Another side of Len Deighton ...

"Another Campari, darling?"

His backside, that is.

Not backside, but his back ... side!

What am I talking about? I’ve recently got hold of an extremely rate copy of Town magazine from Christmas 1965 – forty-eight years old but in fantastic condition. The front cover is a photo by James Mortimer that straightaway makes a serious statement about the style and verve of the swinging sixties.

The stunningly beautiful, winking woman is model Patti Boyd, later to become the wife of ex-Beatle George Harrison and blue guitarist Eric Clapton.

She is the woman who was subsequently purported to be the the inspiration for George Harrison's 'Something', 'I need you' and 'Isn't it a pity', plus Clapton's 'Layla' and 'Wonderful Tonight'. She was clearly in the sixties the ultimate hip 'It Girl' and lucky was the man who go to spend a morning in her arms.

The lucky man? Well, that’s Len Deighton of course, hence why it's on this blog. The image it conjures up gives a clue to the way in which men's expectations were changing: a pretty ‘bird’, sexually liberated, up front, enjoying drink-fuelled partying fun, with a handsome man on her arm, who clearly thinks he's struck lucky.

It's perhaps the ultimate fantasy for Town’s male readers of the to subscribe to, as the staid, buttoned-up 'fifties gave way to the 'sixties and men had to learn how to deal with greater personal independence and wealth.

Why is this picture interesting? Well, for a start, it’s the reverse image of the cover of Drinks-man-ship, edited by Len and produced by the same team working on Town magazine, which came out at the same time (in time for Christmas).

"Absolutely - make mind a double!"

An early example of integrated product marketing and advertising. Indeed, at the back of the magazine is an advert (right) in the form of an invitation to join the fun and purchase a copy of the book.

The book, now reasonably collectable, is a bawdy, alcohol-soaked paean to every manifestation of booze in all its forms, with contributions from some of London’s finest writers and reconteurs of the time.

However, it’s also interesting because it demonstrates Len’s status – three years after publication of The Ipcress File – as a writer and … well, nowadays one would refer to him as a “celebrity”.

One would think that a clinch with one of the most beautiful women in London would stay long in the memory.

But Len Deighton today has little recollection of this shoot: he was at the time, he recalls, very busy (with what he doesn't recall) and he remembers a car coming to collect him, going to a studio somewhere where some pictures were taken with the "delightful" Patti Boyd before he was whisked away.

Not a bad way to spend a morning!

[Thanks to blog reader Nick Flindall for his detective work on identifying Patti Boyd]

Some light reading for wartime....

An eagle-eyed reader of this blog, Jeff Quest, spotted this interesting photographic essay by photographer David Moore in Wired magazine.

Titled 'Inside London's Secret Crisis-Command Centre', it is part of a series of photographs called The Last Things, documenting the secret MoD command centre in London from which - in times of crisis - the Government and army would run the country and any conflict.

The official line is, this place doesn't exist. Moore's photos show not only that it does, but also what a fascinating place it is, the sort of facility which one associates immediately with the Cold War but which clearly has a modern role to play as governments face up to new and different threats. The suggestion in the article accompanying the photos is that this is in fact the Pindar complex beneath Whitehall, one of many hidden citadels across the city. What do readers think?

The interesting little twist? Look at this picture. Judging by that bookshelf, it looks like Her Majesty's spies and generals sometimes seek inspiration from their fictional counterparts!

Brian Duffy documentary on BBC Four

Just been watching a very interesting documentary on BBC Four tonight about the photographer Brian Duffy, entitled The Man Who Shot The 60s.

Duffy was one of the figures of swinging sixties London, a fashion photographer who along with David Bailey and Terence Donovan was one of the "black trinity" of photographers who helped make London and Soho in particular the centre of the fashion and arts worlds. Duffy worked for Nova, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and The Sunday Times. Famously, in the seventies Duffy destroyed all his negatives.

Duffy was an art school friend of Len Deighton and took a number of publicity shots of him as he became famous following the publication of The Ipcress File. They both shared a connection with photography, Deighton having learned photography as part of his work in RAF intelligence during National Service. The photo on this blog post is from a Life article 'Hot Spy Writer on the Lamb' from 1966, and shows Duffy with Deighton explaining his approach to taking shots for a fashion shoot. Writers dropping in on film shoots for glossy magazines sort of sums up Soho in the sixties, really.

Duffy and Deighton's connection extended further into showbusiness when, as Duffy recounts on the documentary, he and David Bailey went to see Oh! What a Lovely War at the theatre in London. Duffy was overcome by the play - "I was in tears" he says - and decided that they should make it into a film. As I've covered on the Deighton Dossier website, Duffy and Deighton set up the Accord Production company, which purchased the rights to the film and recruited Richard Attenborough to act as director. However, the production was pretty difficult by all accounts and Bailey recalls how, quite shrewdly, he sold his share in the production to Deighton for £49 for an easier life. The film was Attenborough's first directing role and, while he went on to great fame and worldwide attention, he proved a handful for the fledgeling producers. Duffy refers to him in the documentary as "unctious"! The shooting of the film was traumatic and stressful, leading Deighton to take his name of the production credits, though Duffy kept his credit. The film was an artistic success.

Deighton, Duffy and Attenborough had first worked together on the film adaptation of Only When I Larf, on which Duffy had a production credit. What comes across clearly in this documentary however is that on their second time working together, Attenborough was already showing signs of being an awful 'luvvie' and evidently put Duffy right off further adventures in film!

Brian Duffy recently had a major retrospective exhibition of his works in London, which was covered on his blog. He certainly created some of the sixties' most iconic images .

The programme will be rebroadcast a number of times over the week on BBC Four and should be available on iPlayer on the web for the next week. A real slice of sixties' London to watch out for.

Swinging sixties on film - London's decade

London really was swinging in the sixties - fashion, music, design, the arts, everything was expanding in technicolour contrast to the slightly drab sixties. Soho was at the epicentre of much of this cultural expansion; Len Deighton, Raymond Hawkey, Peter Blake and others at Central St Martin's College and then the Royal Academy led the way in design and modern art. It was also the period when photography was at the cutting edge of art.

One of Len Deighton's friends from that period and into the seventies, Brian Duffy, is to have a retrospective of his iconic photographs on show at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London, according to this article in The Guardian. Duffy was, along with fellow Londoners Terence Donovan and David Bailey, considered one of the famous three of photographers - the so-called "black Trinity" - who shaped the modern media's image of London in this time of tumult, photographing stars like Jean Shrimpton and Michael Caine (see above), as well as capturing 'old' London, such as the Krays. The zeitgeist of this exciting time was captured well by Deighton in his book London Dossier which gave a nod and a wink to the seamier - but more exciting - side of London that was emerging steadily throughout the sixties.

Duffy subsequently became a film producer and set up a company with Deighton to produce Oh! What a Lovely War. He was also responsible for the cover of David Bowie's seminal Aladdin Sane album.

Certainly - like Deighton - he was a renaissance man and London working class boy-done-good for whom the sixties was one huge cultural grow-bag in which his artistic talents could flourish. Info about the exhibition can be found here; visit Brian Duffy's website for some iconic shots from the sixties.

(Image reproduced here copyright of Brian Duffy)