By George .... they've only gone and done it.

Different actor, same spy

Produce a re-make of a much-loved TV series that is, which, by the looks of it, doesn't make you want to throw away your Kia-Ora and hunker down in front of the small screen. 

Courtesy of the Guardian's website, I've been watching the trailer for the new re-imagining of Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, starring Gary Oldman as George Smiley.

It's both instantly recognisable, and somewhat different, with the cream of the crop of English actors and a cinematic quality not evident from the excellent BBC mini series. The best bit? The music - monotonous, compelling, hinting at danger, providing the right tone for what looks like a faithful re-imagining.

Well, that's the holiday reading sorted ....

Thanks to the good folks of the Harper Collins publicity department, I have received in the post the latest paperback reissues of Len Deighton's books: Close-Up, and the last trilogy of the Samson triple trilogy: Faith, Hope and Charity.

The new introductions by Len are very, very interesting .......

Quick news roundup: palmer, putin, pictures

When not watching Ipcress File, he shoots tigers

Having fifteen minutes to spare for a trawl through the alphabet soup that is the Internet brings up interesting snippets of Deighton and spy-related news from time to time. Today is no exception. Here's a disparate a bunch of items:

First up, according to Michael Caine, the KGB used to learn a thing or two from the silver screen. Across a number of news media is a report from his interview with entertainment newswire WENN (I can't find the original) in which he says a Russian friend tells him Vladimir Putin and colleagues in the KGB used to enjoy the Harry Palmer films! Wonder what tips they picked up? It would be fun to think of trainee spies in the Lubyanka learning how to make a two-egg omelette!

Secondly, a song featuring Harry Palmer and the Berlin Wall has been voted 2 in the top 10 list of Canadian Synth Pop tracks. My favourite was outside the top ten, sadly.

Finally, there's a new book out showing many of the once-though-lost pictures of Brian Duffy, London photographer and co-producer with Deighton of Oh! What a Lovely War. Duffy was an art school contemporary of Deighton's.

Update: a longer article on Caine, drawn from the same newswire source, can be found on the website of the Toronto Sun.

All in the detail - Gordon Crabb's covers for Len Deighton

I recently received from Len Deighton a short email containing nine pictures of artwork. More precisely, original cover artworks by artist Gordon Crabb from the 1980s reissues of his works by the Arrow publishing house. And it raised an interesting question: does having an image of the key figures and locations before you start a book shape the way you approach a book and its characters. In other words: who creates the more impactful character - the artist, or the reader? Or does it matter?

First, the artwork. Gordon Crabb's work is of what one might call the 'realist' school: his covers pick out the two or three key characters, in poses and uniforms that suggest instantly their roles, and place them in front of a montage of locations and vehicles which let the reader do an instant join the dots and create a rough and dirty idea of what they're dealing with.

Len tells me of his decision to commission Crabb: "I did nothing other than go through every paperback in Harrods book dept and find that Gordon Crabb's covers were my favorite. After that it was entirely his work. His research was wonderful: he is even more fanatical that I am. He told me that he spent weeks, maybe months, and had to advertise, to get one garment (a riding mac) that was correct for the period. He did about nine covers." Len was supremely confident that Crabb would create covers that spoke to the reader and had a dramatic edge. Interestingly, Len confides: "I never met him." Crabb is nowadays exhibiting as a fine artist.

The covers below (a mixture of original art and the art in situ) are finely detailed and, having read the story, the characters and illustrations are instantly recognisable: with the assassins on the cover of Yesterday's Spy, for example, you can feel your face blasted with the dust blown up by the spinning rear tyre. But here's my question: having seen the front cover, does the image create a character, or rather augment the written word of the author and fix in the reader's mind an image of that character. Does it, in other words, dull the imagination, or inspire it?

I ask because when I first read Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match in their original covers, the apple jacket designs by the legendary Ray Hawking were abstract - they hinted at something, riddles you knew would unfold once you opened the covers. Intrigue. Betrayal. Corruption. All in one simple, apple-y metaphor.

There were no characters on display. No gruff Bernard Samson; no sexy, coquettish Tessa Kozinski; no roguish Silas Gaunt. The image I had of these characters was built up page by page, each adjective and adverb adding a layer to the understanding of who that character was. Every reader has his or her own image of the character. So when in 1988, for example, ITV bought to life Bernard, Tess, Silas and others in the TV adaptation, it challenged readers' perceptions of their favourite character. Was Ian Holm really the tall, well-built, bespectacled hero spelt out on the pages of the novel?

Michael Caine and Len Deighton talk Harry Palmer

"At the time I wrote The Ipcress File, the English were even less interested in food than they are now. Any man who was able to cook was regarded as weird." Len Deighton

The 'Harry Palmer' character Len Deighton created - and Michael Caine embodied - was something new when he appeared: the anti-Bond, the tough, uncompromising working class spy who inhabited the shadier streets, someone with whom the cinema-goer could in some way connect. He was also ahead of his time, representative of the changing social behaviour of men in the 'sixties. He could not only cook but - as the scene in which he bumps into Colonel Ross in a new-fangled supermarket, and argued over the tinned champignons, demonstrates - talk knowledgeably about food without appearing to sound 'queer'.

The instant success of this new spy archetype is due in large part to Michael Caine's uncanny understanding of how the modern spy would live and work in swinging London, and portraying that on film. Seducing office colleague Jean with a glass of wine and a home-cooked omelette was something new in the courtship playbook for the average chap. Here was the sixties' 'new man', seducing top notch 'crumpet' and tracking down the spies kidnapping UK scientists.

I recently unearthed a rare copy of Eat Soup magazine from 1996 containing an extensive interview with Michael Caine in which he talks about the overlapping themes of film and food. Eat Soup was the short-lived food supplement for lads' mag Loaded, when it was still a magazine and not the boob-obsessed parody which it's become. As well as the feature interview with Caine, Len Deighton was commissioned to write an article explaining how he used gourmet food and changing cultural fads to help fashion this iconic character. This appears as the post-script to what proves a fascinating Caine interview.

A copy of the full article is now up on the Deighton Dossier main website.

Reissues go States-side

News today of a deal between Harper Collins and Sterling Partners to reissue most of Len Deighton's books in new editions in the US market.

In August 2011, twelve books by Deighton, including The Ipcress File, Horse Under Water, Funeral in Berlin, Billion-Dollar Brain, Bomber, and Declarations of War, will come out in new editions with new covers (expected to be the Schwartzman covers). These will include the new introductions which Len has written about (and, indeed, as he said in the recent interview with this blog, is still writing).

More information's available on the Booktrade website.

Q&A with Len Deighton - part three

Following yesterday's second blog posting, below is the third and final part of the exclusive Deighton Dossier Q&A with author Len Deighton, in which among other things the author recounts his first steps to discovering what Cold war life was like, behind the Iron Curtain. The questions in this Q&A are either my own or suggestions from blog readers. A full .pdf copy of this interview will be put up on the main Deighton Dossier website.

Len Deighton Q&A - part three

All text (c) Pluriform 2011

Q&A with Len Deighton - part two

Part one of the Deighton Dossier's exclusive Q&A chat with Len Deighton was yesterday. Now, in part two of the interview below, find out more about how Deighton approached the writing of the immense Samson triple-trilogy, and his feelings on the never re-broadcast TV adaptation of Game, Set & Match.

Deighton Q&A - part two


All text is (c) Pluriform 2011

Exclusive to the Deighton Dossier: Q&A with Len Deighton

“I didn’t want simplicity. I didn’t want a spot-lit singer on a bare stage. I wanted an opera.”

Len Deighton, on the Game, Set & Match triple trilogy.

Though he spends much of his time in retirement outside of the UK, Len Deighton still visits London regularly and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to catch up with him on a recent visit. Over lunch we talked about his writing past and present, his approach to characterisation - notably the development of the rough-around the-edges Bernard Samson - and setting, his recollections of central London in the ‘sixties ..... and the dipping headlights on his 1978 Cadillac! We also discussed his experiences in the film industry, and he talked positively about the putative Bomber production and hinted at a possible film of Horse Under Water, the ‘missing’ Harry Palmer novel adaptation.

Having failed spectacularly to capture this conversation on my iPhone recorder (see posts passim), I asked Len if he would be willing to do a short interview for the website and blog via email, in the form of the Q&A.

He agreed. The result is this three-part online discussion, based on questions from me and from readers of the blog, the website and the related online forums. Given his infrequent appearances in the UK media, the Deighton Dossier is incredibly privileged to have this opportunity to engage with the author.

Enjoy.

Note: all text is (c) Pluriform 2011

Len Deighton Q&A - part one

A touch of ennui

Nick Jones' interesting book-based blog Existential Ennui (great title) has this week been looking at Len Deighton's 'Harry Palmer' series of books, copies of which he's picked up at various book fairs. Well worth checking out, not least because the blog provides an interesting insight into the motivations and passions of the book collector. Nick's library is certainly varied and, one imagines, large!

Arnold Schwartzmann's designs on Deighton

A book's cover is essential to its success or failure. The primary aim is to attract the reader, to offer a taste of what's inside, a hint of the subject matter, the ideas and plot twists which they will encounter when the cover is turned.

The book cover has become a modern art form in its own right (check out the excellent Book Cover archive website for a searchable visual database of great book cover design). In spy fiction, readers have recently mourned the loss of Ray Hawkey, who designed the covers not just for many of Len Deighton's books but also of course the famous Pan series of Ian Fleming's Bond novels in the sixties, which arguably transformed the public's awareness of and fascination for the series and set a tone style that was mirrored in the movies.

Len Deighton was a book illustrator prior to becoming a full-time writer, working with André Deutsch and Penguin (there are many examples of his covers on the main Deighton Dossier website). So strongly does he feel about the importance of good design to his books that he is one of the few authors to have specific clauses in his contracts about the use of fonts and aspects of the cover design.

Naturally, when Harper Collins reissued many of Len's books marking his eightieth birthday, he wanted a designer who knew him and his stories well and who understood perfectly the role of cover design in influencing the reader. Arnold Schwartzman, his friend and internationally recognised designer, was the man he chose to design all the new covers.

As I've covered in this blog since the reissues have been released, Schwartzman's designs have given new purpose to the stories and arguably are the best examples of the synergy between cover and content since Ray Hawkey's original 'rotten apple' cover designs for Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match (and improve upon the ill-advised illustrations by Joe Partridge for the first Harper Collins editions of Faith, Hope and Charity).

In its April edition, no 59, Baseline magazine, the design journal, profiled Schwartzman's approach to the Samson series of books in an article called Secret Assignment 1 (harking back to the 'Secret File No. 1' moniker on The Ipcress File). Issue 58 began this series with a look at Schwartzman's chessboard-themed approach to the covers for the first four 'spy with no name' novels, The Ipcress File through Billion-Dollar Brain.

Drawing on some of his text introductions to the new editions, the key design elements from the new front covers are laid out wonderfully against a stark white background.

A couple of pages from issues 58 and 59 are reproduced below; they include a reproduction of the design for the book spine illustration for the Samson novels, made up of torn airline ticket stubs which - when placed side by side in sequence - spell out the name of the protagonist. It will look great on the bookshelf!

Hans Dieter Reichert, the editor, has kindly provided a full reproduction of the article which will be available as a .pdf download on the main Deighton Dossier website in due course.

'It's all in the planning'... Deighton in the WSJ

Len's popped up this week in the Wall Street Journal, in its Word Craft section to be exact, writing about his approach to planning a book and the extensive work that goes into it before the pen touches the paper, or a finger stokes the keyboard.

The article, Facing the hard questions before chapter one, is by-lined by Len. In it he sets out his approach which has long been recognised as being among the most thorough of modern fiction and thriller writers. Understanding the era about which you're writing is his first point; and be clear about the time context for the story. His books has ranged from covering 24 hours - in the case of Bomber - to fifty years, as the reader experiences with Winter.

It's a wide-ranging exposition, written as much for the aspiring writer as the interested reader. So, he recommends that writers follow his example and write out a sentence on a blank sheet of paper for the main theme of each chapter, allowing the writer to add and subtract ideas and see how the structure of a book develops before the main text is written. Clearly, this approach will have come in handy when writing a major triple trilogy such as the Bernard Samson series, where short and long-term narratives intertwined.

He also writes about his aborted novel on Vietnam, a subject of much curiosity among readers of his books. While the story never made it beyond the planning stage, the work wasn't wasted, as he recounts:

'For a book I planned to do about the American air war in Vietnam, I flew in Phantom fighters and spent many weeks with a U.S. fighter squadron, but my timing was wrong. By the time I had all the necessary paperwork, the war was winding down. But the experience of living with those fighter pilots sowed the seeds for another book. "Goodbye, Mickey Mouse" was set in World War II but benefited greatly from my earlier research. So never throw anything away.'

An intriguing insight into the mechanics of story-telling.

Lunch with Len .....

I was pleased to have the opportunity today to have lunch with Len Deighton, his wife, and Edward Milward-Oliver, author of the indispensable Len Deighton Companion and currently working on a biography of Len.

Much interesting chit-chat over lunch about film production, the Game Set and Match TV adaptation, the narrative arc of Bernard Samson in the Game Set and Match series, Len's books on fountain pens and the history of the aero engine, and the progress on plans for a film adaptation of Bomber, which was first recorded last year on this blog.

Len was happy enough to answer questions from blog readers and those on the forum, the discussion of which I recorded on my iPhone, which ...... has subsequently failed to yield up a second of the conversation recorded. So for the moment I will just say that Len is on good form and, I'm pleased to say, appreciative of the Deighton Dossier blog and website.

The lesson of all this, however: don't rely on technology!

Update: Len has agreed to do a question & answer interview for this blog, which I'll edit and post up when I get his responses to the questions I sent him, which were drawn from suggestions from readers of this blog. Keep visiting the blog to check out his answers when this is up, as this will be one of the first interview's Len's given in a long time.

None shall win prizes ....

(c) Jonathan Player/Rex

Interesting story in The Guardian this week concerning John Le Carré.

He has been nominated for the Man Booker International Prize for contribution for fiction (as distinct from the Man Booker Prize for an individual work of fiction). But ... to the disguised consternation of the organisers, he has turned down the nomination.

On declining it, the author's quoted as saying:

"I am enormously flattered to be named as a finalist of the 2011 Man Booker International prize. However, I do not compete for literary prizes and have therefore asked for my name to be withdrawn."

Le Carré, a resolutely private man, is not a great exploiter of the media (aside from what one would expect as a minimum to support the marketing of his latest titles) and not a over-regular visitor to our screens and newspaper pages; his renown as an author and the sales of his books clearly are tribute enough to his talent as a leading light of UK spy and popular fiction since the sixties.

One does have to admire, in a way, his steadfast refusal to be swayed by the baubles which the publishing industry particularly enjoys hosting (but then, is it any different from any other industry?) As readers of this blog and the Deighton Dossier website will know, Len Deighton too is apparently bereft of literary awards .... and also happy for things to remain that way.

However, is there another author in the spy fiction and thriller genre - who may be more willing to stand up on stage in London's West End in front of the world's media - who has yet, unjustifiably, to pick up a major literary award. Any nominations in the posts below.....

The Spywriter & The Godfather

Small snippet I noticed this morning, clearly as part of the PR around the re-release by Harper Collins of Len Deighton's French Cooking for Men - though I struggle to see the connection. Deighton gives his opinion on Francis Ford Coppola in this month's GQ magazine online and outlines what he think are the issues a modern re-interpretation of this film should address.

Catch the (brief) commentary here.