that Karla was in Britain in 1936 and 1941 and we know from the letter Haydon sent to his tutor about Prideaux that they were both at Oxford during the 1936-37 academic year. Perhaps Oxford is where the events of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy were truly set in motion? In any event, it is the perfect note to close on.

I was recently contacted by Vincent Crawford who drew my attention to another Oxford connection for Smiley, which we learn of in Call for the Dead. Smiley actually turned down a Fellowship at All Souls to join the Circus:

Some time in the twenties when Smiley had emerged from his unimpressive school and lumbered blinking into the murky cloisters of his unimpressive Oxford College, he had dreamed of Fellowships and a life devoted to the literary obscurities of seventeenth-century Germany. But his own tutor, who knew Smiley better, guided him wisely away from the honours that would undoubtedly have been his. On a sweet July morning in 1928, a puzzled and rather pink Smiley had sat before an interviewing board of the Overseas Committee for Academic Research, an organization of which he had unaccountably never heard. Jebedee (his tutor) had been oddly vague about the introduction: “Give these people a try, Smiley, they might have you and they pay badly enough to guarantee you decent company.” But Smiley was annoyed and said so. It worried him that Jebedee, usually so precise, was so evasive. In a slight huff he agreed to postpone his reply to All Souls until he had seen Jebedee’s “mysterious people.”

- Excerpt From Call for the Dead by John le Carré

My thanks to Vincent for highlighting this additional important connection between Smiley and Oxford.

Entry to the ‘Tradecraft’ exhibition is free and it is open until 6th April 2026. Details of opening hours and any planned closures can be found here. 

We hope you enjoy your visit to Oxford as much as we did.