Desert island discovery

Through regular blog correspondent Bryan Graham, I've uncovered the list of tunes chosen by Len Deighton for his appearance on Desert Island Discs in 1976.

For anyone who doesn't know, this is a BBC Radio 4 series which has been running since the war, in which famous individuals are invited to select eight records which they would like to have with them, were they stranded on this mythical desert island, along with a luxury item and a book.

Len appeared on 19 June 1976. His choices were these:

• Ludwig van Beethoven, Für Elise, Soloist: John Ogdon
• Louis Armstrong & His All-Stars, Stars Fell On Alabama
• Johnny Cash, There ain't no easy run
• Gwendoline Brogden, I'll make a man out of you
• Maurice Ravel, La Valse, Orchestra: Swiss Romande Orchestra
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Concerto No 11 in F, London Symphony Orchestra
• Neil Diamond, Crackling Rosie
• Gustav Mahler, Ich hab' ein glühender Messe (from Lieber eines fahrenden Gesellen), Halle Orchestra.

The latter piece Len picked as his favourite tune. His favourite book was The Art of Modern French Cooking - perhaps not surprising, as in his early twenties in Paris Len spent time in some of the great Parisian kitchens learning from top chefs. And his luxury was a photo darkroom, reflecting his early career as an RAF photographer and his long-standing interest in photography.

You can now listen to the interview online thanks to the BBC R4 archive.

Just Len...

Bang! Bang!

I have eagle-eyed reader of this blog Bryan Graham to thank for spotting this article on The Guardian's website. Len Deighton is one of 16 thriller and crime writers asked by the paper to pick their own favourite writers. The article appeared last month as crime writers gathered in Harrogate for the annual Crime Writing Festival.

Len's pick is Richmal Crompton, author of the Just William books. He cites young William Brown's undaunted opposition to authority - be it the school teacher or the village policeman - is one of the characteristics of Richmal Crompton's schoolboy character that entranced him and other readers. He sees the evidence of Crompton's writing in other characters:

"It is William's spirit of upbeat anarchy that distinguishes so many British crime stories from their tough-guy American counterparts. His pronouncements are social, political and philosophical but his adventures are catastrophic. William does not recognise catastrophe. Britain's wartime slogan "Keep calm and carry on" might have been his motto. Is William English, rather than British? I think so. Is he a male chauvinist pig? Undoubtedly. Did Richmal Crompton know what she was doing? Perhaps not: but what writer does?"

Also asked to pick their favourite writers as such crime and thriller writing luminaries as Lee Child, Frederick Forsyth, Nicci French and PD James.

Concrete wall, iron curtain - Berliner Mauer, 50 years on

It would get bigger.

Fifty years ago, as Deighton writes in Berlin Game, the first people to know anything was wrong were the cab drivers of Berlin, who were unusually being stopped and searched when they crossed the boundaries between the allied zones and the Soviet zone, something that on every other night would be routine.

The uneasy existence of the four-power control of occupied Berlin was to become even more so with what followed. Over the next four nights, as barbed wire and breeze block fell across what were once busy streets, brother was separated from sister, grandmother from grandchild, friend from friend. There was little East Berliners could do but watch or, in rare cases, make a last bid for freedom.

The building of the Berlin Wall – which began not with an iron but rather a steel barbed wire curtain - ‘Stacheldraht’ in German – stretched across roads, parks, through buildings, even crossing rivers. The pompously named ‘anti-fascist protection rampart’ would not come to look like the Wall we all remember until the concrete version was put up in 1965, and improved in design in 1975.

It's completion and subsequent operation - it was, in effect, a 161 km long machine of torture and repression which required constant manning and maintenance - kicked off a deep freeze in the Cold War.

Holy Trinity

It's almost Stasi-like, the way Amazon.com watches my buying habits and knows what I like. I shouldn't listen to it, but it frequently - too frequently, judging by the amount of times I read its name on my bank statement - knows what I'll like to read.

Take Charles Cumming's The Trinity Six. This was recommended to me on Amazon and I took a punt and purchased it. I'm glad I did. This is a thriller that ties together old-school Cold War skulduggery and a modern-day conspiracy trope in a tense drama with many levels which, chapter by chapter, illuminates a twisting plot which delivers handsomely.

The plot centres around the discovery of the identity of the possible Sixth Man linked to the Cambridge Spy ring by Dr Sam Gaddis, Russian expert and biographer of the current Russian leader who sounds, and appears, libellously like Vladimir Putin. Gaddis is an academic, not a spy - think AC Grayling with a gun - and when given box after box of files with a 'story' in them by a journalist friend, who subsequently mysteriously dies, Gaddis slips out of academic mode and becomes a hunter of some very deeply buried secrets. The plot is as thick as a well-stirred béchamel sauce, as a conspiracy is uncovered which binds MI:6 and the Kremlin together in an unholy - and murderous - embrace.

The books reads easily, the dialogue is realistic and the descriptions and the procedure suitably authentic to give the reader the impression that they're at the heart of something big. It is written cleverly enough that when new plot lines are revealed, more are added so that you never know exactly what's been going on until the last few chapters.

It's positive that the novel has three strong female characters who rightly reflect the modern world of espionage and counter-intelligence - Tanya Acocella is the young agent who's given a task by C that she thinks is the path to fast career progression but instead - as she finds out how she's being hoodwinked - is a fast track to the murderous heart of British intelligence and the risk of being killed by President Platov's merciless agents. She is written with a lot of vim and vigour, Cumming cleverly plotting a slow realisation of the truth over the story that sees her move from watcher to partner of Gaddis, keeping him alive long enough to bring the truth to bear.

I like Cummings' style, and this was a worthwhile read, keeping me entertained on every chapter. At no stage did I contemplate not finishing the book; each chapter asked enough new questions to make me skip right on. His inside knowledge of British security services is obvious - he was recruited by MI:6, working for them for a year before turning to writing.

On the back of the hardback edition, the praise for Charles Cumming includes the following:

"The best of a new generation of British spy writers taking over where Le Carré and Deighton left off."

I wouldn't disagree. An enjoyable book and, at only £12 for the hardback edition by Harper Collins, good value for money in these austere times.

The only downside? The cover. Ach! Readers of Private Eye will know that the magazine is great at pointing out the lack of creativity in book covers these days, with publishing houses spotting a trend ..... and flogging it to death. This book is added to that little list of dishonour. A mournful, shadowy figure walking away into the middle distance makes its appearance on the cover of this novel, just like many other thriller novels. It's supposed, you know, to illustrate the life of the spy, always alone, on the run, being watched, having to ... ah, you know the rest. Subtle, it ain't.

Where are the Ray Hawkey's in publishing nowadays? You despair, sometimes.

The reissues (13) - Faith

Faith reissue with new cover
by Arnold Schwartzman

The Harper Collins Deighton reissue production line remains in full flow. With Faith, Hope and Charity, along with Close-Up recently appearing on bookshelves, the reissues - complete with new introduction and new cover designs - now number twenty.

Faith is number seven in the Bernard Samson triple trilogy. The reader starts the novel having already absorbed a huge number of stories, events, twists and surprises over the previous six parts: Fiona's betrayal, Bernard's struggle over his two loves, the crisis of confidence within London Central, Werner's hidden past and Dicky Cruyer's career overtaking Bernard (he's now acting Director of Operations when the novel starts).

Bernard is still seeking the truth and is in Magdeburg - grimy, run-down, bleak, utterly East German. He's after Verdi, a KGB defector who has promised him access to the KGB mainframe and information about the death of Fiona's sister Tessa. Fiona, now working for Dicky, is as determined as Bernard is to find the truth. Others in London, evidently, are not.

Dealing with the stress of managing the Verdi operation, the reader finds Bernard also having to grapple with the repercussions of a mixed-up career and home life; and Bret's back and evidently back to seize control of the steering wheel, with support from Gloria. The Verdi mission ultimately fails, and the truth about Tessa's death is nearer the surface, but still waiting to be solved. Bernard must keep digging and have faith he'll find the truth.

The new introduction
Much of this story is set in East Germany and in his introduction Deighton explains that his knowledge of Germany and his extensive list of contacts and friends - 'German history has always obsessed me' - has allowed him to weave authenticity into every paragraph of the novel. So, a throw-away line in the novel, that Adolf Hitler's remains were kept by the KGB in Magdeburg, is a product of a lot of research into evidence from Soviet files indicating that after the Soviet secret police discovered them in the ruins of the Reich Chancellory, they were taken first to Magdeburg, then on to Moscow. Deighton's research, he says, confirms they are still there, 'like the revered body fragments of an ancient saint.' He recounts too that much of his findings from hours spent in Germany talking to people and checking officials didn't appear in the novel. Scope for a fourth trilogy, one day, perhaps?

From this new introduction the reader picks up not just the care and attention paid to the hugely complex story lines, but Deighton's genuine affection for the characters which - over ten books - have had more time to grow and evolve than most characters in a novel. Bernard, Fiona, Tessa, Dicky et al lie at the heart of the novels, Deighton reveals, and they have left a lasting impression:

"Writing ten books about the same small group of people is a strange and demanding task. I am a slow worker, and I don't take regular vacations or set work aside for prolonged periods. Ten books meant about fifteen years, during which these people, their hopes and fears and loves and betrayals were constantly whirring about in my brain. They disturbed my sleep and invaded my dreams in a way I did not enjoy.... Unlike the content of my other books, Bernard Samson and his circle became imprinted on my mind and remain there today."

That certainly came across when I chatted with Len earlier this year. These characters live with him; in a way, he knows them as well as any spouse, lover or therapist would do and consequently, the actions and words of each are so honed and utterly believable. Deighton told me that dialogue is crucial in his novels and he's always sought to present and use it with authenticity.

The new cover design
The spine motif - Bernard Samson's name spelled out in torn strips of airline baggage tags - is now almost complete with Faith and on the bookshelf it creates a great effect, meaning the reader wants to display these books together; he or she wants to revel in the sheer bulk and width of the story he or she has enjoyed up to this point.

The lace curtain on the front cover is, Arnold Schwartzman notes, an obvious but subtle metaphor for the Berlin Wall - or anti-fascist protection rampart (Antifaschistischer Schutzwall)  as it was more formerly known. But the way Samson is portrayed behind it is unusual, but has a purpose:

"I discovered that by placing a larger-than-life photograph of Samson in the window it created a rather surreal effect. Rather like Kong peering in at an unsuspecting Fay Wray, Bernard looms behind the curtain, an unwilling outside ostracised from domestic comfort."

I also really like the motif on the back cover: a traditional paper cut heart (Wycinanki in Polish) torn asunder by a KGB badge, representing very clearly the impact that Stinnes and indeed London Central has had on the relationship at the very heart of this story. It's a lovely touch and like all the new covers in this series, portrays the  complexity of the story - labyrinthine even, at this stage - through the every-day in some stunning visual images against a clear white background (again, the link back to the pioneering white covers of the 'Palmer' novels of the sixties).

Room for one more?...

It's difficult to disagree with The Independent's choice of the top 10 spy novels: Riddle of the Sands, Thirty-Nine Steps, Spy Who Came in from the Cold. All good. No filler.

But. No Ipcress? Berlin Game? Funeral?  Ah well.

Where's the blu-tack again?.....

.... is the frequent call in houses around the world when someone has a new poster. And, invariably, it's right at the back of the kitchen draw along with balls of string, dead batteries, scissors, pegs (singular), and other detritus.

Why might you need blu-tack? Well, to put up this handsome poster of Jane Fonda as sixties space starlet Barbarella, before the whole Viet-Cong thing and the inevitable slide into actually very lucrative fitness video and a marriage to the equally lucrative Ted Turner.

This is the gift on offer in a competition by Jason Whiton of the ever-excellent Spy Vibe website, which is part of the COBRAS collective. This sounds like an anarchist theatre group but is in fact the online grouping of a great bunch of websites devoted to all themes spy, and related cultural themes and memes.

What's the task? Send an email. Simple as that. The (very, very short) instructions are on the website, so do check it out. If the prospect of winning a cool sixties poster isn't enough, you can read about all manner of things: the Man from U.N.C.L.E., the Persuaders, Mrs Peel in Underwear, Mission Impossible.

So, get on over to ..... WHAAAT? Mrs Peel in Underwear? [click]

Soho Spaghetti

I was a little late on this one, but last week saw the death of Mario Cassandro, London restaurateur and arguably a man who changed the British palate with his authentic Italian trattoria in Soho, Terrazzo.

For the first time in sixties London, he served authentic pasta, in an informal atmosphere, and made it popular. In a London still used to rationing and Brown Windsor soup, he couldn't really fail.

Alastair Scott Sutherland wrote about his impact in the excellent book The Spaghetti Tree, to which Len Deighton wrote the forward. It recounts how Cassandro literally changed everything about eating out: mood, menu, waiting, dress code, wine.

In the sixties it was the place to be seen - a social nexus. Len Deighton and David Bailey were early patrons. Deighton wrote portions of his first book here, and was introduced to his great friend Michael Caine here too.

And famously, Deighton referenced it in The Ipcress File, giving the restaurant a great bit of PR:

"In London with a beautiful girl, one must show her to Mario at la Terrazza," says our unnamed hero!

Listen to it while you can on Radio 4's The Last Word obituary programme.

The Telegraph also carries a nice obituary. as does The Guardian.

A pocket full of spy....

Is it possible to have such a thing as negative innovation? Retro-creativity? Backward-looking foresight?

In publishing, perhaps so. The future - if you read the pages of the major newspapers and online sources - is electronic. It's 'e'. e-Books. e-Readers. e-Novels.

The days of the book, you might think, are numbered. The paperback is headed in a few years for the great bookshelf in the sky. The irrational turn-on one finds in opening a brand new hardback book is a fleeting pleasure to be enjoyed while you can and soon lost to the biblophile. In the brave new world of literature, there's no sifting through the first few pages, the swish of the paper and the smell of the just-off-the-presses text hinting at the reading pleasure ahead. Just text. Efficient, clean, text, just there. Ready.

At the touch of a button. Bing - there you are. New novel. Exactly like all the other new e-novels. A great story ... but, somehow, not the same. The traditional book - spine, cover, pages, turned over corner, is on the canvass. Bloodied.

Ah, now, look....see, the book's put in a parry. It's fighting back, getting in a punch or two, thanks to a great little innovation which, while it may not hold the electronic hordes at bay, might take a few of the e-book sluggers down in a brave - but perhaps foolish - rearguard action against the ropes.

What do I mean? Flip back books. I stumbled across them in my local bookshop, the name front of mind thanks to a great radio marketing campaign. And what a pleasure! All the sensation of a real book, but with half the fat, metaphorically speaking.

A simple innovation of printing a novel with the pages turned bottom to top, rather than the traditional right to left, and the pages made of super-thin paper, allows the book to be truly pocked sized - and smaller than an e-reader, I might add - but retaining all the tactile sensations of a traditional tome.

I picked up le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in this format, not having read it for many years. The flip back book makes the story of George Smiley tracking down the activities of 'Gerald' and 'Lapin' in creating merry havoc in the Circus a real reading pleasure. It's easy to hold one-handed - great format for packed commuter trains, where one free arm's the best you can hope for - and the pages can be turned with the merest push from your thumb, as thin and delicate as a layer of a mille-feuille pastry.

In the book market, anything that provides competition and user choice is welcome, and this new format - sure, a little pricey - adds something new and I take my hat off to the people at Sceptre for taking a leap of faith.

I await with interest news of other thriller writers coming out in this format!

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.