Unfaithful to the story? The cover of Faith ...

Does the design fit the story?

Is there a fundamental error on the design of the new Harper reissue of Len Deighton's Faith?

One correspondent and blog reader - Sandipan Deb, an Indian journalist and Deighton fan - thinks so. He has pointed out to me an apparent mistake committed on the cover of Faith in the new edition published by Harper in 2011. The cover design is by Arnold Schwartzman, Deighton's friend and fellow designer.

Sandipan writes:

"On the Faith cover, Schwartzman has used the photograph of a window in Poland with a lace curtain (and merged it with a picture of Bernard peering from behind it). In the cover designer's note, Schwartzman explains: 'As Bernard Samson is now on an assignment in Poland I searched through my collection of photographs for a suitable image that would evoke that part of the world...' The point is: Bernard goes to Poland in Hope, and not in Faith, which is set in Berlin and London!"

On first examination, something does seem to be amiss. The majority of the plot action in Faith takes place in East Germany, where Bernard Samson makes contact with the agent VERDI, who promises information that will explain the death of his wife's sister Tessa during Fiona's escape from the East when serving as a double agent in the KGB. It is in Hope that the story essentially shifts further west to Poland, as Bernard is forced to go there to extract Tessa's husband George - who is secretly working for Polish intelligence - who is in the country in the hope of being reunited with his wife, whom the Stasi have told George is still alive.

It does seem to be a discrepancy. Perhaps Schwartzman, in trying to find individual design elements for each of the nine stories while retaining a thematic integrity, overlooked this. Does it matter? Not really. What is as important about the source of the image is the idea it portrays - for net curtains, read Iron Curtain. Schwartzman's aim is to depict Samson behind the Wall, isolated, "an unwilling outsider ostracised from domestic comfort."

Whatever the motivations of the designer and the source of the image, the Harper reissues by Arnold Schwartzman are still iconic covers. The complexity and depth of the nine volume story is one of its attractions as fiction, as it requires the reader to become fully absorbed in the main stories which flow between each of the books.

Still, an interesting observation.

The reissues - the job is done .....

Arnold Schwartzman, Len Deighton's friend and collaborator on a number of books, emailed me recently to say he's now completed the full set of covers for the Harper Collins reissues of all of Len Deighton's fiction works.

Having seen them all, I can say they're on a par with the original set of Ray Hawkey covers, in the sense in which they innovate and provide a consistency of design across all the books, and give the book buyer a clear sense of what themes the book is exploring.

Make up your own mind by checking out the covers in this online gallery.

Reproduced below are the covers for the final four books in the reissue series, coming out in 2012. Noticeably, Arnold's chosen to adopt a common theme running across the books, of a pair of spectacles, worn by the hero. The 'spy with no name', a certain Harry Palmer? Given that Palmer (unnamed spy) isn't in Spy Story, for example - based on my understanding of the story and a reference by Len in a previous edition - might this cause confusion? To the book-buying public, probably not. The covers are on a par with all the others produced so far, and Arnold's to be congratulated on revitalising Len's existing collection of stories.

Bored already? ....

Nick Jones, chronicler of all things books in Lewes and writer of the Existential Ennui blog, has put up an interesting post about The Ipcress File, in which he references well known comments by author Kinglsey Amis in an article called 'A New James Bond', in a published collection of essays, Kingsley expresses frustration with the complex plot:

"tough sledding with The Ipcress File... The endless twists and turns of the plot, the systematic withholding of clues and even of settings in time and place..."

Great article that's worth checking out.

The reissues (15) - Charity

After nine books (if you exclude Winter), with Charity Len Deighton brought the curtain down on - according to The Times - "one of the great literary achievements of British fiction." Having dealt in the first trilogy with the knowledge that his wife is a defector, only to discover in the second trilogy that Fiona's defection was in fact the greatest infiltration success of London Central and he was the crucial - unwitting - pawn in this most elaborate of espionage chess games, Charity rounds of the Samson story.

Bernard is still working for Frank Harrington in Berlin but increasingly caught up in the machinations of his brother-in-law George Kosinzki who is supporting the growing Catholic church movement in Communist Poland. Samson is increasingly anxious to find the truth about the defection of his wife and the death of her sister during the mission to exfiltrate her. A meeting with a former colleague, Jim Prettyman, reveals that he was responsible for hiring the hit man who killed Tessa, Fiona's sister. What is worse, Bernard realises there is no future for him and girlfriend Gloria, who is now carving a career for herself in London Central and sharing a bed with Bret Rensellaer.

Bret holds an inquiry in to Tessa's murder which uncovers that Silas was solely responsible for Tessa's death, and had gone to great, murderous lengths to keep the operation secret by trying to murder various of Bernard's contacts and friends who'd been forced to become involved. Betrayed by the department that now seeks to repay his loyalty, Bernard asks Fiona and their children to join him in Berlin, his true home.

The new introduction

What's most interesting in this new introduction is that Len explains his "obsession" with Berlin, which I've always maintained is one of the central 'characters' in the books, because the city and its inhabitants is so wonderfully described that the reader totally understand the mixed feelings Bernard has about the city and its people. That sentiment too is understood by Deighton:

"Berlin is like an ever-present character in my Bernard Samson books. It hovers over the action like a storm cloud even when the action moves to a different locale. But Berlin has no speaking part. It is the action and the inter-action that must always dominate stories of the type that I write. Berlin is the backdrop but the people who strut and posture on the stage together create a mood of drama, farce, horror or knockabout horror that must be maintained through all the stories. When I wrote Winter, a story of Berlin the first half of the twentieth century, and the prelude to the Bernard Samson stories, the ghosts danced in my head.

As a historian, Deighton tells the reader that he has had a fascination for all things German for many decades, and displays his grasp of the strategic imperatives which drove the development of Berlin - and Germany - from peasant economy to economic powerhouse in just over a century and a half. Across three pages, Deighton displays his knowledge of Berlin's history to explain its role in the ups - and many downs - of German culture from the Kaiser time right up to the fall of the Wall. Berlin is a city of contradictions - cultural centre drawing in people from all across central Europe, yet one which is dominated by the German army, to the extent that in the nineteenth century revenues from one particular toll gate went straight to the German army. Makes for fascinating reading for anyone interested in understanding the dynamics that have created this most tumultuous of cultures. 

There is an interesting part of the introduction in which Deighton seeks to respond to critics' descriptions of the novels and their classification as spy thriller. Despite his apparent Prophet status in understanding the structure forces that eventually brought down the wall - the Catholic and Lutheran churches - and reflecting them in the heart of his novel, Deighton insists the stories are not political thrillers. They are, Len insists, comedy dramas about love and marriage, of a man with two women in his life.

The new cover
The spine motif - torn up plane tickets spelling out BERNARD SAMSON - is complete with this book, and the total effect when all nine books are place side to side is very pleasing. Arnold Schwartzman explains the front cover image - of Samson's image behind a push-bell directory - is to suggest Samson as the 'third man' of the story, an unreliable narrator; it also suggests the third book, of the third charity. The best image is on the back: a Russian ashtray on which lies a lit cigarette with lipstick, hinting at Fiona's central role in this whole drama.

The quality of thinking that has gone into all nine of the covers of this triple trilogy is immense, and I think that Schwartzman's design deserve consideration alongside Ray Hawkey's original covers for the trilogy.

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.

The reissues (12) - Spy Line

After a hiatus, I'm returning to covering the 2010/2011 reissues by Harper Collins of all of Len Deighton's major novels - running my eye in particular over the new designs and determining if there's much new for readers to enjoy.

Having so far covered all the four 'un-named spy' novels and the first four novels of the Bernard Samson triple trilogy, we're up to Spy Line, the book which provides the anchor for the whole story arc right starting with the first novel, Berlin Game. It sets up the denouement of the central narrative - Bernard's wife Fiona's defection to the Communist and her subsequent operations to de-stable London Central, often with much success. With that, the reader thinks, all the threads in the story are neatly brought together. That is, of course, until the story takes a whole new twist in the subsequent books and the trilogy that does bring the story to an end. So Spy Line is not an ending, more of a gear change.

In Spy Line, for Bernard Samson life has turned upside down. His wife has defected, but his new relationship with the much younger Gloria seems to be going well ... for now. He has survived the initial internal investigations concerning his role in his wife's defection, but is still under suspicion and begins the novel on the run in Berlin, where - after debriefing an undercover agent - he discovers that  his KGB nemesis - Eric Stinnes - has been smuggling drugs into East Germany.

The story moves from Berlin to London and then on to Vienna, where posing as a philatelist Bernard is asked to pick up a package from a stamp auction. As various threads of his investigations into Fiona's disappearance come together, Bernard draws his own conclusions and meets Fiona who reveals she has been a double agent all this time and has, effectively, betrayed Bernard's trust. What follows is a dramatic attempt to bring Fiona back to the west during which a number of major characters are killed and the story is fantastically set up for the final three novels as Bernard starts to ask: what really happened?

The new design
The holistic approach adopted by Arnold Schwartzman continues, with the cover image of Bernard Samson's photo on his fake Russian passport - which has been run through the shredder - illuminates the precarious balance Samson finds himself in, in which one false move could find him snatched by the Russians before he can get Fiona back.

What Schwartzman wants to symbolise here is how Samson's character, his life, is in tatters, it is ripped apart by forces beyond his control and yet he survives. However, this is perhaps the least challenging of the front covers in terms of its visual appeal.

The new introduction
Deighton writes about his approach to structuring all nine books of the three trilogies together. Although - as he points out in the introduction to each original edition - each book can be read as a stand-alone novel, clearly as an author Deighton needed to find ways to thread multiple narratives and character across nine novels (ten if you include Winter), and Spy Hook had a pivotal role.

"In planning this Samson series I knew that Hook would record a change of mood....There was a need to reach a climax, or at least a milestone, in the overall story; a place that would prepare me, and you, for the change in style and method that Spy Sinker, the final book of the second trilogy, would use. [Deighton used a third person narrative to provide a whole new perspective on events]

My wife, and both my sons, have always maintained that my musical taste tends to favour the minor keys. Eventually I yielded to their judgement. I like the minor keys and a whole opera in a minor key is not too much for me. Spy Line is a book written entirely in a minor key. Line depicts Samson at the nadir of his life and career."

That's a great description of this story's mood.

The book also provides Deighton with an opportunity to take a deeper look at Cold War Berlin and the under-belly of the city that allowed it to function as a capitalist enclave within a Communist country. Samson's long discussions with one of his father's former agents, 'Lange' Koby, for example, illustrate the harsh reality of life in Berlin for those on the front line of the Cold War.

"I must admit that I enjoyed investigating Berlin's underworld. Sited in what was virtually the No Man's Land of the Cold War, this milieu was unique in having a national and a political dimension. Perhaps this sad domain was no more violent than Paris, New York or London, but here in Berlin one saw that authority could be more ruthless than the criminals and more indifferent to suffering. Perhaps that was not unique to Berlin; perhaps it was more a measure of my innocence."

Spy Line remains a great book which adds new layers to the characters which the reader is familiar with but also quickens the pace to lead up to the dramatic finish where one thinks the outcome is clear cut. But as the subsequent three novels prove, this is far from the case.

The reissues (11) - Spy Hook

Spy Hook - photo (c) Harper Collins

After a blogging hiatus of a few weeks, I'm pleased to get back to blogging about the world of Len Deighton and bring you some news about the latest reissues from Harper Collins. Having brought out new editions of Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match, Bomber, Winter, and Len's two most famous cook books, the next off the conveyer belt are Spy Hook, Spy Line and Spy Sinker. All three were reissued this autumn (along with Close-Up).

Spy Hook is the next novel in the nine-volume Bernard Samson series, and follows the tumultuous ending to London Match, which saw Bernard's wife Fiona - now a KGB colonel - outwit him on the streets of Berlin to get rid of a rival and plant further seeds of doubt in the minds of London Central about her husband's position.

Crucially, the action takes place three years on from Fiona's defection. It is evident in this story that those three years have taken their toll on Bernard: though now romantically involved with Gloria Kent from the office, his work has suffered and the hurt of being having been under suspicion by his colleague still eats away at him. Old friend shun him, and he's somewhat 'out of the loop', which for an agent is not a great place to be.

Questions still remain about his wife's defection and, like any good agent, in this novel Bernard starts to pick up the threads of what happened in Berlin and - through a fortuitous meeting with an old colleague in the US - he starts to weave together the strands of what happened to his wife ..... and comes up with a disturbing picture.

We meet a lot of new characters at the start of this trilogy, many of whom the reader will have met in the prequel, Winter, which was published shortly before the second trilogy. Crucially, Bernard stumbles across his old boss, Bret Rensselaer, who was - he thought - mortally wounded in the shoot out that was the denouement of London Match. What Bret has to say makes Bernard question everything that's happened since Fiona defected, and it sets up the next two novels nicely.

The new design
Designer Arnold Schwartzman - long-time friend of the author - has created a tour de force of book design with a design narrative that stretches across all nine books but which gives scope, in each volume, for cover designs that tell a story straight away and hint at the machinations and twists in the novel.

Again, he has used an image of 'Bernard Samson' - for me, it's not how I imagine Bernard to look from reading the texts, but it does provide a strong visual hook and emphasises that Bernard is at the centre of everything (but not always knowingly and often without being in control).

Once again, the Berlin Wall is themed in the front cover and on the images used on the back cover. The reader sees immediately how Schwartzman has "hooked" Samson's image on the sharp end of the hammer & sickle, suggesting - appropriately - the extent to which the character's arc in this story is controlled by malevolent forces on the other side of the wall. Schwartzman writes that the wall image on the front cover was taken at the time when the wall came down, adding a poignant touch.

With the fourth book, Schwartzman's clever touch of using air travel baggage tags to spell out Bernard Samson's name is beginning to take shape. On a bookshelf, with the six books lined up, it creates a visual unity which looks great and emphasises the  scope of these books.

The new introduction
This book stands alone as a story, but also propels along the meta narrative of Bernard and Fiona's relationship and its interlinking to shifts in the operation of the Cold War, in which both are inextricably caught up.

Deighton makes the point in his introduction that, having completed Game, Set and Match, he didn't want to go straight into writing another three books. In fact, he took himself away to write somewhere new, and put aside the existing plans he had for the next books in the novel. It had an effect - he wrote Winter, which I and many other readers regard as essential to understanding the wider Samson trilogy. Deighton explains why that needed to come first:

"I drafted a completely different book that would take a lot of time and energy. I decided that I must complete it before starting the second trilogy. A prequel seemed a valuable addition and almost a necessity. There were so many things I wanted to say about the characters that surrounded Bernard, especially the elderly ones. My story would have to cover a long period .... I decided to call it Winter. Much of Winter was already in my mind as noted extensions of existing characters. Winter [would be] a chronological story but it had to conform to my chart and the overall plan  - and all the biographical characterisations - for nine Samson books."

Deighton makes clear in his notes in this introduction that Spy Hook is about Bernard's shifting relationships with the women in his life - the abandonment (apparently) by his wife and the comfort offered to him by Gloria, who as the story unfolds is demonstrably the one certainty in his life; at least, that is what Bernard thinks.

But this relationship lies heavy on Bernard. This is a story about the impact of guilt, Deighton says, about Samson's domestic situation. It leads him to question everything and to try to get to the root of what really happened in Berlin. As Deighton writes:

"It becomes essential for Bernard to believe his wife is not only a defector but personally dishonest and disloyal and thief too. Only by proving this to his master and to himself will Bernard be able to shed, or at least be able to soften, the deep feelings of guilt he has about being in love with the much younger, and sometimes childlike, Gloria. It is the depth of his love for Gloria that makes his quest so important to him."

Spy Hook is where the Samson series goes to another level and becomes more than just a spy story. It is a multi-level, multi-character examination of human weakness and frailty, set against the last years of the Cold War.

The reissues (5) - The Ipcress File

As previously mentioned on this blog, Harper Collins is drip feeding onto the book market a steady series of re-issues of all of Len Deighton's fiction output. The process began in May with XPD, Bomber, Goodbye Mickey Mouse and SS-GB, all editions carrying a new introduction by Len Deighton himself and sporting new front covers by his friend and associate, designer Arnold Schwartzman.

October has seen the launch of four more reissues, perfectly timed for the Christmas market - a Deighton novel is one images an easily marketable gift item. The first of the reissues covered on this blog is The Ipcress File, Deighton's first novel.

The new introduction

The story is familiar and, thanks to the film adaptation, firmly part of the canon of modern spy fiction. This is the book which introduced to readers the working class, sardonic, wise-cracking un-named agent who thanks to Harry Saltzman and Michael Caine has become universally recognised as 'Harry Palmer'. The milieu in which much of the book is set is swinging sixties London, particularly Soho and Victoria. In his new introduction, Deighton writes he drew heavily upon his time in London in creating the backdrop to the agent's work in the capital: "After completing two and a half years of military service I had been, for three years, a student at St. Martin's School of Art in Charing Cross Road. I am a Londoner. I grew up in Marylebone and one art school started I rented a tiny grubby room around the corner from the art school. This cut my travelling time to five minutes. I got to know Soho very well indeed. I knew it by day and by night. I was on hello, how are you? terms with the 'ladies', the restaurateurs, the gangsters and the bent coppers. When, after some years as an illustrator I wrote The Ipcress File much of its description of Soho was the observed life of an art student resident there." It becomes clear in the retelling of the creation of the Harry Palmer character just how much of Deighton's own life and experiences shaped it, except in one way. In the book, the character comes from Burnley (in the film, naturally, with Caine he became a Cockney). Deighton adds: "I suppose that intervention marked on tiny reluctance to depict myself exactly as I was. Perhaps this spy fellow is not me after all." He also replicated in the office banter with colleagues in W.O.O.C.(P). the atmosphere of his time as an art director in a Soho advertising agency, exchanging barbs with Eton-educated colleagues in their plush private members clubs.

Deighton gives some interesting perspectives on the books that he read which fuelled his creativity and drew him towards the written word and away from design: "At school, having proved to be a total dud at any form of sport - and most other things - I read every book in sight. There was no system to my reading, nor even a pattern of selection. I remember reading Plato's The Republic with the same keen attention and superficial understanding as I read Chandler's The Big Sleep and H.G. Wells' The Outline of History and both volumes of The Letters of Gertrude Bell. I filled notebooks as I encountered ideas and opinions that were new to me, and I vividly remember how excited I was to discover that The Oxford Universal Dictionary incorporated thousands of quotations from the greatest of great writers."

Interestingly, when I read this new introduction it felt familiar, and indeed shares much in common with the last Deighton introduction for a special edition, that for the silver jubilee edition in 1987. This reflects a frequent tendency of the author when recounting of his career and his writing to give away little new information in articles, books, forewords or interviews, and draw instead on a store of existing anecdotes which do often bear re-telling anyway.

The design

Harper Collins and Deighton pulled off a masterstroke in asking Arnold Schwartzman, a major international design figure, to create new front covers for these reissues. Ever since Raymond Hawkey stunned the book and design world with his cover for The Ipcress File - the use of large amounts of white, the use of B&W photography, the striking visual design and innovative typography were symptomatic of the new design wave in the UK led by Deighton and his art school contemporaries - Deighton's books have often represented innovation in book cover design. These new editions follow in that tradition.

The covers of all four 'Palmer' reissues have two central themes: the chessboard, the classic metaphor for the 'game' of espionage and counter-spying (which Deighton uses to full effect in Horse Under Water), and smoking, which was an essential element of popular culture during the Cold War.

Schwartzman provides an insight into his approach to the design for The Ipcress File. Each design element on the front cover points to a key theme in the book: "In seeking an appropriate ashtray, to carry through the 'smoking' theme, I accidentally came across a unique piece shaped like a hand gun, so I aimed it at a red chess pawn, which represents Ipcress's 'Red' Cold War antagonist." It's great fun looking across the design to identify the meticulous approach to symbolism that Schwartzman's employed: the Aquarius cigarette lighter is a reference to Deighton's use of the protagonists' horoscope to introduce each chapter; the syringe with made in the GDR obviously point to the use of psychotropic drugs to induce the psychosis central to the antagonist's plans to brainwash British scientists; the Savoy Hotel coat ticket references his and Deighton's shared affection for the famous London hotel. The fingerprints are Schwartzman's own, taken by a police sergeant in the 1970s as part of a design commission for The Sunday Times.

The pattern of shared symbolism across all four novels continues on the spine, where each of the four books has a stamp motif - in this case a Russian 4 kopek stamp commemorating the former Soviet spy Richard Sorge. Cigarette cards on the back cover depict military insignia from National Service, harking back to the protagonists background in the Army where he was involved in the black market, prior to being press ganged into W.O.O.C.(P).

He acknowledges Raymond Hawkey's original, iconic cover with the use of the gun-shaped ashtray mirroring the gun used in the original, and the retention of the wooden type font logotype used. Overall, the design elements capture perfectly the development of the consumer culture in the sixties at the height of the Cold War and serve as an excellent visual smogasbord to the complex - sometimes over complex - plot which Deighton weaves in the text.

The Ipcress File, Harper Collins 2009, RRP £7.99, ISBN 978-0-586-02619-9.

Design news

I've had some correspondence with noted British designer Arnold Schwartzman, friend of Len Deighton and co-author with him of Airshipwreck. Arnold has been commissioned by Len and Harper Collins to design the front covers of the new Len Deighton book reissues (see postings below).

His new designs for the forthcoming reissues of the first four "Harry Palmer" novels feature on the back inside cover of the first four reissued books and they look great - montages of sixties ephemera laid out on different chess boards, each pointing towards different themes in the complex plots developed by Deighton for his classic agent character. The library at the University of the Creative Arts in Maidstone, Kent is to hold an exhibition of some of the props from these new cover designs.

Arnold tells me that his wife had a lot of fun searching across eBay for the items for each book front cover, which will be out in October (I'm anticipating my copies with great interest). He writes that he already has a concept in mind for the "Game, Set and Match" series (due out for Father's Day next year); Ray Hawkey's original designs for these books - based around knives thrust into apples - is iconic, so I can't wait to see how Arnold chooses to interpret these classic stories.

The reissues (2) - Goodbye Mickey Mouse

The second of the four recently re-issued novels I want to look at today is Goodbye Mickey Mouse, Deighton's fourteenth novel first published in 1982. The story follows a group of American fighter airmen based at Thaxted in East Anglia, flying escort missions over Germany in 1943-4 at the height of the air war when the Americans were bombing during the day, at great cost to their men. Central to the novel are two contrasting characters - the reserved Captain Jamie Farebrother and cocky yank Lieutenant Mickey Morse. It is his Mustang Fighter - Mickey Mouse II with the cartoon mouse on the cowling - which gives the novel its title (although Arnold Schwartzman's new front cover for the book shows a more conventional pilot's 'sweetheart' illustration with decals showing seven successful hits for the pilot).

Not surprisingly, for an author who was a former RAF intelligence officer and also flies his own planes and has a long-standing passion for aircraft and their intrinsic importance to modern military history, this book was heavily researched by Deighton. In his new introduction, he quotes with relish the feedback from an 8th Army Air Force veteran he spoke to in his research who talked about the missions of 'Big Week', when up to 800 planes crossed the channel in one of the most intense air battles of the war.

His closeness to flyers was crucial to his research. He recounts how the genesis of the novel came from first-hand research he'd done for a half-completed story about the air war in Vietnam, during research for which he'd spent a couple of weeks on an US air base, training, eating and flying with the aircrews in an F-4 Phantom. While the Vietnam story came to nothing, he writes that he used this research and experiences to look again at the novel possibilities in the air war in the second show, having also been prompted by lengthy correspondence with a historian of the US air force in the UK.

Spending time with veterans of the 91st Bombardment Group at one of their reunions, he recalls just how self sufficient these air bases became for the men: everything was there, dentists, theatres, barbers, shops. It was a self-contained community of men and women. This led him to develop the narrative arc, telling each chapter from the perspective of a different character, not just the pilots but the technical specialists and ground staff. This meant each chapters language and construction would be slightly different, and accuracy and consistency paramount - but he gave up trying to get exact details of all the different speech patterns of this diverse community of Americans.

Though based in wartime, the plot mechanic is simple. Deighton writes: "Goodbye Mickey Mouse is a love story. Almost every fiction book I have written is to some extent a love story; I suppose I must be some sort of closet romantic. This story is a somewhat prosaic tale. It depicts desperate wartime romances and the cruel anguish they bring to all concerned, the ordinary ebb and low of human frailty during extraordinary times."

That sentiment is characteristic of much Deighton's writing on the war, both fictional and fact - the immense impact it has on individuals and their relationships with those around them during a time of unprecedented violence and upheaval.

The reissues - new insights into the writing process - SS-GB

As set out the last blog entry, at the end of May Len Deighton's publishers Harper Collins re-issued the first four books from his catalogue, each of which now has a fantastic new cover by Deighton's long-standing friend and creative partner (they worked on Airshipwreck together in the 'seventies), Arnold Schwartzman. The new books each have a short introduction by the author explaining his writing process behind each book and the genesis of the story, and much of what is there on the three or four pages of each introduction is new information which gives the reader a new insight into these familiar books.

While for obvious copyright reasons - and because you really should by these books in paperback again if you haven't read them for a while - I'm not going to reproduce at length what we learn in these new introductions (the most recent writing Len Deighton's produced) I'll offer up some hints.

First up, is SS-GB, his celebrated novel using the 'what if...' historical re-imagining approach. Schwartzman has created for it a wonderfully shocking image of a smugly satisfied Hitler opposite Parliament after the Wehrmacht has conquered London (in reality, it looks like Schwartzman's used the famous shot of Hitler when he'd entered Paris in 1940 and was photographed in front of the Eiffel Tower). It's a cover that definitely is there to grab the reader's attention.

So, what of the new introduction from Len Deighton? The catalyst for the book was he writes a late-night drink with his editor at Jonathan Cape Tony Colwell and designer friend Raymond Hawkey, following a discussion about the book they were working on at the time, Fighter. 'No one knows what we might have happened had we lost the Battle of Britain', Tony Colwell said. That was the spark. There's a sense here that no sooner had Len put one book to bed, he was already thinking ahead to his next project (or more likely, projects!).

Deighton reveals how this remark led him to look at the official German documentation and publications, which indicated that much of the military planning for an invasion and occupation of the UK had already been made in 1940 and was in the archives. He'd already talked to a number of German veterans and officials for his acclaimed World War Two histories and novels, so there was already a deep understanding of what such an invasion and occupation would have entailed.

A diligent researcher and note-taker, Deighton gives an insight into how he fleshed out this kernel of an idea - a detective thriller in which a British policeman working under the SS is the hero as he uncovers a Nazi plot to grab the UK's atomic weapons secrets while the King is in prison and the government in exile - from scratch to create the labyrinthine plot and authenticity which it needs to be believable as re-imagined history:

"Using the German data I drew a chain of command showing the connections between the civilians and the puppet government, black-marketeers and quislings, and the occupying power with its security forces and its bitterly competitive army and Waffen SS elements. My old friend and fellow writer Ted Allbeury had spent the immediate post-war period in occupied Germany as what the locals called 'the head of the British Gestapo'. Ted's experience was very valuable indeed and I used his experiences and anecdotes to the full."

Deighton has long argued that one of the keys to his novels is getting the details right; from that, everything flows. Papers and histories only give you one perspective; to make characters and plots realistic and believable, you've got to go to the source - the participants, the observers, the eye-witnesses, the experts. This is what he did with SS-GB certainly. He gives a detailed explanation for example of his research into the Old Scotland Yard off Whitehall - one of the main locations for the novel - to understand the workings of the Metropolitan Police during the war, and drew upon the direct experiences of a former detective from the period who gave him a guided tour around the old nick. That sort of research comes across in the novel as Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer becomes embroiled in a tussle between two competing SS officers in command of occupied London.

SS-GB was always a book that begged to be filmed. London felt the touch of the Nazi hand through the Blitz bombings but - due to the bravery of the fighter pilots or Hitler's failure to see through the defeat of British forces at Dunkirk and his subsequent excursions in Russia, whichever theory you believe - we escaped occupation. This novel is the closest you can probably get to understanding what it might have been like!

News on Deighton reissues

Word from my editorial contact at Len Deighton's publishers, Harper Collins, is that following the initial release of the first four revised editions of SS-GB, Bomber, Goodbye Mickey Mouse and XPD - all with new introductions by Len Deighton himself (more details in future posts) - is that on 1 October this year the following books will be published in new editions, again each with new introductions by the author: The Ipcress File, Horse Under Water, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain. These are the books which are really synonymous with Deighton as an author and their appearance should result in another spurt in media attention, one would imagine.

In addition, there are plans to issue for Father's Day 2010 the Bernard Samson novels Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match (my personal favourites), which I look forward to tremendously, particularly for any author insight on this key character. The next trilogy in this series, Spy Hook, Spy Line and Spy Sinker, are also slated for publication later in 2010 along with the author's only collection of short stories, Declarations of War, some of which are among his finest works including the short story First Base - set in Vietnam - which was initially planned to be a full-blown novel. Len Deighton's French Cookery Course may also follow this year's republication of the Action Cook Book.

One thing they are also considering for the new novel reissues is to include commentary on the new cover designs by Deighton's great friend and design colleague Arnold Schwartzman. The four covers for the four classic Harry Palmer novels draw inspiration from Raymond Hawkey's originals, with a cornucopia of objects on each giving clues to the main themes in the story. They're excellent, and a great compliment to the story.

So - a lot to look forward to!