An Interview With British Thriller Writer Len Deighton, The Author Of 'The Ipcress File,' 'Funeral In Berlin' And 'SS-GB'

When I was a teenager back in the 1960s I was a huge fan of American crime thrillers and British spy thrillers. I was weaned on Ian Fleming and I later read Graham Greene and John le Carre.

I also read another British spy thriller writer named Len Deighton. Today is his birthday. He is 89.

Unlike the other British spy writers, Deighton’s unnamed spy hero in his first series of thrillers was an overweight, working-class smart aleck. When Michal Caine starred as the spy in the film versions of The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain, the producers called him Harry Palmer.

Over the years I’ve read nearly all of Deighton’s novels, including his WWII military novels and his clever alternative history novel, SS-GB, which takes place in a post-WWI Briton that the Nazis have defeated and now occupy.

Last February, when the BBC offered a TV series based on SS-GB, the Telegraph republished Jake Kerridge's interview with Len Deighton from 2009.      

Deighton is famously publicity-shy, and I did wonder whether getting to interview him would be what the acronym-loving secret service bureaucrats of his early spy novels would call a high D of C (Difficulty of Completion) mission. But here he is, relaxed, jolly, indecently sprightly for a man who will celebrate his 80th birthday this week, and quietly pleased that HarperCollins will, from June, be reissuing several of his novels (with new cover designs by his old friend, the Oscar-winning documentary-maker Arnold Schwartzman), culminating in a golden jubilee edition of The Ipcress File in 2012.

 “I was on holiday, I was restless, I started this story, then I put it to one side and got on with my life. And then I met a guy at a party and he said ‘I’m a literary agent.’ He was a literary agent like I was a writer, to tell you the truth.” Jonathan Clowes, his agent to this day, sold what became The Ipcress File to Hodder & Stoughton.

“It might have sunk without a ripple but Harry Saltzman had just made the first Bond film [Dr No, 1962] and it did very well, but that was really because the critics used me as a blunt instrument to beat Ian Fleming over the head.” Saltzman bought the film rights to Ipcress, and Deighton found himself a professional author.

 His first four novels are a wonderful mixture of the exciting and the amusingly humdrum, narrated by an unnamed working-class intelligence officer from Burnley who spends as much time trying to reclaim his expenses as he does searching for kidnapped scientists.

His Eton- and Oxbridge-educated superiors are usually incompetent – “what chance did I stand between the communists on the one side and the establishment on the other” – or treacherous. Much is made of the fact that he is overweight: in Billion Dollar Brain (1966) he is told he has been chosen to go on a mission to Helsinki because he is “the one best protected against cold”. Well, James Bond may be thinner, but so is his dialogue.

Deighton doesn’t see the character as an anti-hero, and stresses that he is a romantic, incorruptible figure in the mould of Philip Marlowe. “This is not the way it is now. Modern fiction is not so keen to guard the integrity of our heroes… When I started writing I had rules. One was that violence must not solve the problem, and I cannot have the hero overcome violence with a counterweight of violence.”

He hopes new readers will “get a laugh” out of his books. Does he think other spy writers are too solemn? “It’s difficult to be sure sometimes what is intended humour and what is unintended, isn’t it?”

… Deighton admits he felt bad that he did not predict how brilliant his friend Michael Caine would be as the hero (newly christened Harry Palmer) in the 1965 film of The Ipcress File; Harry H Corbett was his choice for the role. By this time Deighton was famous. He was seduced by the celebrity lifestyle for a period (becoming the travel editor of Playboy), but soon swore off interviews and parties: “Two things destroy writers: praise and alcohol.”

… “I’m seriously thinking if I can persuade my wife to live in Japan.” Any other ambitions? “I’ve always wanted to land a jet on a carrier. But I’m content. Nobody could have had a happier life than I’ve had.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/len-deighton-interview-nobody-could-have-had-happier-life-had/

You can also read Len Deighton’s piece on his meeting with fellow thriller writer Ian Fleming (Deighton is on the left in the above photo and Fleming is in the center) via the below link:

https://literary007.com/2013/12/13/len-deighton-lunches-with-ian-fleming/ 

Secret life Of The SS-GB Spymaster: How Author Len Deighton, Who Lived Next Door To A Nazi Spy In The War, Created A Nightmare Vision Of Britain Under The Jackboot

Nicole Lambert at the Daily Mail offers a piece on one of my favorite writers, Len Deighton, the author of The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, Bomber and SS-GB, which has been adapted for TV and is now airing on the BBC.

He has dined with everyone from Nazi criminals to the cream of British society; from rock’n’roll royalty to eminent philosophers. He has lived all over the world and known spies and traitors. Some say he would have made a successful intelligence agent himself.

But he is also a man of many parts. Author, film producer and successful artist, published cook — who made it cool for men to be in the kitchen — and eminent historian: Len Deighton is all of these.

As a writer, he changed the way the world looked at spies with The Ipcress File, the 1962 thriller about a working-class spook (un-named in the book but christened Harry Palmer for Michael Caine’s screen portrayal) who is as interested in getting his expenses signed as in catching enemies of the state.

He also created a fascinating and terrifying alternative world in his 1978 book SS-GB, now adapted by BBC1 for peak-time Sunday viewing, set in a wartime England that has been invaded by the Germans and is under Nazi rule, with prime minister Winston Churchill executed and King George VI imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Deighton, who turned 88 last weekend, has dreamt up many fascinating characters in his novels but few are more intriguing than the reclusive man himself.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link: 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4254416/Author-Len-Deighton-created-nightmare-vision-Britain.html 

Note: SS-GB is one of my favorite Deighton novels. I look forward to watching the TV series when it airs in America.

Happy Belated Birthday To Thriller Writer Len Deighton

Yesterday was Len Deighton's birthday.

I happen to rereading one of Deighton's spy thrillers from the 1960s, The Billion Dollar Brain. I enjoyed his spy stories when I was a teenager in the 1960s and I came across a couple of old paperback copies of The Funeral in Berlin and The Billion Dollar Brain.  

I like his unnamed narrator in the early novels (called Harry Palmer in the Michael Caine films). He is sort of a British Philip Marlowe working the espionage beat.

I have in my library several of Deighton's hardback books, including his Bernard Sansom spy series.

I recall in the sixties that some critics and reviewers called Deighton's working class hero the "anti-Bond," but I like both Fleming and Deighton. Their thrillers were different, but both were well done in their own way.

I also liked the Michael Caine films made from Deighton's novels and the later TV series starring Ian Holm as Bernard Sansom. 

You can read Jake Kerridge's 2009 interview with Len Deighton in the British newspaper the Telegraph via the below link: 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/4681966/Interview-with-Len-Deighton.html

Len Deighton On Writers Facing The Hard Questions Before Chapter One

Len Deighton, author of 40 books, wrote an interesting piece for The Wall Street Journal on how writers should prepare to write a book.

You can read the piece via the below link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703916004576270890356713596.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I've been reading Deighton since the 1960s. I've enjoyed his spy thrillers, which include The Ipcress File, and Funeral In Berlin, as well as his historical fiction, such as Bomber and Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain. Deighton's spy thrillers were made into a successful film series starring Michael Caine as the working class spy hero.

Deighton has also written cookbooks and a very clever alternative history-thriller called SS-GB. I've reread the novel several times over the years.

SS-GB is set in a Great Britain defeated by Nazi Germany. In this alternative history, America did not become involved in the war.

Deighton's novel was published in 1978, years before Robert Harris wrote a similar novel called Fatherland in 1992.

You can read a good piece about Deighton in the British newspaper The Guardian via the below link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/feb/19/len-deighton-revival