Horse Under Water poster

THE DETAILS:

Here’s the challenge: Give us a glimpse of what an adaptation of Horse Under Water might look like. Show us a movie poster, a scripted scene, a theme song, an animation, a trailer, a level from a video game, a comic, a selection from a radio play, etc. etc. We’re not too particular. Just get it to us by midnight EST on Dec. 12th by emailing your submission (or a link to your submission) to mister8 (at) mister8.com! Improve your odds with multiple entries!

This contest is open to anyone in the world, except for yours truly. I’ll be doing solo judging on this one, in case any COBRAS or friends of the site want to enter. I promise to be fair and impartial!

GRAND PRIZE:

Len Deighton Autograph

Above is a rarish sort of item, a Trivial Pursuit Baby Boomer Edition card with the question “Whose spy novels included An Expensive Place to Die and Billion Dollar Brain?” The answer, of course, is Len Deighton, whose autograph is scrawled on the back of the card (the tape is on the plastic card holder, not on the card itself). I recently purchased this from an autograph dealer who wrote: “This would have been forwarded through his publishing house back in the ’90’s and was returned from his residence in Ireland. He has since moved and since arriving in the United States has been to my knowledge next to impossible to obtain.”

OTHER PRIZES:

I’m still working on putting these together, but will likely be a mix of new and used copies of Len’s novels!

THE FINE PRINT:

By submitting an entry, you agree to allow us to display, discuss, and make available for download your material. Shipping will be on me.

Welcome to the newest COBRAS member, Rob Mallows of Deighton Dossier blog and website fame. Rob has been a big supporter of the Harry Palmer series here at Mister 8, and we’re pleased to welcome him into the esteemed echelon of espionage essayists.

And I don’t want to leak intelligence out of school, but I’d expect some other forthcoming membership announcements….

Housed in what, from the outside looks to be an old barn, the bookstore turned out to be a bit of a TARDIS, a labyrinth of what had to be hundreds of thousands of books on the inside. I’d already accumulated an armful across two stories and an hour’s worth of searching, and was checking out when I mentioned to the elderly owner that I was disappointed that there wasn’t a paperback thriller section. He smiled and asked if I’d been downstairs yet.

Here’s what I picked up from the store, Dog Ears Antiquarian Books in Hoosick, NY:

Donald Hamilton - The Silencers

Donald Hamilton - Murderer's Row

Donald Hamilton - The Ambushers

Donald Hamilton - The Wrecking Crew

I’m not incredibly familiar with Hamilton — I’ve only read The Interlopers, from the middle of the series — so I grabbed the four titles I was familiar with, namely those who share names with Dean Martin films. I am tempted to say, having looked over the list, that the whole lot were there, and I may go back and pick them up a few at a time until I’ve built the whole collection. I might also do the same for the Edward S. Aarons Sam Durrell series. And I’m already thinking about reviewing these, the movies, and perhaps an episode or two of the show (if I can get my hands on it) somewhere round-about Christmas in a multi-part series called “Helm for the Holidays.”

Yes, I know my plate’s already a bit full, but I can’t pass up that pun, can I?

The Avengers: Too Many Targets

I already had a copy of this one, but couldn’t resist picking up a copy from the first printing on the cheap (this cover is much cooler than the other version I have as well).

Billion Dollar Brain

I FINALLY turned up a copy of this one on the cheap without turning to eBay. Yes, I started the Harry Palmer Files without even owning all of the books, but thanks to the fact that this bookstore owned every book ever, I now have a copy for myself! I also picked up a non “Harry” book Bomber, said to be Deighton’s best by many critics (including Kingsley Amis).

The First Saint Omnibus

While I love the show, I’ve never actually read any of the Charteris books. Thought this would be a good place to start, a nice smelly old edition.

The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier

This looks to be a nice addition to my TV spy reference shelf, and it’s the major 60s-era spy show about which I know the least, for some reason.

The Official James Bond Movie Book

From the era of Living Daylights. Because I can’t turn down cheap James Bond ephemera. (And yes, I’m being lazy and stealing these pictures from other sites).

Allen Dulles - The Craft of Intelligence

And lastly, but certainly not least…ly, a paperback copy of Allen Dulles’ thoughts on the intelligence business in 1963. Chock full of fun and informative bits by the director of the CIA (just after he was ousted actually, following the Bay of Pigs). We’ll be quoting bits of this here in a regular series, as soon as I can think of a witty title. I’m thinking “A Dulles Moment,” or “Mere Dulles Ink.”

All of the above rang up to roughly $15. Not a bad haul, and I’m sure I’ll soon be going back for other books I had to leave behind.

On the way home, I also scored 70 issues of Heavy Metal for mere cents at a garage sale. And then we watched two wonderful films — Toy Story I and II — on the big screen in 3D. What a great day.

Oh, and as I’m typing this, news has come in over the wire that we have a new member of the COBRAS, Rob Mallows of the Deighton Dossier. I’ll give Rob an official welcome tomorrow, but for now…I’m exhausted!

Do you want the good news or the bad news first? The bad news? OK. Here goes.

I’m going to be suspending the Harry Palmer Files series for a while, because life is quite busy, and random posts on whatever I have on hand will be easier and less stress than a planned series.

The good news? The good news is we’ll be resuming the Harry Palmer series in December with A CONTEST!

The book we were due to cover next was Horse Under Water, the least-known of the “Palmer” novels due to the fact that it was never made into a film. We here at Mister 8, inspired by Robert Green and Carl Barber’s imaginary soundtrack for such a film (which we’ll be showcasing here), and Kevin Dart’s trailer for an imaginary Yuki 7 film, want to see what you readers could do with the material.

THE DETAILS:

So here’s the challenge: Give us a glimpse of what an adaptation of Horse Under Water might look like. Show us a movie poster, a scripted scene, a theme song, an animation, a trailer, a level from a video game, a comic, a selection from a radio play, etc. etc. We’re not too particular. Just get it to us by midnight EST on Dec. 12th by emailing your submission (or a link to your submission) to mister8 (at) mister8.com! Improve your odds with multiple entries!

This contest is open to anyone in the world, except for yours truly. I’ll be doing solo judging on this one, in case any COBRAS or friends of the site want to enter. I promise to be fair and impartial!

GRAND PRIZE:

Len Deighton Autograph

Above is a rarish sort of item, a Trivial Pursuit Baby Boomer Edition card with the question “Whose spy novels included An Expensive Place to Die and Billion Dollar Brain?” The answer, of course, is Len Deighton, whose autograph is scrawled on the back of the card (the tape is on the plastic card holder, not on the card itself). I recently purchased this from an autograph dealer who wrote: “This would have been forwarded through his publishing house back in the ’90’s and was returned from his residence in Ireland. He has since moved and since arriving in the United States has been to my knowledge next to impossible to obtain.”

OTHER PRIZES:

I’m still working on putting these together, but will likely be a mix of new and used copies of Len’s novels!

THE FINE PRINT:

By submitting an entry, you agree to allow us to display, discuss, and make available for download your material. Shipping will be on me.

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

First, a pair of quick notes. First, I hope you all are reading Horse Under Water, as I am, to prepare for our next round of conversation. Second, Mark Simonson was kind enough to provide a few more typeface suggestions for yesterday’s post. If you want to make your own Dalby Domestic Employment Bureau sign, give the post a look-see.

As noted in our recent review of The IPCRESS File, scenes involving the foreign locations in the novel were rewritten to take place in London. Today, I’ve spliced together a selection from the audiobook (read by Robert Whitfield) and the film that demonstrate how the screenwriters approached the relocation. In the book, this scene is an action-packed bust out set on a night road in Lebanon. This scene also demonstrates the differences between the Dalby of the novel, who gets right into the thick of things with sticky bombs in hand, and the Dalby of the film, who for the most part stays in the car.

The novel presents the take-back of Raven as a violent surgical strike in the midst of the desert, whereas the film shows careful, choreographed procedure in a London carpark. Which do you prefer? Take a look:

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

As our friends at the HMSS Weblog point out, today is the 45th anniversary of the passing of author Ian Fleming. As we’ve noted here before, any discussion of 60s spies starts with Fleming and his creation, James Bond. Though others (Greene, Buchan, Ambler) before him wrote espionage novels, it was the popularity of OO7 that led to creations as widely disparate as Alphaville, The Prisoner and Danger: Diabolik entering the annals of popular culture.

Whatever one’s view on Bond, it cannot be denied that Fleming has a place in the conversation. Thus our continuing discussion of Fleming during a series devoted to Len Deighton. Today’s post is short, but I wanted to share a photo that I’ve…well, I pretty much swiped it from our friend Rob of The Deighton Dossier, after he posted it at the In Appreciation of Len Deighton Facebook group.

Fleming and Deighton from Funeral in Berlin slip-on

I tried to clean up the picture a little (I probably made it look worse), but if you want to see the original, please do join the Facebook group and have a look around. Rob says that this photograph was taken at the luncheon arranged by Peter Evans that we discussed previously. This blurb comes from a 1/3 wraparound on the first edition of Funeral in Berlin. From what I gather, this is an extremely rare marketing piece, and we’re thankful for Rob for sharing it!

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

British author Len Deighton.

I’ve had an incredibly productive offline week this week, but a horribly ineffective week here at the blog. I’ve got about 15 posts in the hopper, all around three-quarters completed, so the schedule will resume shortly (tonight, I hope, with my overdue review of The IPCRESS File film (If I’ve done nothing else, note that I’ve gone back and changed every instance of “Ipcress” to “IPCRESS”!).

In the meantime, here are two bits of info that I’m sure Deighton fans will be interested to learn. First, from the indispensible Deighton Dossier, Rob Mallows writes:

Word from my editorial contact at Len Deighton’s publishers, Harper Collins, is that following the initial release of the first four revised editions of SS-GB, Bomber, Goodbye Mickey Mouse and XPD – all with new introductions by Len Deighton himself (more details in future posts) – is that on 1 October this year the following books will be published in new editions, again each with new introductions by the author: The Ipcress File, Horse Under Water, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain.

For more on the reprints, and a schedule for other releases, check out Rob’s Deighton Dossier blog.

And then there’s this comment I found on a blog while researching the next installment of “When Harry Met James,” by Deighton Companion author Edward Milward-Oliver:

I am writing a major biography of Len Deighton, and offer a couple of corrections to your piece.

Producer Harry Saltzman met with Len Deighton to discuss the film rights of The Ipcress File prior to the opening of the first James Bond film Dr No, and nearly six weeks before the publication of the novel.

Saltzman had received an advance copy of Ipcress from Deighton’s agent Jonathan Clowes, and arranged to meet the new author at Pinewood Studios. After Deighton subsequently declined to adapt Ipcress for the screen himself, the producer hired him to prepare a draft screenplay of From Russia With Love, and in December 1962 flew the author and his wife to Turkey to scout locations. As you correctly stated, Deighton delivered a draft but it was not used, and nor was he credited.

We’ll be coming back to the latter information, but was it known that Milward-Oliver was working on this biography? I still await my copy of the Companion, hopefully speeding its way from Massachusetts on interlibrary loan, but have heard many complimentary things about the book. Anyone have any more information? Perhaps Mr. Milward-Oliver is somewhere lurking in the wings?

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton

This post is late, with my apologies, because I spent the evening watching a movie about bespectacled Harry P., whose rebellious attitude helps him navigate past suspicious authority figures to thwart evil conspiracies.  I have to say that I’m disappointed that I paid so much extra for a tiny IMAX screen, and 3D for only the first ten minutes of the movie. Also, that I watched two hours of teenagers freaking out about puppy love and not the evil wizard who intends to kill them all.

In case you, like myself, were wondering, here’s the Deightonless answer from JK Rowling’s Scholastic website:

Q: From where did you get the name for Harry Potter?

J.K. Rowling responds: ‘Harry’ has always been my favourite boy’s name, so if my daughter had been a son, he would have been Harry Rowling. Then I would have had to choose a different name for “Harry” in the books, because it would have been too cruel to name him after my own son. “Potter” was the surname of a family who used to live near me when I was seven years old and I always liked the name, so I borrowed it.

I feel as though we  haven’t addressed everything I wanted in our discussion of Len Deighton’s The IPCRESS File, but I also don’t want the discussion to grow stagnate, so today, I’ll be addressing a few, nugget-style wrap-up thoughts about the novel. Feel free to continue talking about the book in the comments section of this post!

The Framing Device

If you’ve read the prologue and first chapter, you’ll note that The IPCRESS File has a framing device wherein the narrator visits the Minister of Defence to explain the whole affair. The framing story was nothing new, but I’m always interested in the choices the author makes in presenting the story. Perhaps it’s all the times, as an English major, I had to answer, “In Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, why the customs house?”

Deighton’s decision in IPCRESS is interesting because the framing device itself has a frame. We are not eavesdropping on the narrator telling the minister the story of Jay, the brainwashing, Dalby, etc., but rather, he is telling us about telling the minister about the affair (complete with footnotes and an appendix — were these for us or the minister?). At this point, we’re sort of thrice removed from the actualities of the narrator’s experience, and so have to consider the validity of the details. One always wonders with first person narrators how faithful the related narrative was to the “truth” (if one can consider a “truth” having taken place in a fictitious world). Our narrator, like Chandler’s Marlowe before, seems quite witty and capable in the crunch, but it’s sometime hard to judge whether this is a construct on the part of the fictional storyteller. In IPCRESS, we’re bound to believe the narrator, again as with Marlowe, because he equally details the instances in which he was proven fallible.

Another interesting question to ask might be who we, as the reader, represent? The narrative is presented casually, conversationally, and with no attempt to keep certain details secret. In this framing device choice, Deighton has seemingly made us part of the intel community. And is this not part of the thrill of reading espionage fiction, to be included in the behind-the-scenes action of the “great game”?

The Americans

As an American myself, I was interested to read Deighton’s take on the American characters in The IPCRESS File. I was fascinated to see the “special relationship” playing out through the history (he spent time training with the CIA) and present (he’s warned by “Barney” Barnes of the impending double cross) of the narrator character, and the way in which race is presented. As I noted in my post on class issues the other day, we’re much more occupied in the US with issues of multiculturalism and civil rights for people of different races and genders (and while we’ve had some triumphant successes, such as our first black president, we’re still not perfect, as can be seen in the recent Henry Louis Gates Jr. affair).

The narrator notes that Skip Henderson was a rebel of his own for employing Barnes, in a time when the pressure would be on him to hire a white man intead:

I wished Jean would drop it. She just didn’t know a thing about Skip Henderson. Skippie Henderson who went to Korea and let himself be captured just so he could find out about collaborating in the prison camps; who came back to Washington with three bayonet wounds, a lungful of T.B. and a dossier that put a lot of ex-prisoner brass into the hot seat. In a courtmartial hot-seat. Skip stayed a captain for a long time after that. Prisoners’ friends had friends. But frightened? Skip? who had had the only Negro officer in C.I.A. as his assistant – Barney Barnes, and kept him against every sort of opposition that could be mustered. She just didn’t know what Skip was like. Smooth smiling Skip. Twenty years and they’d finally made him a major, and detailed a policeman to listen to his nightmares.

Later, there’s some interesting dialogue with epithets bounced back and forth between the narrator and Barnes. Were one not holding a gun on the other, I’d call it playful:

‘I’d just better be right about you, pale-face,’ he said.

‘You’d just better had, Sambo. Now ease down the drama and tell me what’s on your mind.’

Barney’s assistance only serves to get him murdered, which I think is a shame — he would’ve made a fine recurring character in the later novels.

The other Americans we briefly encounter are presented as horny devils that are easily tricked. Some days, I’d take offense at that, some days I’d feel that Deighton has us pegged (I feel the same way about CIA man Jeff Ross on The Sandbaggers).

As a nation, we do, it should be said, enjoy wearing flowered Hawaiian shirts whenever we get the opportunity.

Brainwashing

I’m going to hopefully make a post in the future about brainwashing and espionage fiction, but I want to direct you to a book featured by Jason Whiton @ Spy Vibe on the subject, Brainwashing: The Fictions of Mind Control: A Study of Novels and Films Since World War II by David Seed. Here’s an excerpt from what the book has to say on the subject:

When the narrator is captured and taken to be interrogated at length by the plotters, his ordeal is presented as a displaced rerun of Hungarian brainwashing conducted by an Eastern-looking official he nicknames “Kubla Khan.” The process is a composite deriving from Orwell and descriptions like Vogeler’s and Gallico’s, where beating, drugs and meaningless questions reduce the narrator — potentially — to the point where he will be ready to stand trial. The most surreal moment in the novel comes when the narrator makes his escape, only to find himself in a north London bean-patch. The “detention camp” proves to be a house in Wood Green.

With the exception of his brief imprisonment, the narrator’s account totally understates the impact of brainwashing. The “IPCRESS” of the title is an abbreviation for “Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex with Stress,” designating a process being carried out by an organization directed by the evil genius of the novel, Mr. Jay. Mr. Jay has devised a way to plan brainwashed figures in positions of authority and, through an experimental “synthesized environment” in Switzerland, to supply continental factories with docile workers. It is he who states a bold rationale for conditioning by appealing to social efficiency: “One of these days, brain-washing will be the acknowledged method of dealing with anti-social elements. Criminals can be brainwashed. I’ve proved it. Nearly 300 people I’ve processed. It’s the greatest step forward of the century.” Jay describes brainwashing in contradictory terms both as a means of bringing the antisocial within norms and as a means of conquest (”another terrible weapon” even worse than nuclear bombs). Jay’s practices are described as being congenial to Communism although his organization is notionally independent and the defeat of the latter becomes a purging of the British establishment and therefore its consolidation. Because Deighton’s chosen method of narration only allows him to give cryptic glimpses of Jay’s activities, the reader has to wait for the narrator to explain brainwashing in the concluding chapters.

It’s interesting to note that, according to Seed, the modern concept of brainwashing didn’t occur until the Korean War, and so the concept was fairly fresh when presented in Deighton’s novel. There are a number of parallels between the narrator / Harry Palmer and Patrick McGoohan’s Number Six, as I hope to discuss in a later post, and we see them go through similar processes of imprisonment and false trials.

Jay

Like Seed, I’m also a little disappointed that we don’t learn more of Jay, who, at the close of the book is given his own section of British intel to oversee. We see from his file that he’s a career opportunist, but we learn nothing of how he came to develop the techniques of brainwashing seen in the novel, nor really what he’ll be up to with his new department. I want to highlight the close of the novel, minus the epilogue and the appendix, wherein our narrator finds himself dealing with a new strange bedfellow. I love the parallel here between Jay’s asking him to dinner, and his being held against his will in Jay’s home in chapters previous. I also love that, in the end, there wasn’t a shootout, but merely Jay turning himself in (probably knowing that the technical information he had would put him in a good bargaining position):

That’s about all of the IPCRESS story. There has been a lot of work go through Charlotte Street since; some interesting, but mostly boring. Painter has a whole medical research lab working with him, but so far they have found no way of ‘de-brain-washing’ people, and many of the original network are still under the threat of the Treason Act, while some still forward reports under the impression that they are going via Jay to some foreign power. Of course I don’t let Jay handle them, just in case he gets ideas. I see Jay at the monthly conference with Ross, when we prepare the Army Intelligence Memoranda Sheet. He seems happy enough, and he’s certainly efficient. I remember another thing about Jays – they store food for winter. ‘Moving in from opposite ends to the same conclusion,’ Dalby said once, and every time I am with Jay I think about it. But I doubt if this was what Dalby meant.

Anytime I want Jay I know I can find him at the ‘Mirabelle’, and last Saturday morning I bumped into him at Leds. He wants Jean and me to go to dinner with him. He said he would cook it himself. I’d like to go but I don’t think I will. It’s not wise to make too many close friends in this business.

What more would you like to discuss on the novel The IPCRESS File? Please feel free to chime in in the comments section below!

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

‘I’m letting you take over this whole department,’ [Dalby] said at last. ‘Now don’t get all excited, it’s only going to be for about three months, in fact less if I’m lucky. You are a bit stupid, and you haven’t had the advantage of a classical education.’

Dalby was having a little genteel fun with me. ‘But I am sure you will be able to overcome your disadvantages.’

‘Why think so? You never overcame your advantages.’

The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton

One of the things I like best about British literature, film, television, and general media, is the constant presence of class issues, whether on the surface, or bubbling underneath. I grew up a working class American — when I was a kid, my dad supported our family of four on a factory salary (and this was during the Reagan years!) — and, until I started expanding my reading horizons, I felt fairly alone in the world. Admittedly, our class situation is a little different: our accents don’t betray us, and for the most part, we’re all piled into the same schools regardless of class. But still, we definitely have class issues in America, though most of our socially conscious art focuses on multi-culturalism.

As touched upon in the post about the Angry Young Men, class issues also permeate The IPCRESS File. The narrator character and his cinematic counterpart are often noted for their working class roots, compared to the globe-trotting playboy image set forth by other spy franchises. And, again, it’s noteworthy to point out that author Len Deighton was also from a working class background himself.

One of the interesting ways in which class issues are presented in The IPCRESS File is in the narrator’s description of the other characters and their backgrounds. For each of them, their class or financial background is addressed, usually as part of the narrator’s judgment of their character. During his time as head of department, he would have likely had access to personnel reports, and so we can’t ever be sure if these judgments are from the official documents, or casual observations.

CHICO:

Chico always looked glad to see me, it made my day; it was his training, I suppose. He’d been to one of those very good schools where you meet kids with influential uncles. I imagine that’s how he got into the Horse Guards and now into w.o.o.c.(p) too, it must have been like being at school again. His profusion of long lank yellow hair hung heavily across his head like a Shrove Tuesday mishap. He stood 5 ft. 11 in. in his Argyll socks, and had an irritating physical stance, in which his thumbs rested high behind his red braces while he rocked on his hand-lasted Oxfords. He had the advantage of both a good brain and a family rich enough to save him using it.

Chico seems to be the character for whom our narrator has the least respect, and it seems directly related to the fact that he didn’t really earn his job, but had it handed to him by virtue of his background. This is probably the reason that he’s not very good at the job (though it may be worth noting that our narrator may not give a reliable account of Chico’s abilities), and might also explain why he goes missing for half of the book and no one seems to give a damn.

DALBY:

Dalby was an elegant languid public school Englishman of a type that can usually reconcile his duty with comfort and luxury. He was a little taller than I am: probably 6 ft. i in. or 6 ft. 2 in. He had long fine fair hair, and every now and then would grow a little wispy blond moustache. At present he didn’t have it. He had a clear complexion that sunburnt easily and very small puncture-type scar tissue high on the left cheek to prove he had been to a German University in ‘38. It had been useful experience, and in 1941 enabled him to gain a D.S.O. and bar. A rare event in any Intelligence group but especially in the one he was with. No citations of course.

Public school in the UK, it should be noted, means pretty much the opposite of the US connotation. The Heidelberg duelling scar has always been one of the more interesting demarcations of class — a hideous disfigurement so posh that people often stabbed themselves in the face to get one. Dalby often seems to go against his class, and the societal niceties that come with it, but seems to still carry some superficial prejudices. Dalby’s interactions with the narrator, as seen in the excerpt that opens this post, often involve his pointing out the narrator’s education shortcomings and, occasionally, his surprise at his ability to transcend them.

CARSWELL:

On Tuesday I had Carswell in for a drink in the office. He seemed a bit depressed. He had three beers in quick succession and then began to tell me of his childhood in India. His father had insisted upon Carswell going into the regiment. The polo, the pig-sticking, the punitive actions against the tribesmen who enjoyed the fighting as much as the young English aristocrats did, the sun, horses galloping in the open hill country, drinks and mess dinners, the other young subalterns wrecking the mess in horseplay. All these things were things of his father’s life, and when his father died he immediately asked for a posting to another unit. He chose a unit as diametrically opposed to his father’s as he could think of; Indian Army Statistical Office,
Calcutta. He had no interest or aptitude for the work. He did it as a quiet rebellion against his life until then.

…Carswell must have been the only officer in the entire British army who had deliberately thrown away a commission in a crack cavalry regiment in exchange for a dreary office job that had left him nudging sixty, a substantive captain, with little or no prospect of a move past substantive major, if that.

Before this chat, the narrator had been frustrated with overseeing Carswell’s dead-end statistical work, but I feel that afterwards, there’s a bit more respect from one class anomaly to another.

MURRAY:

I talked to Murray about everything except the job. Murray was a tall and large-muscled man who, had he been a few years younger would have made a John Osborne hero. His face was large, square and bony, and it would be equally easy to imagine him as an R.S.M. or the leader of a wildcat strike.

He was efficient and responsive to orders in a way that more than faintly criticized his superiors by its very efficacy. It reminded me of those N.C.O.’s who drilled officer cadets. His hair was tightly arranged across his lumpy skull. His eyes, thin slits, as though he constantly peered into a brightness, would wrinkle and smile without provocation. Unlike Chico, Murray’s smile wasn’t motivated by a desire to join other men – it separated him quite deliberately from them. We talked about Bertold Brecht and the 1937 Firearms Act, and it amused Murray that I was probing around amongst his acquisition of knowledge. He’d not liked the peacetime army and it was understandable, there was no place in it for a man with a paperback edition of Kierkegaard in his pocket. The sergeants tried to talk like officers and the officers like gentlemen, he said. The mess was full of men who’d sit in a cinema all the weekend and come back with stories about house-parties on the river.

‘Georgian houses,’ Murray said, and he had a great love for beautiful buildings. ‘The only Georgian houses they’d ever been to were George the Fifth ones along the by-pass.’

Note the mention of John Osborne, whom we discussed before. Note also that in Murray and the narrator’s view, there’s seemingly a checklist for class pretension (”Attend party at Georgian house? Check Yes or No.”) that both misses the point, and breeds rebels like the two of them.

JEAN:

Even though Led’s wasn’t the place, she passed me a pale-green filing card, It was about six by ten inches. It was a personnel-type card, such as any large commercial firm might employ, but in the space for name and address there was only an irregularly spaced series of rectangular holes. Under this in panels was information. Born twenty-six years ago in Cairo. Norwegian father, Scottish mother, probably not short of the stuff since she went to school in Zurich between ‘51 and ‘52, and decided to live there. Perhaps working for British Diplomatic Service in Switzerland – it wouldn’t be the first time an Embassy typist came into the department. Her brother holds Norwegian citizenship, works for a shipping firm in Yokohama – hence presumably H.K. then Macao – where she worked part-time for the tourist bureau there – a Portuguese set-up. The panel marked T was bursting with entries. She spoke Norwegian, English, Portuguese, German, French, ‘FSW, that is, ‘fluent in speech and writing’, and Mandarin, Japanese and Cantonese ‘SS some speaking’. Her security clearance was GH7 ‘non stopped’ which means that nothing had been found to prevent her having a higher clearance if the department wanted to classify her higher.

In reading over Jean’s file, the narrator seems to comment in passing on Jean’s class background, mostly because he’s preoccupied with other things (”she was still my very first beautiful spy”).

The character on whom we get the least background info is Alice, the department secretary. We also get brief nuggets on our hero — he’s from Burnley, an industrial town in Lancashire, worked briefly with the CIA, and is described as, “a dark-haired, round-faced character; deep sunk eyes with bags under horn-rim glasses, chin jutting and cleft. On the back of the photos was written ‘5ft. 11 in.; muscular inclined to overweight. No visible scar tissue; hair dark brown, eyes blue’.”

I don’t want to be too presumptuous, but the working class narrator seems to be a fictional manifestation of Deighton himself. In addition to a similar physical build, they also share a knowledge of fine foods. This, along with the narrator’s appreciation of culture and history, might at first seem pretensions themselves, but the narrator uses them in his class rebellion, using his wit and knowledge as weapons against those who underestimate him. The intelligence community is populated by elitists (still smarting from the well-educated upper class Cambridge graduates who’d been working for the Soviets — Burgess, Philby, McLean, Blunt & Cairncross — actually, they were still hunting Cairncross, I think) and in some ways, the narrator is able to succeed because of his background and his ability to recognize and function outside of class niceties.

For what it’s worth, Deighton didn’t see himself as a class warrior, but a mere chronicler of the class situation. Discussing the situation in a BBC interview (transcribed here), Deighton said: “I think at the time someone said, ʻyouʼre against the class system,ʼ and I said, ʻWell, Iʼm not against the class system, itʼs just Iʼm recording the fact thereʼs a class system, and I think I might be more against it if I noticed around me anyone who was against it.ʼ”