Literary Locations #4: John le Carré’s “Circus”

Trentishoe Mansions

90 Charing Cross Road

London

WC2H 0JE

In John le Carré’s classic trilogy of novels featuring George Smiley as the mild mannered but mentally agile spy, the “circus” is the term used to refer to the British secret intelligence service MI6. The name derives from the proximity of its headquarters to Cambridge Circus, a traffic intersection in central London. However, le Carré provides a number of clues in his novels that enable us to pinpoint the exact building that he had in mind.

The junction of Charing Cross Road
and the former Little Compton Street

"an hexagonal pepper pot overlooking New
Compton street and the Charing Cross Road"

Firstly, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy we are told that Smiley’s colleague Bill Haydon has an office which is “an hexagonal pepper pot overlooking New Compton Street and the Charing Cross Road”. Although today these two roads do not intersect, New Compton Street was once joined with Old Compton Street by Little Compton Street, which has now vanished beneath an office block. In The Honourable Schoolboy, the circus is described as being housed in an “Edwardian mausoleum”. At the junction of Charing Cross Road and what was once Little Compton Street stands an Edwardian block of flats named Trentishoe Mansions and, if you look up to the roof, you can see a small turret resembling the description of Haydon’s lair.



"A dull doorway in the Charing Cross Road"

Further corroboration is provided when, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, we are told that the circus’ archives are not accessible from the main entrance but are “reached by a dull doorway in the Charing Cross Road jammed between a picture-framer and an all-day café”. Although the commercial spaces are currently occupied by a musical instruments shop and a West End ticket agency, the doorway is still much as le Carré describes.

However, whilst the building itself exists, its role as a spy headquarters is a fictional construct as MI6 were never based in these residential flats. However, the building does have another literary connection in that it is adjacent to the former site of the antiquarian booksellers Marks & Co which featured in Helene Hanff’s book 84, Charing Cross Road, which documented a twenty year correspondence between Hanff and the shop’s chief buyer Frank Doel. Although Marks & Co has long since closed, the story is commemorated by a circular brass plaque on the wall.

 

Rating (out of 10): 6