Len Deighton | |
|---|---|
| Born | Leonard Cyril Deighton (1929-02-18)18 February 1929 (age 96) Marylebone, London, England |
| Occupation |
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| Alma mater | Royal College of Art |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Two |
Leonard Cyril Deighton (/ˈdeɪtən/DAY-tən; born 18 February 1929) is a British author. His publications have included cookery books and works on history, but he is best known for hisspy novels.
After completing hisnational service in theRoyal Air Force, Deighton attended theSaint Martin's School of Art and theRoyal College of Art in London; he graduated from the latter in 1955. He had several jobs before becoming a book and magazine illustrator and designed the cover for the first UK edition ofJack Kerouac's 1957 workOn the Road. He also worked for a period in an advertising agency. During an extended holiday in France he wrote his first novel,The IPCRESS File, which was published in 1962 and was a critical and commercial success. He wrote several spy novels featuring the same central character, an unnamedworking-class intelligence officer, cynical and tough. Between 1962 and 1966 Deighton was the food correspondent forThe Observer and drewcookstrips—black-and-white graphic recipes with a limited number of words. A selection of these was collected and published in 1965 asLen Deighton's Action Cook Book, the first of five cookery books he wrote. Other topics of non-fiction include military history.
Many of Deighton's books have been best-sellers and he has been favourably compared both to his contemporaryJohn le Carré and his literary antecedentsW. Somerset Maugham,Eric Ambler,Ian Fleming andGraham Greene. Deighton's fictional work is marked by a complex narrative structure, extensive research and an air ofverisimilitude.
Several of Deighton's works have been adapted for film and radio. Films includeThe Ipcress File (1965),Funeral in Berlin (1966),Billion Dollar Brain (1967) andSpy Story (1976). In 1988Granada Television produced the miniseriesGame, Set and Match based on his trilogy of the same name, and in 1995BBC Radio 4 broadcast areal-time dramatisation of his 1970 novelBomber.
Leonard Cyril Deighton was born inMarylebone, London, on 18 February 1929.[1][2] His birth was in the infirmary of aworkhouse as the local hospital was full.[3] His father was the chauffeur and mechanic forCampbell Dodgson, theKeeper of Prints and Drawings at theBritish Museum; Deighton's mother was a part-time cook. At the time the family lived inGloucester Place Mews nearBaker Street.[4][5] In 1940, during theSecond World War, the eleven-year-old Deighton witnessed the arrest ofAnna Wolkoff, a British subject of Russian descent for whom his mother cooked; Wolkoff was detained as aNazi spy and charged with stealing correspondence betweenWinston Churchill andFranklin D. Roosevelt.[6][a] Deighton said that observing her arrest was "a major factor in my decision to write a spy story at my first attempt at fiction".[8]
Deighton was educated atSt Marylebone Grammar andWilliam Ellis schools, but was moved to an emergency school for part of the Second World War.[9][10][b] After leaving school Deighton worked as a railway clerk[12] before beingconscripted fornational service at the age of 17, which he completed with theRoyal Air Force (RAF). While in the RAF he was trained as a photographer, often recording crime scenes with theSpecial Investigation Branch (SIB) of the military police as part of his duties.[9][12] During his work with the SIB he learned to fly and became an experiencedscuba diver.[13]
After two-and-a-half years with the RAF, Deighton received ademobilisation grant, enabling him to study atSaint Martin's School of Art where he won a scholarship to theRoyal College of Art; he graduated from the college in 1955.[2][14] While studying he held a temporary job in 1951 as apastry chef at theRoyal Festival Hall.[13] He worked as aflight attendant forBritish Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) between 1956 and 1957 before becoming a professional illustrator. Much of his work as an illustrator was in advertising—he worked for agencies in New York and London—but he also illustrated magazines and over 200 book covers, including for the first UK edition ofJack Kerouac's 1957 workOn the Road.[5][9][15]
While he was working at the Royal Festival Hall, Deighton would make sketches to remember some of the steps he took preparing dishes. He developed the idea into the concept of the "cookstrip", a full recipe within a cartoon-style illustration.[16][c] Following the publication of one of Deighton's cookstrips in theDaily Express in 1961,The Observer commissioned him to provide a weekly series for its own magazine, which he did between March 1962 and August 1966.[18] He later explained:
I was buying expensive cookbooks. I'm very messy, and didn't want to take them into the kitchen. So I wrote out the recipes on paper, and it was easier for me to draw three eggs than write 'three eggs'. So I drew three eggs, then put in an arrow. For me it was a natural way to work.[17]
In 1962 Deighton's first novel,The IPCRESS File, was published; it had been written in 1960 while he was staying in theDordogne, south west France.[12] The book was soon a commercial success and was a best-seller in the UK, France and the US, selling more than 2.5 million copies in three years.[19][20][21] The story—written as afirst-person narrative—introduced aworking-class protagonist, cynical and tough.[1] Deighton did not want to invent a name for the character and later explained "Some people felt that a contrivance, but I kept putting off inventing a name for him until I got to the end of the book and realised I could finish the book without giving him a name".[22][d]
In 2017 Deighton described how he did not consider the character ananti-hero, but "a romantic, incorruptible figure in the mould ofPhilip Marlowe".[19] Deighton described the inspiration of using a working-class spy among theOxbridge-educated members ofthe Establishment as coming from his time at the advertising agency, when he was the only member of the company's board not to have been educated atEton. He said "The IPCRESS File is about spies on the surface, but it's also really about agrammar school boy amongpublic school boys and the difficulties he faces."[23][e]
Deighton published two further novels with his unnamed protagonist—Horse Under Water (1963) andFuneral in Berlin (1964).Funeral in Berlin stayed onThe New York Times best-seller list for twenty weeks and sold over forty thousand copies in hardback in 1965.[15][26] He published two cookbooks in 1965,Len Deighton's Action Cook Book (a collection of his cookstrips fromThe Observer) andOù est le garlic (Where is the garlic), a collection ofFrench recipes.[15][27][f] They also sold well, making Deighton a best-selling author in two genres.[17] Two further novels in the spy series followed—Billion-Dollar Brain (1966) andAn Expensive Place to Die (1967)—after which he published his first historical non-fiction work,The Assassination of President Kennedy (1967), co-written with Michael Rand andHoward Loxton.[27] During 1967 he also edited and contributed toLen Deighton's London Dossier, a work that described itself as "a real London guidebook".[28] The book suggested theRowton Houses owned by Rowton Hotels Ltd weredoss-houses for the homeless.[g] He and the publishersJonathan Cape were sued forlibel; they apologised, withdrew the suggestions made in the book by amending the claim in unsold editions and paid substantialdamages.[28]
In September 1967 he wrote an article inThe Sunday Times Magazine aboutOperation Snowdrop, anSAS attack onBenghazi during the Second World War. Deighton wrote that the raid "suffered a lack of security" becauseDavid Stirling, the leader of the raid, "had insisted upon talking about the raid during two social gatherings at the British Embassy in Cairo although warned not to do so". Stirling sued Deighton and Times Newspapers for libel the following year as the implication was that his indiscretion had endangered the lives of his men. Stirling explained in court that one of the social gatherings was a dinner withWinston Churchill, Field MarshalJan Smuts, General SirAlan Brooke, General SirClaude Auchinleck and GeneralHarold Alexander; the second occasion was a private conversation with Churchill. Deighton and Times Newspapers apologised, published a correction and paid damages.[31]
During the mid-1960s Deighton wrote forPlayboy as a travel correspondent, and he provided a piece on the boom inspy fiction;An Expensive Place to Die was serialised in the magazine in 1967.[32][33] In 1968 Deighton was theproducer of the filmOnly When I Larf, which was based on hisnovel of the same name.[34] He was the writer and co-producer ofOh! What a Lovely War in 1969, but did not enjoy the process of making films, and had his name removed from thefilm's credits.[5][35] In 1970 Deighton wroteBomber, a fictional account of anRAF Bomber Command raid that goes wrong.[15] To produce the novel he used anIBM MT/ST, and it is possible that this was the first novel to be written using aword processor.[36][37] Deighton was interviewed onDesert Island Discs in June 1976 byRoy Plomley.[38][h]
Deighton wroteFighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain, published in 1977, after being advised to do so by the historianA. J. P. Taylor.[19][39] The book was well received by readers and reviewers, although the inclusion of interviews with German participants led to criticism from some.[19] Taylor wrote the introduction for the book, describing it as a "brilliant analysis";[40]Albert Speer, once theMinister of Armaments forAdolf Hitler, thought it "an excellent, most thorough examination".[41]
Fighter was followed in 1978 by another novel,SS-GB, the idea for which came fromRay Hawkey, Deighton's friend from art school and the designer of the covers of several of his books. While the two were discussing what would have happened if the Germans had won the Second World War, Hawkey asked Deighton if he thought there could be analternative history novel.[18][42]Blitzkrieg, Deighton's 1979 history of the rise of the Nazis and thefall of France, has a foreword written by GeneralWalther Nehring, Chief of Staff to GeneralHeinz Guderian.[43] As at 2023 his last history book isBlood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II (1993), which examined the events of the war up until 1942.[44] Reviewing forThe Times, Henry Stanhope considers the work "extremely readable", although he questions the structure of the book which focuses on different theatres of war, rather than using a purely chronological history. This approach, Stanhope considers, "presents a less complete picture to the reader".[45] The historianAllan R. Millett considers that the book would have been improved by wider research into the Russian, Japanese and American aspects of the war.[46]
Beginning in 1983 Deighton wrote three connected trilogies:Berlin Game (1983),Mexico Set (1984) andLondon Match (1985);Spy Hook (1988),Spy Line (1989) andSpy Sinker (1990); andFaith (1994),Hope (1995) andCharity (1996).Winter, a companion novel dealing with the lives of a German family from 1899 to 1945, which also provides an historical background to several of the characters from the trilogies, was published in 1987. The trilogies are centred onBernard Samson, a tough, cynical and disrespectfulMI6 intelligence officer.[1][47]
Deighton married the illustrator Shirley Thompson in 1960;[1] the couple were divorced in 1976, having not lived together for over five years.[48] He left Britain in 1969, and has lived abroad since, including in Ireland, Austria, France, the US and Portugal.[2][49] He lived for a while inBlackrock, County Louth,[50] where he married Ysabelenée de Ranitz in February 1980, the daughter of a Dutch diplomat.[49][51] The couple have two sons.[17]
Deighton does not like giving interviews, and these have been rare throughout his life; he also avoids appearing atliterary festivals.[52][53] He says that he does not enjoy being a writer and that "The best thing about writing books is being at a party and telling some pretty girl you write books, the worst thing is sitting at a typewriter and actually writing the book."[23] After completingFaith,Hope andCharity in 1996, he decided to take a year off writing; at the end of the period, he decided that writing was "amug's game" that he did not miss and did not have to do.[54] By 2016 Deighton had retired from writing.[55][56]
According to theGaleContemporary Novelistsmonographs, Deighton and fellow authorJohn le Carré follow in the same literary tradition of British espionage writers asW. Somerset Maugham,Eric Ambler andGraham Greene. Deighton provides an "energetic style" and his fictional work is marked by a complex narrative structure, according to Gale.[57] Deighton extensively researched the background and technical aspects of his storylines, and enjoyed this side of producing work; in 1976 he said "I like the research better than I like writing books".[58][59] The literary analyst Gina Macdonald observes that the technical aspect of Deighton's work can overshadow the plots and characterisation in the novel when Deighton provides too much detail in a short passage, leading to what she calls "banal conversations, stilted and unconvincing".[58] Deighton was elected to theDetection Club in 1969 and their workHowdunit, published in 2020, was dedicated to him.[60]
According to the film and media historian Alan Burton,The IPCRESS File—along with le Carré's 1963 novelThe Spy Who Came in from the Cold—"changed the nature of British spy fiction" as it brought in "a more insolent, disillusioned and cynical style to the espionage story".[61] The novel used appendices and footnotes which, according to Burton, gave verisimilitude to the work.[62][i] The academic George Grella considers Deighton's novels to be "stylish, witty [and] well-crafted",[64] and that they provide "a convincingly detailed picture of the world of espionage while carefully examining the ethics and morality of that world".[65] Deighton has expressed his admiration for thepolice procedural, which he considers has an authentic feel, and approaches his fiction writing as a "spy procedural".[66] Burton considersThe IPCRESS File to be "a marker of a new trend in mature, realistic espionage fiction".[62]
The IPCRESS File appeared in bookshops at the same time as theJames Bond filmDr. No. Deighton acknowledged that his career had benefited from the enormous popularity of Bond, although he denied any similarity between his andIan Fleming's books except being about spies.[67] The academic Clive Bloom considers that afterFuneral in Berlin was published in 1964, Deighton "established a place for himself ... in the front rank of the spy genre, along with Graham Greene, Ian Fleming and John le Carré".[68] Deighton's later works were less oblique than the earlier ones, and had, according to Bloom, "more subtlety and deeper characterization".[68] Oliver Buckton, the professor of literature, also considers Deighton to be in the forefront of post-war spy writers.[69] The crime writer and poetJulian Symons writes that "[t]he constant crackle of his dialogue makes Deighton a kind of poet of the spy story".[70]
Grella considers Deighton to be "theangry young man of the espionage novel",[65] with the central characters of his main novels—the unnamed protagonist from theIPCRESS series and Bernard Samson from the nine novels in which he appears—both working-class, cynical and streetwise, in contrast to the upper-class and ineffective senior members of the intelligence service in their respective novels.[61] His working-class heroes also stand in contrast to Fleming'sEton- andFettes-educated smooth, upper-class character James Bond.[71]
Several of Deighton's novels have been adapted as films, which includeThe Ipcress File (1965),Funeral in Berlin (1966),Billion Dollar Brain (1967) andSpy Story (1976). All feature the books' unnamed character, but they were given the full name "Harry Palmer" for the films; either the actorMichael Caine—who played Palmer in the films—or the producer for two of the three films,Harry Saltzman, came up with the name.[72][73] Two television films also featured Palmer:Bullet to Beijing (1995) andMidnight in Saint Petersburg (1996); they were not based on Deighton's stories. All the films exceptSpy Story feature Caine as Palmer.[74] Deighton's hands were used inThe Ipcress File in place of Caine's for a scene in which Palmer breaks eggs into a bowl and whisks them.[75] In March 2022The Ipcress File, a television adaptation of Deighton's novel, was broadcast on UK television.Joe Cole was Palmer;Lucy Boynton andTom Hollander also appeared in major roles.[76][77]
Berlin Game,Mexico Set andLondon Match, the first trilogy of hisBernard Samson novel series, were made intoGame, Set and Match, a thirteen-part television series byGranada Television in 1988.[47][78] AlthoughQuentin Tarantino expressed interest in adapting the trilogy,[79] the project did not materialise.[80] The nine Samson novels were inpre-production withClerkenwell Films in 2013, with a script bySimon Beaufoy.[81]
In 2017 the BBC adapted Deighton's novelSS-GB fora five-part miniseries, broadcast in one-hour episodes;Sam Riley played the lead role of Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer.[82] In 1995BBC Radio 4 broadcast areal-time dramatisation ofBomber. The drama was in four broadcasts, each of two hours, from 2:30 pm to midnight, threaded through the station's schedule of news and current affairs.[83][84]
Deighton's work has been acknowledged by the thriller writerJeremy Duns as being an influence on his own work.[85] InLetters from Burma, the politicianAung San Suu Kyi mentions reading Deighton's books, while underhouse arrest. Suu Kyi wrote that she was passionate aboutArthur Conan Doyle's tales ofSherlock Holmes and the spy novels of le Carré and Deighton.[86] When asked byChristie's about his love forIndian art and how he started his collection, the writerV. S. Naipaul credited Deighton. "I met Len Deighton, the thriller writer, at dinner many years ago. He demonstrated to me that Indian art could really be approachable. I bought from ...Maggs because of Len Deighton pushing me onto [them] as being a very fair dealer, saying that they do not charge you much more than they should. That's a marvellous thing to be told".[87]
Deighton's 1970 novelBomber was listed inAnthony Burgess's 1984 workNinety-Nine Novels as one of the 99 best novels in English since 1939.[88]Bomber, the third album of the rock groupMotörhead, was named after the novel, as the band's singer,Lemmy, was reading it at the time they were recording the album.[89]
