Smiley’s London

This map created by illustrator Mike Hall (who we’ve featured before) for Penguin Books, shows the locations in London that featured in John le Carré’s George Smiley spy novels.

This is a lovely map, drawn from scratch and using a distinctive yellow/green and pastel blue pastel colour palette that evokes classic literary works and hand-printed maps. Illustrated vignettes, positioned near their actual location, show the houses and scenes. Tube stations, parks and railways are also woven into the map, with careful cartography and labelling by Mike ensuring the map does not clutter and is attractive to look at. Some subtle digital paper “grain” in the map background, when you zoom in close, adds to the vintage feel:

The map was commissioned by Penguin to mark the forthcoming release of A Legacy of Spies, after more than 25 years since the previous George Smiley novel. The new book is published on 7 September. You can see the full map as a PDF here.

Copyright Mike Hall and reproduced with kind permission.

4 comments

  1. I have my signed copy of the A Legacy of Spies book and am a big George Smiley fan but didn’t know about this map. I am very happy that you have discovered and shared this map.
    Thanks, Alastair Majury

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