@jim-prideaux / jim-prideaux.tumblr.com
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There wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do.
To try my hand at designing a series, I picked a sequence of John le Carré books I had recently read. Considering their common themes, I realized that all three books were about men who played parts in larger plots they didn’t fully understand. Each of my illustrations depicts a pivotal scene in that plot.
Stylistically, I aimed to balance simple, vintage-inspired visual elements with more elegant and modern typography, reflecting the timelessness of le Carré’s novels.
But Jim Prideaux, as Control well knows, is about as soft as flint.
It was so nice to see Jim again in Legacy of Spies! so here’s a sketch of him chain-smoking in the Windfall meeting.
“He has that heavy quiet that commands. He’s my other half. Between us we’d make one marvelous man. He asks nothing better than to be in my company or that of my wicked, divine friends, and I’m vastly tickled by the compliment. He’s virgin, about eight foot tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge.”
—
Bill Haydon’s description of Jim Prideaux
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Tinker Tailor (1979)
it's so important for your health and well-being to get overly attached to a fictional man who is both deeply amoral and unbelievably, pathetically sad
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John le Carré
book illustration by Jean-Claude Götting
