The Honourable Schoolboy characters

Appears from the start

A large, amiable Englishman in his late forties, the son of a newspaper proprietor, educated at a great public school and permanently short of money. He works as a foreign correspondent, has failed at two marriages, and lives in a half-finished house in Tuscany with a young girlfriend, trying to write a novel. He has done occasional field work for the Circus for years, is trusted because he is loyal and asks few questions, and answers a summons the moment it comes.

Also known as The Vicar

Appears from the start

A veteran Australian journalist and doyen of the Hong Kong press corps, orotund, theatrical and hugely knowledgeable about the colony and everyone in it. He has spent decades working for the Circus alongside his newspaper career and knows how to run an agent in a place where everybody drinks together.

First appears in chapter 2

Now the acting chief of a Circus wrecked by the discovery of a Soviet agent at the top of it. Short, plump and unassuming, he presides over a service that has lost its networks, its budget, its allies' confidence and most of its staff, and he is rebuilding it from the archives outward. He is also pursuing, patiently and personally, the Moscow Centre officer who ran the traitor. His wife Ann has left him again.

First appears in chapter 3

The Circus's great researcher on Soviet intelligence, brought back from a forced retirement to work through the wreckage. Huge, arthritic and drinking, with a memory that holds every Moscow Centre career of the last thirty years, she works in the archive rooms reconstructing what was suppressed.

First appears in chapter 3

The Circus's specialist on China and the overseas Chinese communities, a small, eccentric, physically restless scholar with a priest's training and an obsessive attention to genealogy and detail. He works alongside Connie Sachs on the backtracking operation.

First appears in chapter 3

Smiley's chief of staff in the rebuilt Circus, loyal, capable and increasingly protective of a chief he can see being outmanoeuvred in Whitehall. He handles the operational housekeeping and the London end of the field work.

First appears in chapter 4

A Circus babysitter and bodyguard: small, silent, physically expert and disturbingly eager. He is attached to the operation as escort and muscle, and the people who work with him are uneasy about him.

First appears in chapter 4

A Hong Kong shipping magnate and pillar of the colony: a refugee from Shanghai who built a fortune from nothing, holds British honours, sits on charitable boards and races horses. Genial in public and impenetrable in private, he keeps a small circle of people from his past around him and is fiercely loyal to them.

First appears in chapter 6

A middle-ranking official of a Hong Kong trustee company, a frightened, vain man with expensive habits and access to the records of accounts his clients would prefer nobody examined.

First appears in chapter 8

A senior Foreign Office figure with a long involvement in intelligence, worldly, cynical and expert in Whitehall's politics. He takes a close interest in the Circus's recovery and in who should be running it.

First appears in chapter 8

The Cabinet Office civil servant who oversees the intelligence services, cautious and preoccupied with what can be defended to Ministers. He controls the money on which the rebuilt Circus depends.

First appears in chapter 8

The senior American intelligence representative in London, expansive, well funded and outwardly cordial. His service has the resources, the aircraft and the listening capacity that the Circus no longer possesses, and cooperation with him comes at a price that is never quite stated.

First appears in chapter 9

Drake Ko's manager and enforcer, a heavy, watchful Hong Kong Chinese who has been with him since the early days and handles the parts of his business that require pressure.

First appears in chapter 12

A former Circus officer, now running a gambling club and back at the edges of the service, smooth, patient and always better informed than he appears. He attaches himself to the operation in an advisory capacity.

First appears in chapter 13

An Englishwoman of good background living in Hong Kong under a name that is not the one she was born with, elegant, self-invented and evasive about her past. She left a husband and child in England, drifted through South East Asia in the company of pilots and traders, and is now attached to a wealthy Chinese businessman.

First appears in chapter 16

A pilot of mixed Corsican and Shan parentage, the son of a Kuomintang general, flying charter work out of South East Asia and dependent on opium. Ruined, frightened and sentimental, he keeps faith with the few friends he has.

First appears in chapter 17

A Latin American pilot who flew for an air charter company in Laos, a boastful, violent man officially reported dead some time ago. He was Lizzie's lover, and he took on a flight for money that ended his career.

First appears in chapter 21

Drake Ko's younger brother, separated from him in childhood and left behind on the mainland: a diligent, unglamorous technocrat who trained in the Soviet Union and rose to a senior position in Chinese naval and industrial administration.