"...a framed photograph that hung centre stage on the back wall, showing a Socratic, bespectacled gentleman in rounded collars and black jacket, frowning on a younger world."

John le Carre knows he is writing a spy thriller which will become a blockbuster movie so he has left the details of his "Socratic" portrait to the casting director or prop department, as the case may be.

Few writers have the opportunity to write so self-consciously for readers and viewers at the same time. [Perhaps he also visualized Pierce Brosnan in the lead when he wrote the story.]