Peter Guillam

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Peter Guillam is a fictional character in John le Carré's series of espionage novels. He first appears in Call for the Dead at which time he is working for the Ministry of Defence.

In the novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in which he is a principal character, Peter Guillam is head of 'scalphunters', the violent division of 'The Circus' (MI6). He is also Smiley's protegé and helps in the hunt for the Mole who has been selling secrets to the Soviets.

Peter Guillam is the head of scalphunters in the novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, having taken over after the failure of 'Testify' left the former head Jim Prideaux out of action, and in exile. This is a menial position in the Circus and badly looked down on, even by Smiley who jokingly describes the operation as "cosh and carry". Nevertheless Peter is the key in finding the mole, being the only one who can covertly supply muscle for Smiley (notably Fawn), and alerted Lacon when Ricky Tarr was in danger.

Peter drives an old Porsche (in the novel), which turned into a blue Morgan in the TV adaptation, and (in the book) dates a music student, although the relationship revolves around casual sex. He lost a network in Former French North Africa which has left him mentally scarred, and makes his desire to find the mole personal because all of his agents were hanged. Presumably he attended Oxbridge (because so many other spies did, see Roy Bland), but this is not made clear. In the end upon cornering the mole he nearly kills him, but calms down with Smiley's help (in the TV adaptation, in the novel Guillam considers attacking Gerald but, in the end, does nothing).

Peter is half-French, from a family that has been involved with the Circus for generations, and worked with Smiley in "Satellites IV" in the early 1960s, in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. His own chronology has been reinvented by Le Carré:in Call for the Dead he is a near-contemporary of Smiley's, trained by him at the end of the Second World War. In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy he is much younger than Smiley, probably around 40 at a point where Smiley is around 60. Guillam's age has to be changed for plot reasons - he is used in this novel as Smiley's trusted assistant, and cannot be senior enough in the Circus to be one of the senior men suspected of being the mole.

By Smiley's People (the third book in the "Karla Trilogy,") Guillam is married to a young Frenchwoman called Marie-Clare and is head of Circus operations in Paris.