Smiley was born to middle-class parents in the South of England in the early part of the 20th century (his birth date is retconned from 1906 to 1915 in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"), and spent at least part of his childhood in Germany near the Black Forest. He attended a minor public school and an antiquated Oxford college of no real distinction (in the 1982 BBC television adaptation of "Smiley's People", he refers to himself as a fellow of Lincoln College, le Carré's alma mater in real life), studying modern languages with a particular focus on Baroque German literature. One July, while considering post-graduate study in that field, he was recruited into the Circus by his tutor, Jebedee.