New interview with Len Deighton on the web ... and Happy New Year!

I've just been emailed by Remy Dean, co-editor of Scrawl, the literary website, who's advised that he has just put up a short interview with Len Deighton up on their website, which covers a range of themes about the authors career.

You can catch the interview here.

To anyone's who's read the Deighton Dossier blog and website in 2014, a Happy New Year!

Suited and booted ...

On my wanderings across the Internet I found this very interesting - and specific - site relating to James Bond and the different suits he has worn in the cinema since the sixties.

As well as fulsome identification of the styles, cut and cloth associated with each different James Bond, the site - run by US designer Matt Speiser - has a fun blog post about the suits that Michael Caine wore as Harry Palmer. If you want to know the cuff style, suit fabric and pocket designs that make up the Harry Palmer look, this is the page to check out.

Wonderful images: the Berlin Wall Then & Now, courtesy of The Guardian

The way things were

I've just discovered on The Guardian's website this lovely photographic essay of the Berlin Wall, looking at classic images and then superimposing on them the exact same view as it exists today. Very interesting and well-designed piece, with commentaries, which shows just how utterly transformed the city is from its days as the fulcrum of the Cold War.

Really worth investigating.

Winding back the clock - cookstrips are back in The Observer

Readers who enjoy the feel and simplicity of Len Deighton's cookstrips - which first emerged as serialised items in The Observer between 1962 and 1966 are to appear in this Sunday's edition of The Observer magazine, and thereafter monthly in the magazine. The cookstrips of course subsequently morphed into the Action Cook Book, and famously appear in the coffee making scene in The Ipcress File!

The interview can be found here (hat-tip to Terry).

It features a great reproduction of the famous photo of Len showing Michael Caine as Harry Palmer how to make an omelette in a production still from The Ipcress File. Many of the anecdotes are familiar but there's plenty new in the article of interest to readers, such as the fact Len kept terrapins in his airing cupboard (!).

Here's an extract from the article by Robin Stummer:

'In the film, as Harry nonchalantly cracks eggs into a bowl with one hand while the woman pours out two large whiskies, you can see a cluster of newspaper cuttings pinned up near the copper pans and string of garlic. They are from the Observer’s food section. Not words, but drawings – like prison-cell treasure maps dotted with arrows, numbers and scraps of staccato text veering, slightly insanely, into bold and italic. Those cuttings are some of Deighton’s famous “cookstrips”'.

Immortalised in fabric ....

Discovered this on the Internet recently. Len Deighton is available as a collectible figure. As are a host of other literary personalities.

Very odd. But compellingly so!