LEN DEIGHTON

'Leonard Cyril Deighton' (born February 18, 1929, Marylebone, London) is a British historian and author of spy fiction and historical 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Samson'' novel series was made into a twelve-part television series by Granada Television in 1988, shown only once, and withdrawn on instructions from Mr Deighton. He wrote the screenplay 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.
Deighton's interest in spy stories may have been partially inspired by his witnessing the arrest of Anna Wolkoff, a British citizen of Russian descent who was a Nazi spy, and charged with violating the Official Secrets Act on May 20, 1940.
In 1949 Deighton attended St Martin's School of Art in London, and in 1952 won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1955. He 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 has since used his drawing skills to illustrate a number of his own military history books.
Deighton also has 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".
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". With a comment by A.J.P. Taylor simply saying: "Brilliant analysis...".
In 1995 the BBC's Radio 4 broadcast a 'real time' dramatisation of Deighton's documentary novel ''Bomber'', covering the novel's action following RAF Lancaster bomber WF183's take-off in 1943, life in the German town that was its allocated target, the bombing raid and the plane's return at night. The drama, threaded through the station's unchangeable schedule of news and current affairs from early morning to midnight[3] – although it is the story of a night bombing raid. It starred Tom Baker, Frank Windsor, Sam West, Emma Chambers and Jack Shepherd and told how the raid had 'changed the lives' of many men and women – British and German.[4][5]

Contents

Selected bibliography

''"Harry Palmer"'' Books

The ''Bernard Samson'' Books

Others

History

Cookery

External links

Selected bibliography

''"Harry Palmer"'' Books

★ ''The IPCRESS File'', 1962

★ ''Horse Under Water'', 1963

★ ''Funeral in Berlin'', 1964

★ ''Billion Dollar Brain'', 1966

★ ''Spy Story'', 1972 (Palmer is called 'Patrick Armstrong' as cover)

★ ''Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy'', 1976 (The sixth book in the Harry Palmer series by
Len Deighton, published in the US as ''Catch a Falling Spy'')

The ''Bernard Samson'' Books

★ ''Berlin Game'', 1983

★ ''Mexico Set'', 1984

★ ''London Match'', 1985

★ ''Spy Hook'', 1988

★ ''Spy Line'', 1989

★ ''Spy Sinker'', 1990

★ ''Faith'', 1994

★ ''Hope'', 1995

★ ''Charity'', 1996
A prequel to the series, ''Winter'', was written in 1987.

Others

★ ''Len Deighton's London Dossier'', 1967

★ ''An Expensive Place to Die'', 1967

★ ''Only When I Larf'', 1968

★ ''Bomber'', 1970

★ ''Declarations of War'' - short story collection, 1971

★ ''Close-Up'', 1972

★ ''Yesterday's Spy'', 1975

★ ''SS-GB'', 1978

★ ''XPD'', 1981

★ ''Goodbye, Mickey Mouse'', 1982

★ ''MAMista'', 1991

★ ''City of Gold'', 1992

★ ''Violent Ward'', 1993

History

★ '', 1977

★ ''Airshipwreck'', with Arnold Schwartzman, 1978

★ '', 1979

★ ''Battle of Britain'', 1980

★ '', 1993

Cookery

★ ''Len Deighton's Action Cook Book'', 1965 (US title: ''The Cookstrip Cook Book'', 1966)

★ ''Où Est le Garlic'', 1965

External links

★ Unofficial Len Deighton website

★ More information on LD