Toby Esterhase
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Toby Esterhase is a character in John Le Carre's George Smiley novels. He was played by Bernard Hepton in the television adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People.
"Toby was Hungarian, stiff backed, with silvery hair, a crisp unfriendly jaw and never smiles. Connie called him 'Tiny Toby'. He was head of Lamplighters before the fall. Toby owed George Smiley his career at the Circus. Smiley recruited Toby in Vienna, a starving student living in the ruins of a museum of which his dead uncle had been curator. He has a son at Westminster and a daughter at Med school. Haydon called him "Our shadow foreign secretary". The Janitors called him "Snow White" because of his hair.
Peter Guillam had worked with Toby some eight years before the fall on a one-time operation to spike a pair of Belgian arms dealers in Berne, Switzerland. The operation was blown and Guillam marveled at the coolness of Toby as the two of them made their escape (the Swiss Police could be pretty tough, apparently). In Guillam's view, Toby was a snob - he knew the places to eat and be seen; he washed his own clothes and at night he wore a net over his snow white hair. They lived together in Berne for three months monitoring the Belgians and Guillam knew him no better at the end than he did on the first day. Guillam didn't even know Toby's country of origin."
The "Lamplighters" section Esterhase ran was responsible for close-surveillance, safe houses and similar support operations. Esterhase allowed the section to be almost entirely given over to servicing Alleline's London Station and Source Merlin and his importance in the Circus rose dramatically after the fall of Control.
After the events of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Esterhase was removed from the Circus, setting himself up as an art dealer of dubious taste and morality before being recalled to duty in Smiley's People.
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