LEN DEIGHTON
With a new audience revelling in the BBC adaptation of SS-GB, Tony Rossiter looks at the work of an author who created a new type of spy
Tony Rossiter
THE STYLE & TECHNIQUE OF
Len Deighton’s first novel was an instant bestseller – perhaps because it was so different from any previous spy story. The hero defies conventions about loyalty and obeying orders, and he has a spiky relationship with his superiors. Some saw him as an anti-hero, but for Deighton he was a romantic, incorruptible figure.
Publication of The Ipcress File in 1962 coincided with the first James Bond film, and Deighton said that ‘critics [who disliked the Bond books] used me as a blunt instrument to beat Ian Fleming over the head.’
The unnamed hero of The Ipcress File (dubbed ‘Harry Palmer’ in the film of Deighton’s book) is certainly very different from James Bond.
How he began
Deighton’s route to literary stardom was unusual. Although he was a voracious reader as a child and spent a lot of time in the Marylebone Reference Library, he had no strong ambition to become a writer. After National Service in the RAF he worked as a railway clerk, a BOAC steward and a press photographer.
After studying at the Royal College of Art he became a successful illustrator; he was responsible for the British first edition cover for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
He began Ipcress for his own amusement while on holiday. A chance meeting at a party with someone who turned out to be a literary agent led to his digging out his uncompleted manuscript, tidying it up and finishing it, and sending it off to the agent (Jonathan Clowes), who sold it to Hodder and Stoughton.