Deighton's created some memorable fiction characters.
Detective Douglas Archer taking on the SS in London in SS-GB; the unnamed, working class spy (aka Harry Palmer) in Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain; Bernard Samson, the sardonic former field agent from Berlin Game dealing with the ultimate betrayal; and Captain Sam Lambert, hero (in a way) of Bomber.
On the fiction page you'll find information on every novel or short story Deighton's ever written.
As a historian Deighton has had some impact on public understanding and awareness of some of the main themes of the First and Second World War with his books like Battle of Britain and Blitzkrieg.
At the heart of his non-fiction writing is a researcher's temperament and the time and access, afforded by his writing success, to speak to many of the people directly involved in wartime's greatest events.
As an aid in the kitchen, Deighton used his design skills to create cartoon-style recipes to follow.
Aided by his designer friend Raymond Hawkey, these cookstrips morphed into five best-selling cook books that in the 'sixties helped changed the public's attitude towards food and cooking.
Most people know Deighton as a spy fiction writer, one of the most famous of the twentieth century.
But he's also published books or contributed to books on a wide variety of subjects, some of them unknown to most general readers, such as Orient Flight or his TV play Pests. Read more about the range of Deighton's writing.
This is the heart of the Deighton Dossier. The section has information and images on all of the books by Len Deighton, about him, or books to which he's contributed in some way. Prolific is one way to describe his output over many decades.
This is as comprehensive as possible - every known book is here, with images and information to help the collector and the general reader understand Deighton's output, remember his top-sellers and, perhaps, find a book that interests you which you didn't know about. As well as information about the books - fiction and non-fiction - you can also read analysis of what it is that makes Deighton's works still so popular with readers around the world
If you enjoy Len Deighton's books and want to find out the stories behind them or learn about new stories you haven't read yet, then this is definitely the page to start.
Len Deighton is known primarily as a thriller and spy fiction novelist and this site has a page devoted to all of his fiction works. There are dedicated pages covering his non-fiction books, his food & cooking books, and a section on books to which Deighton has contributed in some way, such as through a foreword or introduction, or which feature him heavily.
Make your selection below.
Discover information and images for each of Deighton's 27 full fiction novels, ranging from the familiar stories such as The Ipcress File to less familiar stories which many readers may have overlooked, such as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy. You'll get an overview of each story, a sample of the text and an understanding of why that particular story is worth investigating.
To most readers, Len Deighton is familiar only as a novelist of some repute. But, in between writing novels he has produced a wide range of non-fiction books which reflect his interests and areas of detailed knowledge. As well as writing extensively about the Second World War and military engineering, he has also written books about airships, airborne postal services, the Sherlock Holmes books, London town, military tactics and presidential assassinations.
Before becoming a writer, Len Deighton was already a gourmand and trained chef through having worked during his student days in the kitchens of some of the famous hotels and restaurants in London and Paris. His knowledge of food and cooking techniques, combined with his artist's approach to writing, led him to develop his cookstrips, short cartoons designed to help him work through recipes without needing to reach for a cookbook. From this developed a series of books and guides to help readers understand the principles of cooking and culinary knowledge.
This section covers books which don't fit in the other three sections. Here you'll find Deighton's books on airships and airship post, his guide to London and his contribution to the historiography surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy.
As a world-renowned writer, Deighton is written about extensively too. In this section you can find out about books which explore Deighton's works and their place within the spy and thriller fiction genre, as well as see for which authors's books Deighton has provided an introduction or foreword, and read about the books to which he has contributed a section.
Len Deighton is known primarily as a thriller and spy fiction novelist and this site has a page devoted to all of his fiction works. There are dedicated pages covering his non-fiction books, his food & cooking books, and a section on books to which Deighton has contributed in some way, such as through a foreword or introduction, or which feature him heavily.
Find out more in the drop-down sections below.
Many of Deighton's novels have a wartime theme, whether it's actual warfare or the frozen tension that was the Cold War up until 1990. Whether soldiers or spies, the relationship between those on the front line and the ‘top brass’ - in both wartime and peace - crops up in most of his novels and histories.
His writing communicates his desire that those in positions of power need greater scrutiny than those they send to be killed. In peacetime too, Bernard Samson’s moans about the 'idiots' in London Central reflects this annoyance at the apparent indifference of those in command to the men and women doing the hard graft. Deighton's writing also hints at the limits of loyalty facing agents sent into the field at risk of their lives to clear up the mess made by politicians.
These themes are best explored in his book Declarations of War, twelve vignettes of army life throughout history in which the reader gets the sense that Deighton really understands how war - modern, mechanised warfare - dehumanises a soldier and force him to make decisions which, ordinarily, he would not want or have to make.
Bomber and other stories also explored the important relationship between man and machine, which created the potential of the ordinary man as war 'hero'.
Similarly, in Fighter, Deighton's research and his choice of accompanying photos shows his high regard for the ordinary airmen - on both sides - who struggled everyday against terrific danger to fulfil orders.
Perhaps this question of the relationship between the fighting man and those leading him is best explored by Deighton in his very personal production of Oh! What a Lovely War, the songs of which and the narrative is based on communicating the experiences of the men at the front, as distinct from those of the top brass back at HQ.
At the heart of much of Deighton's writing about spying and spy-craft is an acknowledgement that, even with the best of intentions, the organisations and men charged with defending the honour and safety of their respective nations are, too often, at the same time undermining the very nation they seek to protect, putting ideological or personal interest ahead of the national interest.
During the Cold War, such hypocrisy was shown up by the frequent cases of double-agents, spies like Kim Philby and John Cairncross who as intelligence officers were duty bound to protect the interests of the United Kingdom but who, in the end, sold out their countries - and their peers - for misguided ideological and personal reasons.
In Deighton's fiction, similar hypocrisies can be seen at the heart of the agencies and institutions in which many of his lead characters work. So, for example, Erich Stinnes - KGB Colonel, committed communist and adversary of Bernard Samson - is shown in Charity to in the end be a simple, drug-dealing crook contributing to East Germany's slow death. In Funeral in Berlin, each main character's motivation is as much about putting one over on the enemy - in this case, 'Harry Palmer' - as it is about protecting their nation's interests and security.
Espionage is shown in Deighton's fiction to often be a venal and corrupt place in which personal ambition, jealousy, pettiness and criminality as as much guides to characters' behaviours as training, morality and upbringing. This comes to the surface most often in the petty squabbles and irritations which mark out the office politics of secret government institutions, most effectively displayed in the daily hassles faced by Bernard Samson in Berlin Game and other books in the series.
Whilst there are plenty of vivid character and location descriptions in Deighton’s books that put the reader ‘in the zone’, what stands out particularly as noteworthy is the use of dialogue in place of description. That is what really drives the stories along, because dialogue is how we live our daily lives and learn about things and interact with people. It gives the books a magic touch of reality and vitality.
As Deighton has himself said:
"I was always interested in dialogue, even before I started writing. This today remains one of the things I work hardest at, seeing how much I can delete from descriptive passages and convey by means of dialogue."
Another theme cropping up across his books is miscommunication, particularly involving the English. It is often said that they are poor communicators, especially within a marriage. For instance, the marriage of Bernard and Fiona Samson - who kept from her husband for 12 years her secret identity - is a case in point.
One gets the sense through the first two trilogies - and discovers the truth in Spy Sinker - that there is so much that is left unsaid between the two of them. Samson may be capable of unearthing the truth about Stasi plots but he is clearly unable to identify the treachery under his nose.
In an interview with Edward Milward-Oliver, author of the Len Deighton Companion, Deighton said:
"I feel it's one of the comedies and tragedies of our social life that very few people are able to communicate clearly, and very few people worry about it. Consequently, there is a lot of misinformation being exchanged. I think in England we are probably masters of telling people not quite what we want them to know."
Deighton's is a fiction where face value is often a debased currency. His character exist in world of secrets, lies and the threat of treachery is ever-present. Can you really trust what the narrator or a character is saying? His character of Bernard Samson is the first-person narrator of eight of the nine books in the Samson triple-trilogy. In book six, Spy Sinker, which shifts to a third person narrator, it becomes clear that many of Samson's assumptions and prejudices are misguided at best.
Outside the spy world, this theme is played out in books like Only When I Larf, where the gang of con artists is clearly only able to get away with their increasingly outrageous scams because they are able to convince a range of foreign marks that their collective English word is their bond.
Most recently, Deighton returned to this theme of miscommunication and double speak in a newspaper interview on his 80th birthday:
"You read the obituaries of Harold Pinter, for instance, if you want an insight into how people can say nasty things in what appears to be a eulogy. People communicate by mis-communicating. The English are supreme at this.”
As a gourmand and chef Len Deighton has often used food to signify important roles in his writing. Take, for example, The Ipcress File. What is culturally significant about Harry Palmer, compared with all previously literary spies, is that his interest in food stands in stark contrast to the prevailing dreadfulness of British food appreciation and preparation, characterised by Brown Windsor Soup.
In the film of the book, Palmer is shopping in a supermarket when he is interrupted by his spymaster as he puts a tin of Champignons de Paris into his trolley:
"You're paying 10d more for a fancy French label," his public-school boy-accented boss sneers.
"If you want button mushrooms, they're better value on the next shelf," he replies.
"It's not just the label. These have a better flavour."
"You're quite the gourmet, aren't you Palmer?"
His boss' retort hints at the fact that ‘gourmet’ was on a par with homosexual in nineteen-sixties' society, as evidenced by the sneering manner of this remark! Before the 'sixties it was very much the woman's job to be in the kitchen. So, when Deighton's spy returns home to cook his girlfriend a meal, that was a real statement of social change.
It also, of course reflected Deighton's position in the sixties as restaurant reviewer and publisher of the Action Cook Book, which was marketed as opening up the kitchen to a generation of men. Deighton was also in 'sixties London a renowned party giver, so there are definite autobiographical elements to be discerned in this first key character he developed.
Even in the nineteen-eighties, and the Samson series, upper middle-class characters like Fiona Samson and Dicky Cruyer are schooled in the food of la cuisine nouvelle and London's newer restaurants such as Paul Bocuse.
Food is both counterpoint and metaphor in many scenes within Len Deighton's fiction.
Class - and the constant references to it in social contexts - is a peculiarly British phenomenon and it is not surprising then that a writer writing about relationships at the heart of the British establishment, in its security and government services, would reference it. Deighton, however, makes the most of it and uses it to provide a particular patina to many of his characters, often quite subtly. The relationships of Britain’s working classes with their ‘betters’ - especially the middle classes - comes across in many his stories. In the 1960’s, class consciousness broke through the self-imposed strictures of old-style deference and elements of this can be seen in Deighton's books at that time.
The cultural scene was becoming more ‘popular’ (i.e. less class-based) and Deighton’s novels were some of the first to creatively portray the working class perspective in fields previously dominated by the middle and upper classes: warfare and espionage. (Deighton himself grew up in a relatively poor part of London as a working class boy.)
Harry Palmer and Bernard Samson, Deighton's two main spy characters, are both 'bolshie' to a degree - at least on the surface and in the presence of their superiors - and have chips on their shoulders about their middle and upper class colleagues. Palmer's sharp-tongued lack of respect for authority and old-fashioned bureaucracy certainly caught the mood of the time when the binds of the UK's class system were beginning to loosen. Harry Palmer was also one of the first genuinely cockney voices in British cinema.
In Berlin Game, Bernard Samson's frequent barbs at his more senior - and more privately educated - colleagues in London Central are laced with references to the English class system and its embodiment in the prevalence of graduates from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge ... graduates like his boss, Dicky Cruyer.
Take this scene from Samson's interrogation by Stinnes at the end of the novel:
"I've been West a few times, just as you've come here. But who gets the promotions and the big wages - desk-bound Party bastards. How lucky you are not to have the Party system working against you", said Stinnes.
"We have got it," I said. "It's called Eton and Oxbridge."
Such is the popularity of Deighton's canon, one would think that his books sold themselves.
But Deighton's works, like those of any other top author, are a combination of great story, a strong brand and an effective marketing campaign. Long before the days of social media, Jonathan Cape and other later publishing houses had to be inventive to alert the book trade and the wider book-reading public whenever a new Deighton book or film was published. This included poster campaigns, marketing packs and other ephemera designed to communicate the essence of the story and reach the intended audience
Click on any of the images below to see images of ephemera from some of the marketing campaigns supporting different Deighton books over the years.
When SS-GB was published in 1976 it was somewhat of a departure for Deighton, a move away from spy thrillers towards a police procedural-type conventional crime thriller but set in an alternative history - one in which the Nazis defeat the UK and occupy the country after 1941, removing the King from the throne.
Significant marketing spend was clearly allocated towards this book which had significant media coverage and reviews at the time to propel sales, and it has subsequently become one of Len Deighton's best selling books. Crucial to its marketing was the production of this stamp image by Raymond Hawkey, which succinctly and powerfully communicates what the realities of life in a Nazi-occupied UK would be like.
The quality of the design and the production of the stamps was such that many stamp experts were confused into believing that individual examples were real and a sign of the German's plans regarding the UK: Stamp magazine once wrote that it believed they were produced either as propaganda "or for some other more sinister purpose." Similarly, so good was the reproduction that there have been fakes produced of these fakes which have been successfully sold to collectors.
Added verisimilitude is provided by Hawkey's use of advertisements in the booklet for hotel accommodation in Bournemouth.
Horse Under Water was the second volume in the 'secret file' list of four initial novels featuring the 'unnamed spy', subsequently christened Harry Palmer in the movies.
After the unexpected success of the first story, The Ipcress File, Deighton's new publishers Jonathan Cape increased the first edition print run to 15,000 (compared to 4,000 for the first novel) and put more thought into associated marketing to increase reader interest in the first edition.
In this case, Cape's marketing team came up with a simple competition crossword with 35 clues, which could be solved through reading the novel. The clues were printed on the endpapers of each first edition and readers were given ten days to complete it, encouraging quick reading of the novel and hopefully positive word of mouth about the book.
An Expensive Place to Die is, according to the author, the fifth in the 'secret file' series of novels featuring the unnamed narrator better known as Harry Palmer.
Following the marketing strategies tested in earlier novels, Jonathan Cape published the first edition with a laid-in secret dossier of apparently secret NATO intelligence. This ephemera is clearly intended as a facsimile of the file in the story, which the narrator must deliver to to a Chinese general who is a regular client at Monsieur Datt’s house of ill repute in Paris, in order to ensure the Chinese have an erroneous understanding of NATO's plans in the region.
Famously, the quality of the reproduction (again, by Ray Hawkey) was sufficiently good to fool numerous readers and security agencies into believing that they had discovered a genuine secret document. In 1967, it was reported in the New York Times that these papers had been offered to the Russians by a New Yorker, having been found in a bin. The papers were so convincing that there are other apocryphal stories that passengers reading the book were held up by the FBI and customs. It is likely that many of these stories were generated by the creative marketing department at Jonathan Cape.
The contents of the report are beautifully designed and reproduced, such that it is easy to understand how some people were fooled, even with the legend on the inside flap of the folder indicating that the contents relate to the book and are not genuine. It includes facsimiles of letters from the White House, technical layouts of supersonic fighters, and scientific data on the expected fall-out from a nuclear attack on China.
As a laid-in element, many of the original files will have been lost, so first editions without the laid-in file are plentiful in the market; but without the file, the value of the first edition is compromised. Copies with the 'In Transit Docket' included can range from £100 - £150, depending on the quality of the book and the completeness of the dossier.
This fascinating collection of facsimile documents and information was sent out by Penguin to booksellers and media publishers in advance of the publication of the Penguin film tie-in edition of Funeral in Berlin in 1966.
What's notable is that the book is being sold on the back of the phenomenal success of the first movie and the production of the second movie based on this novel, which is why Michael Caine features so prominently in this pack.
The idea with the author notes, the images, maps and background information was to create excitement about the edition and drive wholesale purchases of the book, along with generating pre-launch PR to increase consumer interest in this edition.
It's wonderfully detailed and well put together. It is also extremely rare for the collector to find, with a market value well in excess of £250.
For any serious collector this is the Holy Grail. It is the rarest item traded on the open market and the most valuable: a good condition copy of this will be marketed for in the region of £2,300. With only 150 copies ever produced and few circulating on the open market, it is a challenge for any collector to hunt this down.
Its origin is in Len Deighton's efforts to secure the movie rights in the US. Sphere, run by Dick Fisher, offered to buy the paperback rights directly from Len Deighton instead of via his usual publisher Jonathan Cape. This meant establishing a basic copyright (which would embody all other rights e.g. screen, serial etc.) This had to be done quickly (hence the spiral binding rather than the proper book binding) and the number of copies was suggested by his lawyers.
Dick Fisher was a good friend of Len Deighton's and this relationship had a crucial catalytic role in generating the momentum behind one of Len's finest books. Fisher had not only been flying bombing missions with the 8th Air Force but he had been a part of the US Bombing Survey. It was a unique experience and Deighton urged him to make it into a book.
Len Deighton puts it this way:
"He thought about it but eventually said 'You write it, Len'
'How can I write it - I was never in a wartime bomber.'
'Yes,' he said. But you were bombed in London so you know how that feels - you know about airplanes; you can write it as fiction.'
'No, no' I said. But eventually that thought became 'Bomber'."
Another important relationship that came out Only When I Larf was Len's friendship with photographer Brian Duffy. Len describes it as "a long sad story, demonstrating the perils of good intentions". He first encountered Duffy at St Martins, but Duffy found the fashion world not to his liking. About three years later, after Deighton left the Royal College of Art, he saw him again. Duffy was working in a coffee bar. Deighton got him a job as assistant to Adrian Flowers. Duffy knew nothing about photography but Deighton suggested his knowledge and talent for fashion would be useful in Adrian's studio. It was.
By the time Deighton bought the screenplay rights to Oh! What a Lovely War, Duffy had left Adrian and was a successful fashion photographer working from his own studio. He wanted to be a film director and (with this as a long-term objective) asked if he could be a partner with Deighton: working in the production, and contributing money to pay for the screen play rights and rent and wages for the latter's offices in Piccadilly.
In fact it didn't turn out like that,
William Morris the agency would only represent Deighton personally as scriptwriter and producer, so the deal with Paramount for Oh! What a Lovely War was between Len Deighton and Paramount; Brian Duffy deferred contributing to the company costs and, in fact, never did so. Having decided to use the Brighton Piers for the film and seeing how it was mostly exterior shooting, it was clear filming couldn't start until Spring. So William Morris persuaded Paramount to finance Only When I Larf to carry Deighton through the winter months. His agents were very keen for him to cast David Niven but Richard Attenborough, the director, persuaded Deighton that he could play the main part better. He agreed and looking back, he saw that Niven's smooth, sophisticated and sexy way would would have given the film a too glamorous dimension, which casting Attenborough avoided.
The first shot sequences of Only When I Larf took place in New York, where Brian Duffy had a public argument with director Basil Dearden. It concerned camera set-ups but Deighton himself wasn't there and to this day isn't sure what the argument was about. Soon after returning from New York, Duffy had a row with Richard Attenborough. Duffy was hurt: he probably felt that Len Deighton was not sufficiently supportive, but he was in fact working a seven day week on the film and clearly didn't have time for such distractions.
Money is at the heart of movie-making and Deighton was solely and directly responsible to Paramount for the films. As well as that he had his staff and offices at 142 Piccadilly to pay for. Brian Duffy had no responsibilities of this sort, and no money invested in it. He was in fact a bystander, and somewhat resentful.
Thereafter, Duffy withdrew back to his photo studio and refused to come near to either Basil Dearden or Richard Attenborough, or indeed Deighton. The only time he heard from him again was when he asked for producer's credits.
So, though IMDB and most other film sources list Duffy as a producer he did, in fact, do little if no actual 'producing' at all; most of the hard graft was done by Deighton and the crew.
This spiral-bound book (the spiral is in various colours (red, white, blue)), is in foolscap paper size and the text is printed in Times New Roman, in a style that clearly illustrates its status as a draft, rather than a finished text. The cover is an old £5 note: the front cover with the front of the note with the Queen's head, the back cover, the back of the note. Both sides should have the centre panel with the book title, the written-in number of which edition it is and the dedication which shows the book is to be published and made into a film.
At the bottom of each cover should be the legend 'Copyright (c) 1967 Vico Patentwertungs und Vermögenswerwaltungs - G.M.B.H.' The book itself should have 176 pages.
This is an example of a lagniappe or gift, often given by booksellers or merchants to customers with their purchase. But, it's also not.
It is frequently found with US first editions of the 1981 novel XPD, in which a file of a secret meeting between Hitler and Churchill emerges and MI6, the KGB and the CIA are drawn into the hunt for those at the meeting. A group of former SS officers in West Germany seek to use papers about the meeting between Hitler and Churchill during the war as a pretext for seizing power; British agent Boyd Stuart is tasked with keeping the documents under wraps.
The denouement, on a film set of the Fuehrer's study under a Nazi eagle, is very well realised. It has also been sold with other novels too, and separately, in various online markets and antiquarian booksellers.
However, there is no mention of the Hindenburg in the story, so why were they turning up so often with the book at book dealers?
Clarification was provided by James Pepper, an antiquarian bookseller from Santa Barbara California. He confirmed to the Deighton Dossier that the source of the card is himself:
"The original of the postcard is in my personal collection, and for fun and in friendship, knowing that Len was keenly interested in that period of Germany and in airships, I had my printer in the 1980s make an exact facsimile of the front of the postcard, and then had the verso blank except for Len's name. I presented Len with a whole box of them as a gift and he was delighted with them. Since back then Len had especially tiny handwriting, I told him he could use them to write notes to fans or friends, or give them away to people. I see that they have appeared out into the world, so perhaps Len gave some to his publisher or the publisher’s publicist and they got distributed that way."
It is a collectable item and is relatively hard to find. A US first edition of the novel has a market value of about $25; with the laid-in postcard, expect that market value to rise to $150-200 or more.
In 1966, Jonathan Cape's marketing manager came up with the wheeze of sending out to booksellers and distributors in advance of publication of Deighton's new novel Billion Dollar Brain a 'letter purporting to be from Len Deighton', in order to generate interest.
The letters - clearly in facsimile - were posted out to booksellers across the UK on Jonathan Cape's mailing list from Helsinki (they bear a Helsingfors briefmark). The set contained a letter from Len Deighton written in the Helsinki Hotel on hotel letterhead, a luggage tag, a ticket for a ferry and one for 'Otello' at the Helsinki Opera.
Also included was a facsimile of pages from the notebook Deighton used to make notes when writing the book. This notebook is similar to the sort of notebook Len carries with him everywhere, in which he makes notes and sketches of things around him that interest him or could be referenced in a novel.
The latter gives a fascinating insight into the detail with which Deighton approaches all his writing and is designed clearly to communicate to sellers the quality of the next book and the fact that Deighton this time reaches deep into the Soviet bloc for inspiration for his story.
The letter from Deighton says:
'The tiny notebook is the key to the whole operation as far as I am concerned. I have marked the pages that contain items that were finally used in my new book just in case you find it fun to check the notes against the results.'
The elements together were intended to generate publicity and interest in the book and, naturally, to boost advance sales to the shops. As a collectable item, this is extremely hard to find and rarely pops up for sale online. The only likely route to finding this now is at auction or through a specialist dealer.
Biography
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