I'd like to thank all the readers and visitors to this blog - and the accompanying main website/archive, the Deighton Dossier - who've read the articles, added comments, got in touch with me or otherwise contributed to the small but lively online community of Deighton readers and spy fiction fans.
In the decade or more since setting up this blog, I've enjoyed reading the comments and the emails received from fans all across the globes - on at least five continents, according to the statistics - who enjoy Len Deighton's books as much as me, and in return it's a pleasure to share my thoughts, and sometimes those of other readers and fans, on this blog.
The last few months posting has been limited. But in the context of over a decade of posting (over four hundred separate posts) and sharing interesting finds, titbits, nuggets, images and stories, a slight pause from time to time is permissible, I hope you'll agree.
On that note, as I do every year, I encourage other readers and spy fiction scholars and experts who have their own views and ideas on reading and collecting Deighton's works, to get in touch. I'm keen to increase the volume of alternative voices on here, to bolster the number of posts I put up.
Most importantly, thanks for visiting the blog, and have an enjoyable peaceful Christmas and New Year, whatever your beliefs or not.
Remember, spies often don't get to spend Christmas with their families:
England. Christmas 1983.
Gloria Kent felt miserable. She had bought Bernard Samson's two young children to spend Christmas with her parents. She was tall and blonde and very beautiful and she was wearing the low-cut green dress she had bought specially to impress Bernard.
'Why isn't he with his children?' Gloria's mother asked for the umpteenth time. She was putting the Christmas lunch dishes into the dishwasher as Gloria brought them from the table.
'He was given Christmas duty at the last minute,' said Gloria. 'And the nanny had already gone home.'
'You are a fool, Gloria,' said her mother.
