Have Pencil, Will Write.
They say you should never meet your heroes. Well, they are wrong.
One of the proudest moments of my life was when, as a student, I had an essay, on the economic policies of fascist states in Europe in the 1930s, returned from the tutor who had marked it with the added comment: Stop trying to write like Len Deighton! (Despite, or perhaps because of this, I got a good mark.)
Even earlier in my academic career, I had reason to be grateful to Len Deighton. As a teenage schoolboy I treated myself to the first hardback novel I ever bought, Billion Dollar Brain in 1966 (it cost 21 shillings). During a lesson with a notoriously sarcastic English master, we were asked to name the novel we had read most recently and I was immediately accused of lying as I could not have read Billion Dollar Brain because ‘it’s not out in paperback yet’. When I claimed I had the hardback first edition, and could bring it to school, the master said: ‘Can I borrow it?’ He did, and I got excellent marks for the rest of the term.
I have written extensively on the impact Len’s debut novel, The Ipcress File (1962), had on me and the whole spy-fiction genre and it is certainly the novel I have read more times than any other and for me, the anonymous hero of Ipcress, Horse Under Water, Funeral In Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain (‘Harry Palmer’ in the films) is an icon of the Sixties. With advancing age, I have come to realise that I belong to the early generation of Deighton fans, as there is a younger generation which believe his massive contribution to spy fiction began in the Eighties with his triple trilogy featuring the world-weary spy Bernard Samson. I’m sticking to my guns. Much as I enjoyed the Samson saga (and its background novel Winter) I think those first four books were Deighton’s greater achievement.
But they were not his only achievement. He had already established himself as a graphic artist (and noted designer of book covers) and combined this skill with a natural talent for cooking in his famous ‘cookstrips’ which even the most culinary illiterate male could follow. He also found time to be a film producer. At the end of the Sixties he broke new ground writing his WWII novel Bomber with the aid of a word-processor, gaining a reputation as a keen adopter of new technology, especially when it was reported that he had a personal telex machine and one of the first radio car telephones. I did once ask Len if it was true about the car phone and he replied with a cheeky grin: ‘And the first call I took on it was Bertrand Russell asking if I knew how to contact The Beatles…’
He put his interest in WWII to good use, establishing himself as a military historian of the conflict who had clearly considered and research the German side, in which he was assisted by his wife Ysabele and her fluency in numerous languages. The war was to feature in his fiction in novels such asiXPD, City of Gold and Goodbye Mickey Mouse, which he once told me was his favourite book, and spectacularly in his ‘alternate history’ SS-GB.
I first met Len in The Travellers’ Club in London, where he researched the background to the opening of his novel Winter – specifically New Year’s Eve 1899 in Vienna. Although we had corresponded via email through our mutual friend Harry Keating we had never actually met and Len must have sensed my nervousness, for he quickly set me at my ease and offered me his basic rules when attending any sort of business meeting: ‘Have a clean shirt, wear a tie and always be polite.’ I think he appreciated my reply: ‘Well two out of three ain’t bad’.
From then on we would meet for lunch whenever he was in London, and damn fine lunches they were even without alcohol. (I only ever saw Len drink once, a single glass of champagne at a lunch he hosted in Knightsbridge.) He introduced me to the cuisine of Anton Mosimann (and Anton himself) while I introduced him to the cooking of Marcus Waring, and though the food was good, it was the table talk which always made the occasion.
At one lunch in a Japanese restaurant a discussion about the economy of Renaissance Florence somehow turned into an explanation (by Len) of how stolen money could be 'laundered' into US dollars in Vichy France. A month or so later, I asked him if I could use his idea as the basis of a plot. He agreed and it became the backbone of my novel Mr Campion's War.
On another occasion, I told him of a recent poll on Radio 5 to find the ‘best Bond villain’ and whilst Blofeld, Goldfinger, Oddjob, etc. all scored highly, one person voted for film producer Kevin McClory. I knew Len had known McClory, and worked with him on various Bond projects, and would be amused by the poll. He was, and immediately penned an eBook, James Bond: My Long and Eventful Search for his Father.
His stories about the film world and publishing in the Sixties were always entertaining, often self-depreciating and (almost) never rancorous. Although when published, Ipcress File was touted as the ‘anti-Bond’ and the media of the time would have loved a Fleming/Deighton confrontation. But Ian Fleming chose Ipcress as his book of the year for The Sunday Times and Deighton has credited the boom in spy stories in the 1960s to the success of the Bond films. He has always maintained that there were two strands: he wrote spy fiction, Ian Fleming (with many others aping him) wrote spy fantasy.
It was that definition which I used as a basic thesis in my history of British thrillers, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which I dedicated to Len Deighton. For that I remain eternal grateful, as well as for the many books he urged me to read (which I did) and the authors I should champion – Ted Allbeury being a case in point. And, of course, for the casual advice about writing and being an author which passed across those many tables.
I especially remember him going suddenly serious and asking if I ever suffered from ‘writers’ block’. When I said ‘no’, he seemed relieved and dismissed the idea as ‘the blank wall we secretly know is incompetence’. He scoffed at associating writers’ block with technology, from electric typewriters to word processors to laptops. ‘The only implements needed to write book are pencil and paper, everything else is luxury.’
Len Deighton wrote a lot over thirty non-stop years and I thought, as a long-time fan, I had read it all, but I discover one piece which I have missed, his editing of Drinkmanship in 1964, which sounds right up my street.
What a hero!
No comments:
Post a Comment