Len Deighton

All you want to know about Len Deighton

Len Deighton (left) teaches Michael Caine how to break an egg on the set of The IPCRESS File.[1]
Len Deighton (left) teaches Michael Caine how to break an egg on the set of The IPCRESS File.[1]

Leonard Cyril Deighton (born February 18, 1929, Marylebone, London) is a British historian, cookery expert and novelist, perhaps most famous for his spy novel The IPCRESS File, which was made into a famous film starring Michael Caine.

Contents

Early years

Deighton was born in Marylebone, London, in 1929. His father was a chauffeur and mechanic, and his mother was a cook. At the time they lived in a mews near Baker Street.[1]

Deighton's interest in spy stories may have been partially inspired by the arrest of Anna Wolkoff, which he witnessed as an 11-year-old boy. Wolkoff was a British citizen of Russian descent who was a Nazi spy. She was detained on May 20, 1940, and charged with violating the Official Secrets Act for attempting to pass secret documents to the Nazis.

Career

After leaving school, Deighton worked as a railway clerk before performing his National Service, which he spent as a photograper for the Royal Air Force's Special Investigation Branch. After discharge from the RAF, he studied at St Martin's School of Art in London in 1949, and in 1952 won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1955.[2] While he was at the RCA he became a "lifelong friend"[3] of fellow designer Raymond Hawkey, who later designed covers for his early books. Deighton then worked as an airline steward with BOAC. Before he began his writing career he worked as an illustrator in New York and, in 1960, as an art director in a London advertising agency. He is credited with creating the first British cover for Kerouac's On the Road.[1] He has since used his drawing skills to illustrate a number of his own military history books.

Following the success of his first novels, Deighton became The Observer's cookery writer and produced illustrated cookbooks. He also wrote travel guides and became travel editor of Playboy, before becoming a film producer. After producing a film adaption of his 1968 novel Only When I Larf, Deighton and photographer Brian Duffy bought the film rights to Joan Littlewood's Oh! What a Lovely War. However, he had his name removed from the credits of the film as producer, a move which he later described as "stupid and infantile". This was his last involvement with films.[1]

Deighton left Britain in 1969 and has not since returned, apart from some personal visits and a very few media appearances, his last one since 1985 being a 2006 interview which formed part of a "Len Deighton Night" on BBC Four. He now resides in southern California.[2]

Works

Novels

Several of his novels have been adapted as films. His first four novels featured an anonymous anti-hero, named "Harry Palmer" in the films, and portrayed by Michael Caine. The first trilogy of his Bernard Samson novel series was made into a 12-part television series by Granada Television in 1988, shown only once, and withdrawn on instructions from Mr Deighton.[citation needed] He wrote the screenplay and was an uncredited producer [4] for the 1969 film of the play Oh! What a Lovely War. His 1970 World War II historical novel Bomber about an RAF Bomber Command raid over Germany often is considered his masterpiece.

He reportedly began an unfinished Vietnam novel, a portion of which appeared as the story First Base in his short story collection Declarations of War.

Cookery books

Deighton also published a series of cookery books and wrote and drew a weekly strip cartoon-style illustrated cooking guide in London's The Observer newspaper – Len Deighton's Cookstrip. At least one of the strips is pinned up in Deighton's spy hero's kitchen in the 1965 film of his novel The IPCRESS File.[2]

To exploit the success of Deighton's first four "Harry Palmer" novels, he wrote Len Deighton's London Dossier (1967), a guide book to Swinging Sixties London with a "secret agent" theme — contributions from other writers are described as "surveillance reports".

History books

Deighton's 1977 "The Battle of Britain" was said by Albert Speer (once Hitler's Minister of Armaments) to be "an excellent, most thorough examination. I read page after page with fascination". The piece was furnished with a comment by A.J.P. Taylor simply saying: "Brilliant analysis...".

Bibliography

External links

References

  1. ^ a b c Scott, Robert Dawson (Wednesday, 4 January 2006). "Len Deighton: The spy and I". The Independent. Retrieved on 2008-06-19.
  2. ^ a b Scott, Robert Dawson (January 7, 2006). "A class act, not a class warrior". The Times. Retrieved on 2008-06-19.
  3. ^ Dempsey, Mike. "Immaculate conception". Design Week. Retrieved on 2007-12-06.
  4. ^ "Oh! What a lovely war (1969) - Full cast and crew". IMDB. Retrieved on 2006-12-08.


v • d • e
Works by Len Deighton
"Unnamed hero" novels:
The IPCRESS File (1962) · Horse Under Water (1963) · Funeral in Berlin (1964) · Billion-Dollar Brain (1966) · An Expensive Place to Die (1967) · Spy Story (1972) · Yesterday's Spy (1975) · Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy (1976)
Bernard Samson novels:
Berlin Game (1983) · Mexico Set (1984) · London Match (1985) · Winter (1987) · Spy Hook (1988) · Spy Line (1989) · Spy Sinker (1990) · Faith (1994) · Hope (1995) · Charity (1996)
Other novels:
Only When I Larf (1968) · Bomber (1970) · Close-Up (1972) · SS-GB (1978) · XPD (1981) · Goodbye, Mickey Mouse (1982) · MAMista (1991) · City of Gold (1992) · Violent Ward, (1993)
Short story collections:
Declarations of War (1971) · The Verdict of Us (2006)
Non-fiction:
Où Est le Garlic (1965) · Len Deighton's Action Cookbook (1965) · Len Deighton's London Dossier (1967) · Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain (1977) · Airshipwreck (1978) · Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk (1979) · Battle of Britain (1980) · Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II (1993)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Deighton"

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