Questions, questions .....

Readers,

I may be catching up again with Len soon.

He's indicated he might be up for doing another Deighton Dossier Q&A (no promises, mind).

So..... questions you might like answered?

Post them below!

Almost a century ago....

Sir John Mills as Marshall Haig

[Corrected post due to updated information from Len's biographer Edward Milward-Oliver]

... the First World War broke out. There's been plenty of coverage in the news over the last week and more about the 11 November armistice commemorations and the fact that next year will be the hundredth anniversary of the Great Conflict.

In the context of Len Deighton's historical and fictional work, one normally associates him with the Second World War and also, of course, the 'Cold' War. In communication with him this week we discussed briefly his main artistic contribution relating to the Great War, the 1969 film Oh! What a Lovely War, directed by Richard Attenborough.

Len's in London in December filming a short interview with Edward Milward-Oliver at the Imperial War Museum about his decision as a first-time film producer to make a film version of the original stage version by Joan Littlewood, the famous impresario and director. This video of Len - who's own father was in the Machine Gun corps and severely wounded - will touch briefly on his recollections of the film and motivations for doing so: "I felt it a sacred duty to get it right". The short interview will be shown next year as part of a feature by BBC South East.

For those who haven't seen the film, it is worth watching (you can catch a clip here on YouTube) because the play - and Len's film - seek to give the Tommy's eye view of the conflict - the initial enthusiasm, the patriotism, but then the deflation and the anger with the futility of the conflict and the loss of friends in many cases. It was certainly, Len has reminded me, controversial at the time, coming only 50 years after the end of the conflict when many veterans were still alive, and his determination to present his truth of the conflict apparently created high dudgeon with the establishment at the time.

The film, starring an unrivalled cast list of British greats, is entertaining but also deeply maudlin, as it makes the viewer - through song and drama - ponder the lives of the chaps on the front line and contrast their behaviour with that of the politicians.

There's a lot of good books to choose from ….

An interesting article here in The Guardian online, posting what the author DJ Taylor posts as his top-ten counter-factual novels of all time.

With only ten, you've got to make choices, and some of them I agree with - Robert Harris' Fatherland is excellent, read it years ago; CJ Sansom's Dominion is pretty good, and I read it earlier this year. Both, of course, about an alternative fictional world in which the Nazis in Germany are triumphant, or near enough, in World War Two.

There are, shall we say, obvious omissions in my opinion!

Archive round-up (2) - back when magazines were king....

In lieu of any significant news at the moment (that I can report at least) on Len's body of work, I've been looking through my collection of ephemera and magazine articles to bring to readers some items that add a little colour and background context to Len's work as both an author and, pre-1962, as an illustrator and artist.

I've collected over the years many magazines with articles about Len and pieces by him. It's always fun to flick through these magazines because you get a real sense of how people lived in that era, and the almost benign nature of the marketing and consumer world from the adverts:

• Men's fashions were more about "knitted outerwear" than David Beckham in his underwear
• The word "gay" was used in a Midland Bank advert to describe a "gay and cheerful girl" for whom a gift cheque is the most marvellous gift
• Car adverts that were selling British car marques still made in Britain - the Triumph Spitfire, anyone
• Rothman's King Size could still be advertised as "king size flavour that really satisfies"
• Radio Rental Hi-Vantage Colour TVs could be rented for just 25 shillings a week

Also what's clear is the quality of the journalism and the investment editors and writers made in serious, extensive articles the likes of which are now rarely seen outside of specialist titles. Lilliput, a "man's magazine' from the 1950 (sans nudity and pull-outs - this was the 'fifties), contains wonderfully erudite and expansive articles on the likes of 'The Russians on Holiday' and 'A Psychiatrist on Psychiatrists'. Lilliput went out of business in the 'sixties, a victim perhaps of a changing trend in magazine readership as the youth audience was targeted more?

In August 1958, Len Deighton was still operating as a much in-demand freelance illustrator, and below is reproduced his illustration from an advertisement (more like advertorial) entitled 'The Secret of the Cellar', selling the wares of B. Seppelt & Sons, Cannon Street:

What went for "men's magazines" in the 'fifties

Moyston Claret at 8 shillings? Bargain!

The Sunday Times magazine is still going. It was a pioneering magazine in the 'sixties - the first sold with the Sunday Papers, providing a source for more in-depth journalism and - literally - colour. In the November 1969 edition of the magazine, writer Bernard Shaw (and photo journalist Davis Steen) - as part of a special feature on careers and work - talks to a range of famous Britons about the influence their teachers had on their lives. Alongside author Margaret Drabble, journalist Angus McGill and actor/director Bryan Forbes giving their experiences of influential teachers, Len shares his thoughts about being a student at St Martin's School of Art and the influence of lecturer Henry Collins:

"His method was to talk about a design problem in such a way that you realised there were a dozen or more ways of solving it"

Len talks about his time at St Martin's School of Art

Len Deighton and Henry Collins

Tom Clancy ... mission sadly over

The late Tom Clancy

Lots of media reaction in the last couple of days to the death of novelist Tom Clancy, often presented as the world's most popular thriller writer and the creator of the techno-thriller genre. The New Statesman has a nice profile of the author, who died this week aged 66. The BBC also has a nice summary of his career, highlighting the Jack Ryan character who, like Bond and other agents, made a seamless transition to the silver screen in films such as Hunt for Red October and The Sum of All Fears.

There's a good Guardian piece today evaluating his five most important stories.

His books are well-written and popular - a term that's often used by critics to denigrate the worth of an author, but in Clancy's case, it was true - his books were tremendously popular as they offered readers a rip-roaring story, presented fantastic detail about the mechanics of spying and military strategy, and had great characters to boot.

Be interested to hear readers' views of the the author.

Round-up - Smiley culture, X-rays and books within books....

Picked-up across the Inter-web some interesting things I thought I'd bring to the attention of the readers of the Deighton Dossier.

First up, The Guardian marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of John Le Carré's classic novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and challenged its readers to a quiz about how well they know the novel. I took it; shamefully, I only scored 5 out of 10. Far too long since I read the book!

Second, London's Evening Standard newspaper reported this week that Whiteley's, the West London department store, is to close and, inevitably, become luxury flats. The story by the paper's property correspondent looks back at the historical links with the store, which includes:

"In the film version of Billion Dollar Brain, the hero uses an X-ray machine in Whiteley's shoe department to examine the contents of a sealed package"

Why on earth does a shoe department need an X-ray machine?

Finally, I've just finished an excellent book at the moment which I'd go so far as to describe as 'the spy fiction fan's spy fiction. It's The Double Game by Dan Fesperman, a winner of the Crime Writers' Association of Britain's John Creasey Memorial Dagger award for The Small Boat of Great Sorrows.

The Double Game is set in 2012 and follows a journalist Bill Cage who inadvertently reveals a startling secret about a best-selling spy novelist, Edwin Lemaster, a friend of his father's and writer of the 'Folly' spy novels. He's drawn into a web of intrigue involved encoded messages, and the nub of the story rests on Cage's encyclopaedic knowledge of spy fiction, and the fact that he knows someone mysterious is testing his knowledge of spycraft. There are plenty of knowing references to blog readers' favourite writers, including Len, of course:

"In le Carré's Call for the Dead, George Smiley is summoned from sleep by a ringing telephone. In The Miernik Dossier, Charles McCarry's Paul Christopher is yanked from bed in Geneva by the doorbell. In Berlin Game, Len Deighton's Bernard Samson waits in the midnight cold of Checkpoint Charlie for a contact who never shows. And in Knee Knockers, Lemaster's Richard Folly is lured into the murk of predawn Prague. Such a lonely procession of nocturnal seekers. Literally and figuratively they were all in the dark. Now, so was I, an unlikely initiate to the midnight brethren."

Definitely one that's worth checking out.

Dabbling around the internet ....

I found this interesting article on a website and culture blog The Dabbler, which looks at how Len Deighton, through his 'Harry Palmer' character from the first four novels and two films, made an association between food and style which up to that point had rarely existed for male culture. It has some nice photographs and quotes from his early Action Cook Book, making the point that Len - along with other writers and cooks - helped drag the United Kingdom out of something of a culinary desert in the early sixties.

Archive round-up - some lesser known discoveries ....

Posting on the blog has as readers will see been a bit slower than normal over the last couple of months with the summer, holidays and other things getting in the way.

Having had some contact with Len I'm hoping to catch up with him in the UK in October and this might well create another opportunity for a fourth Deighton Dossier interview, so welcome ideas now of questions and themes which readers might want me to explore this time with Len.

Until that, I've been going through some of the recent rarer items I've come across in recent months that have been added to my collection of ephemera related to Len's life and works, which I thought I'd share with blog readers through a series of photographs.

First up, a 1967 edition of what might be called a 1960's "lifestyle" magazine called Nova, which is a mix of fashion advice, serious articles - such as the cover story about sexual mores, featuring BBC TV character Alf Garnett on the cover - shopping advice and stories. In this edition, Len Deighton's fifth novel, An Expensive Place to Die, is serialised (which all four of his previous novels had been in various media). With an illustration by contemporary Roger Law (later of Spitting Image fame), showing the character of Kuang from the story, this is the second part of the serialisation in which the narrator seeks to understand the relationship between Inspector Loiseau's ex-wife Maria and the mysterious Datt, who own the mysterious clinic researching sexual behaviour.

Nova 1967

The illustration by Roger Law

Part two of the adaptation

Another serialisation of Len's books - this time, Catch a Falling Spy (the US name of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy) occurs in the US edition of Cosmopolitan from December 1976, whose female audience doesn't strike me as an obvious core market for spy thrillers. In the same style as the earlier adaptation, this feature provides a short introduction before giving readers seventeen pages of close-typed text, which is a significant amount of the magazine to give up to part of a novel. But, clearly serialisation is another way to reach a readership who might not normally have gone out and bought the novel. The most interesting thing about this serialisation is the illustration by Don Daily, which have a very clear seventies design ethic.

Not an obvious place for spy fiction

The design shrieks the 1970s

Having become one of the sixties' big literary names since the publication of The Ipcress File in 1962, Deighton was in big demand for interviews and features from a range of media. But it wasn't just Len whom media wished to speak with. In this September 1964 issue of Vogue magazine, such was Len's celebrity that the magazine saw interest for its readers in talking to Len's first wife, Shirley (as part of a feature called "Classified material: spy writers' wives", which also runs a profile of John Le Carré's wife, who's only referred to as "Mrs Le Carré").

This profile of Shirley Deighton, who was an artist in her own right, is cleverly written through interspersing the details of the first-person profile with relevant text from her husband's book Funeral in Berlin, published the same year. Here's an example as Shirley wrote about how Len was when writing a new book:

'If his book isn't going well, he's difficult to cope with. He tends to niggle about why there isn't any milk in the fridge. He'll fuss about things, get suspicious. ("I hope you haven't been giving him access to our records," I said ... "No,"said Jean, "I got it." "What do you mean you got it?" I said. "You climbed through the window of the Sureté Nationale at dead of night, do you mean?") I know when he comes through the door what mood he's going to be in, and I know how I should respond to get him in a good mood. But I won't pander to him. I never know what he's thinking. He's quite unpredictable, but I could never live with a man who did the same thing every day. In September, he's going to learn to fly.'

The magazine remains all about style

Shirley Deighton

The article has the same 'style' as her husband's book

On a different track, this summer I finally managed to source something I've been looking for for years: below is a picture of an 'original' Deighton, one of Len's well-received designs for the Andre Deutsch publishing house catalogue from Summer 1967, which is an excellent example of Len's design, developed at art school, as an illustrator, featuring his typical heavy outline and slightly unrealistic perspective. It's extremely rare, so it's a pleasing find.

One of six catalogues illustrated by Deighton

If they weren't so notorious, this would be funny - Stasi disguises....

Really? The cardigan is not a good look

An interesting story cropped up this week when browsing through the Daily Mail's website. An article based on a feature on the Foreign Policy website looks at the attempts made by the Stasi to disguise its agents operating overseas. Looking at some of the images, you wonder how on earth the Stasi was able to maintain a network of agents, given the appallingly bad 'disguises' given to operatives.

Of course, this was the seventies and eighties, generally regarded as a time period when style took a vacation. So, perhaps their choices were inspired. I mean, four button crimson cardigans and TV-cop style glasses. That's right for the seventies, surely? Some of these photos are hilarious, until you think about the objectives of the men and women who were sent to blend in to different Cold War cultures.

The reality of the Stasi is much more serious than comical wigs and woolies. They were, along with the KGB, one of the most ruthlessly successful of espionage bodies during the Cold War. The guys at the top, such as chief Markus Wolf, were cunning and experienced practitioners and professionalised the Stasi and its overseas agents to an extent that allowed for some significant infiltrations.

As Wolf's biography reveals, they were not averse to using some pretty serious tactics to get the intelligence this most paranoid of Cold War states needed to keep its economy moving and its citizens in check.

Still, looking back, you have to laugh a bit!

A design on food - French author evidently draws inspiration from Deighton's cook strip's - FT

The book that started it all

I came across an interesting Deighton reference on Friday in that week's FT - not in the business section but in the life pages (no subscription apparently required to access).

This article by Rowley Leigh uses cartoons to illustrate a recipe for country paté, and draws its inspiration from Len's well-known cook strips from the early sixties, produced and serialised in The Observer. As Leigh observes, of course, "his cookery-book career was small beer compared with his success as the author of thrillers such as The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin."

Len's cook strips were, and until now have always been, one of the few attempts at using design to put across consistently and succinctly the key processes of cooking. This article points to efforts by French designer Chrisophe Blain to graphically recount the story of the French chef's experience using a similar approach, but this time in more cartoon format (and in French).

Michael Caine: 1960s by Graham Marsh - book review

The coffee table Caine

Who was the male face of film in the 'sixties?

Sean Connery? Tom Courtenay? Dustin Hoffmann?

All have a case to make, but in the opinion of Graham Marsh in this new book - an opinion shared by this blog's editor - you can't look much further than Michael Caine as the quintessential face and 'look' of the nineteen sixties that has defined that decade for movie goers then and since.

The erstwhile Maurice Micklewhite, south London born and raised, became an icon of sixties film-making through a little luck, talent and, undoubtedly, a single pair of black-framed glass. Through a series of wonderful, black & white and colour images in large format, Marsh charts Caine's progress from hopeful actor to global star.

And what progress it was! Caine's movies in the sixties is a roll-call of some of the most recognisable, enjoyable, iconic and profoundly British films that still resonate with audiences today.

Each chapter of photographs looks in detail at each of these films: Zulu (1964), The Ipcress File (1965), Alfie (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Billion Dollar Brain (1967) and .... of course ... The Italian Job (1969), frequently cited in film polls as one of the the great films of the sixties.

With his well-cut suits, side parting, glasses and Crombie jack Michael Caine epitomises the look and feel of London in the sixties: stylish, confident, modern and a little bit risky. The selection of photographs by Marsh is impressive: many are recognisable media images, but others are candid on-set shots or off-set snaps from Caine's life in London as one of the UK's most bankable stars.

Of interest to this blog is the inclusion of images from Caine's contribution to the three films of Len Deighton's 'unnamed spy' novels, when he became, without question, 'Harry Palmer' and brought that character fully to life in a way not even the novel captured. Len and Michael became good friends through the films - and through being part of the same London dinner party set along with other London stars of the time - and there are some great images of the two of them on set, bringing Len's characters to life.

The analysis Marsh provides isn't particularly interesting for each chapter, but that's not really an issue as it's the quality of the images that make this book a winner for any film.

In the interests of the book review, I share below some images from the book. This book is very much a coffee table book - it's something you can pick up, flick through and smile as you see image after image of this great British star doing what he does best: being Michael Caine!

It's definitely worth checking out. RRP is £20, it's hardback and published by Reel Art Press.

The glasses, the overcoat, the introduction ....

A note for any collectors out there ....

A conversation this afternoon with friend and book dealer extraordinaire James Pickard of J P Rarebooks. He advises that he's just got hold of a number of extremely rare Deighton books and ephemera items (such as the marketing ephemera sent out with first editions of Billion-Dollar Brain to book sellers) which should be of interest to any collector of Len's works.

These haven't yet been catalogued on his website, so he advises to give him an email on jparebook [at] aol [dot] com

As well as these hard to find items (which I can advise, are hard to find) he tells me he has also got in his collection many first editions from Len's catalogue. So if blog readers are looking to fill in a missing part of your collection, it might be worth giving him a call.

James is also one of the foremost collectors of Ian Fleming's books and has many interesting tales to tell in that regard, too.

He's back! Alternative history with a twist ....

The genre of alternative history remains a popular staple in literature. One of the most recent examples published which I read - but found only moderately interesting - is Dominion by C J Sansom. Another recent example - which by contrast, I still enjoy - is of course Robert Harris' Fatherland. Both feature alternative histories involving an undefeated Nazi Germany.

SS-GB was Len's contribution to the genre and that time period. It's still regarded as one of the premiers examples of the genre. The grim fascination with the period and the willingness to contemplate the awfulness of the 'what if' scenarios of a Nazi victory from the comfort of an armchair also explains why the Second World War, and the Nazis in particular, is one of the main themes of the alternative history genre.

Er is Wieder Da (He's back! in English) has a twist on this - it's not so much an alternative history of Nazi Germany as much as an alternative contemporary history of this decade, contemplating what would happen if the Nazis - more strictly, Hitler - returned to modern Germany.

It's a fascinating premise, one I was keen to explore. It's currently only published in the original German (but such has been its popularity in Germany that English-language rights have already been sold to MacLehose). Timur Vernes is the author; he's one of a new generation of German writers starting to explore their wartime history in a more open and arguably post-modern way, to the extent where the Nazizeit is now the potential source for a humorous novel.

The premise is simple, but clever. Hitler is discovered having somehow reawakened in Berlin of 2011 and, after finding his way in modern society, becomes a TV demagogue on a comedy show hosted by a Turkish immigrant having been mistaken for a never-out-of-character comic act, having had his potential as an act recognised by TV producers. Hitler - still convinced of his messianic role to save the German people - again uses all his rhetorical power and charm to begin to sway the Germans through his own website - the Fuhrer Headquarters - after a video of him leaks onto YouTube. His bigoted rants are interpreted as a satirical exposure of prejudice, leading him to decide to start his own political party.

It's as much a story about the contemporary Internet-soaked, celebrity-obsessed culture in the West, which allows someone as obviously evil as Hitler to, somehow, become an overnight celebrity and be courted because he's controversial, opinionated, charming and, clearly, dead! The book, which has already sold hundreds of thousands of copies has unsurprisingly sparked debate in a country that has grappled for decades with Hitler’s legacy.

But as fewer and fewer citizens from that time are alive in German society, it has created a real debate in the country. Some, unsurprisingly, are critical of what it represents: Stern wrote that the book was an “outgrowth of a Hitler commercialisation machine that breaks all taboos to make money. ” The author sees it differently, and contributing to a debate: “[Hitler] is always the monster, and we can be comforted by the fact that we’re different from him. He continues to spark real fascination in people, just as he did back then when people liked him enough to help him commit crimes.”

The Nazis will always make tremendous fodder for fiction writers and especially thriller writers, because of the nature of the crimes committed under the regime and because it was the war to end all wars. This book is the first to take this subject matter a wryly humorous twist. Worth investigating when it comes out in English.

The Americans are still coming .... show 2 quick review

Does ITV's The Americans have a chance of becoming one of the next 'must see' serials on TV? A new Homeland, perhaps? Might it do as well as BBC's The Fall.

Judging by Saturday's second episode, I think it does .... and can.

The actors - leads Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys - are excellently chosen as the Russian couple whose life is based on falsehood and fantasy as undercover Soviet spooks in suburban America, into whose lives the truth is seeping in and threatening to undermine everything they've devoted their lives too.

This weekend's show was a race-against-time story. Asked at short notice to bug Casper Weinberger's house - there's a name for the teenagers, one of the eminences grise of US diplomacy in the eighties - the Jennings choose to kidnap and poison the son of Weinberger's cleaner in order to get her to plant a device in his office.

It was fascinating to remember how much more challenging espionage was back in the 'eighties when, sans Internet and sans iPods and steady-state technology, secret recordings required a real to real tape recorder and transmitter the size of a small suitcase! Technology has made a spook's life a lot easier, surely!

Many reviews have pointed to the real-life discovery of Russian sleeper agents in the US in 2010 - one of the prompts for creation of the show was the discovery of the gorgeous Anna Chapman, Russian femme fatale and apparent embedded operative. Recent knowledge of this sort of real-life example does aid the viewers belief in the story and the question at the heart of it: do we really know the people we live across the street from, and spend our daily lives with? The premise, therefore, has currency (particularly in modern times when for Soviets one could read al Qaeda lone wolves or Chinese cyber agents). The scripts and the dynamic, tense relationship between the main characters I think creates real believability. The situations, the fears, the anxiety when they lie in bed, the show captures well the emotions anyone would feel when they fear the game is up and their life-long game of charades may be under threat.

At the heart of the show is a simple device to create tension - will they get caught by next door neighbour, a FBI lead agent ? It's a great way for the writers each episode to ratchet up the tension, tighter and tighter, with discovery coming closer and then - twang - like an elastic band snapping back, the Jennings can go back to living an apparently domestically happy life, until the next threat to their existence.

In terms of spy craft, it seems plausible enough, and clearly the show's creator being an ex-CIA operative ensures that what we see procedurally and out in the fields is likely to be pretty authentic.

There are obvious parallels between this story and Len's Game, Set and Match triple trilogy. At the heart of both stories is a marriage, a relationship between two people which is threatened and also driven by the global strategic power struggle between nations of millions, implacably opposed to each other and dedicated to defeating their ideology. Betrayal, loyalty, trust, denial - all are crucial human emotions that are essential to any good espionage story. This series seems to have it in spades, so far.

Do share views on show 2 below.

The Americans are coming .....!

How about a bit of Cold War nostalgia on TV? Forgotten what things were like when two superpowers ruled the world? Then maybe new drama The Americans (co-produced by Fox TV) will bring back some memories.

This is debuting in the UK on the ITV network tomorrow evening. The story centres on an pair of Soviet spies living as a loving American family in Suburbia at the time of the Reagan election, whose cover is potentially blown by the arrival of an FBI agent in the area. Sounds fascinating, and I'm loving the ident for the drama (see picture) drawing on the classical design of sixties and seventies era Soviet propaganda posters.

Given the recent announcement of plans to film all nine of the Game, Set & Match books, is this the start of a period of Cold War nostalgia from programme planners? I'll be interested to see the results!

If any readers in the States have already seen it, what's the assessment?