Deighton, Len 1929–

(Leonard Cyril Deighton)

PERSONAL: Born February 18, 1929, in Marylebone, London, England; married Shirley Thompson (an illustrator), 1960. Education: Attended St. Martin's School of Art, London, three years; Royal College of Art, graduate.

ADDRESSES: Office—25 Newman St., London W.1, England.

CAREER: Author. Worked as a railway lengthman, an assistant pastry cook at the Royal Festival Hall, 1951, a manager of a gown factory in Aldgate, England, a waiter in Piccadilly, an advertising man in London and New York City, a teacher in Brittany, a co-proprietor of a glossy magazine, and as a magazine artist and news photographer; steward, British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), 1956–57; producer of films, including Only When I Larf, based on his novel of the same title, 1969.

WRITINGS:

Only When I Larf (novel), M. Joseph (London, England), 1968, published as Only When I Laugh, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1987.

Oh, What a Lovely War! (screenplay), Paramount, 1969.

Bomber: Events Relating to the Last Flight of an R.A.F. Bomber Over Germany on the Night of June 31, 1943 (novel), Harper (New York, NY), 1970.

Declarations of War (story collection), J. Cape (London, England), 1971, published as Eleven Declarations of War, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1975, reprinted, Thorndike Press (Thorndike, ME), 1992.

Close-Up (novel), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1972.

SS-GB: Nazi-Occupied Britain, 1941 (novel), J. Cape (London, England), 1978, Knopf (New York, NY), 1979.

Goodbye, Mickey Mouse (novel; Book-of-the-Month Club selection), Knopf (New York, NY), 1982.

Winter: A Novel of a Berlin Family (Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection), Knopf (New York, NY), 1988.

Also author of television scripts Long Past Glory, 1963, and It Must Have Been Two Other Fellows, 1977. Also author of weekly comic strip on cooking, Observer, 1962–.

ESPIONAGE NOVELS

The Ipcress File, Fawcett (New York, NY), 1962, reprinted, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1982.

Horse Under Water (Literary Guild selection), J. Cape (London, England), 1963, Putnam (New York, NY), 1967.

Funeral in Berlin, J. Cape (London, England), 1964, Putnam (New York, NY), 1965.

The Billion Dollar Brain, Putnam (New York, NY), 1966.

An Expensive Place to Die, Putnam (New York, NY), 1967.

Spy Story, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1974.

Yesterday's Spy, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1975.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy, J. Cape (London, England), 1976, published as Catch a Falling Spy, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1976, reprinted, Compass Press, 2002.

XPD, Knopf (New York, NY), 1981.

Berlin Game, Knopf (New York, NY), 1983.

Mexico Set, Knopf (New York, NY), 1985.

London Match, Knopf (New York, NY), 1985.

Spy Hook, Knopf (New York, NY), 1988.

Spy Line, Knopf (New York, NY), 1989.

Spy Sinker, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1990.

MAMista, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1991.

City of Gold, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1992.

Violent Ward, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1993.

Faith, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.

Hope, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.

Charity, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

NONFICTION

(Editor) Drinks-man-ship: Town's Album of Fine Wines and High Spirits, Haymarket Press, 1964.

Ou est le garlic; or, Len Deighton's French Cookbook, Penguin, 1965, revised edition published as Basic French Cooking, J. Cape (London, England), 1979.

Action Cookbook: Len Deighton's Guide to Eating, J. Cape (London, England), 1965.

Len Deighton's Cookstrip Cook Book, Bernard Geis Associates, 1966.

(Editor with Michael Rand and Howard Loxton) The Assassination of President Kennedy, J. Cape (London, England), 1967.

(Editor and contributor) Len Deighton's London Dossier, J. Cape (London, England), 1967.

Len Deighton's Continental Dossier: A Collection of Cultural, Culinary, Historical, Spooky, Grim and Preposterous Fact, compiled by Victor and Margaret Pettitt, M. Joseph (London, England), 1968.

Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain, J. Cape (London, England), 1977, Knopf (New York, NY), 1978.

(With Peter Mayle) How to Be a Pregnant Father, Lyle Stuart, 1977.

(With Arnold Schwartzman) Airshipwreck, J. Cape (London, England), 1978, Holt (New York, NY), 1979.

(With Simon Goodenough) Tactical Genius in Battle, Phaidon Press, 1979.

Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk, Coward (New York, NY), 1980.

Battle of Britain, Coward (New York, NY), 1980.

ABC of French Food, Bantam (New York, NY), 1990.

Blood, Tears, and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1993.

ADAPTATIONS: The Ipcress File was filmed by Universal in 1965, Funeral in Berlin by Paramount in The Billion Dollar Brain by United Artists in and Only When I Larf by Paramount in 1969; Spy Story was filmed in 1976; film rights to An Expensive Place to Die have been sold. Deighton's nameless British spy hero was given the name Harry Palmer in the film adaptations of his adventures. Several of the author's books have been adapted as audio recordings, including The Ipcress File, Yesterday's Spy, and The True Story of the Battle of Britain.

SIDELIGHTS: With his early novels, especially The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin, Len Deighton established himself as one of the mainstays of modern espionage fiction. He is often ranked—along with Graham Greene, John le Carre, and Ian Fleming—among the foremost writers in the field. Deighton shows a painstaking attention to accuracy in depicting espionage activities, and in his early novels this realism was combined with a light ironic touch that set his work apart. Deighton, David Quammen remarked in the New York Times Book Review, is "a talented, droll and original spy novelist."

Deighton's early novels are written in an elliptical style that emphasizes the mysterious nature of the espionage activities portrayed. They feature a nameless British intelligence officer who is quite different from the usual fictional spy. This officer is a reluctant spy, cynical, and full of wisecracks. Unlike many other British agents, he is also, Julian Symons stated in Mortal Consequences: A History—From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel, "a working-class boy from Brunley, opposed to all authority, who dislikes or distrusts anybody outside his own class. He is set down in a world of terrifying complexity, in which nobody is ever what he seems." T.J. Binyon wrote in the Times Literary Supplement, "The creation of this slightly anarchic, wise-cracking, working-class hero was Deighton's most original contribution to the spy thriller. And this, taken together with his characteristic highly elliptical expositional manner, with his fascination with the technical nuts and bolts of espionage, and with a gift for vivid, startling description, make the first seven [of Deighton's spy] stories classics of the genre." Peter S. Prescott of Newsweek, speaking of the early novels featuring Deighton's nameless hero, found that the style, marked by "oblique narration, nervous laughter and ironic detachment,… effectively transformed [Deighton's] spy stories into comedies of manners."

Deighton's elliptical style in these early books is clipped and episodic, deliberately omitting vital explanations of what his characters are discussing or thinking. This style, Robin W. Winks wrote in the New Republic, makes Deighton's "plots seem more complex than they are…. Because very little is stated explicitly, sequences appear to begin in mid-passage, and only through observation of the action does one come to understand either the motives of the villains, or the thought processes of the heroes." In these novels, Winks concludes, "Deighton had patented a style in which every third paragraph appeared to have been left out." Although this style confuses some readers—Prescott claims that Deighton's "specialty has always been a nearly incoherent plot." Writing in New Leader, Pearl K. Bell stated that Deighton's "obsessive reliance on the blurred and intangible, on loaded pauses and mysteriously disjointed dialogue, did convey the shadowy meanness of the spy's world, with its elusive loyalties, camouflaged identities and weary brutality."

Deighton was an immediate success with his first novel, The Ipcress File, a book that the late Anthony Boucher of the New York Times Book Review admitted "caused quite a stir among both critics and customers in England." Introducing Deighton's nameless protagonist in an adventure that takes him to a nuclear testing site on a Pacific atoll, to the Middle East, and behind the Iron Curtain, the book continues to be popular for its combination of a serious espionage plot with a parody of the genre. As Richard Locke observed in the New York Times Book Review, The Ipcress File possesses "a Kennedy-cool amorality … a cross of Hammett and cold war lingo."

Critics praised the book's gritty evocation of intelligence work, ironic narrative, and comic touches. Boucher called it "a sharply written, ironic and realistic tale of modern spy activities." Deighton's humor attracts the most attention from John B. Cullen of Best Sellers, who claimed that in The Ipcress File "Deighton writes with a tongue-in-cheek attitude…. No one is spared the needle of subtle ridicule, but the author still tells a plausible story which holds your attention throughout." However, for Robert Donald Spectar of the New York Herald Tribune Book Review Deighton's humor ruins the espionage story. "Deighton," Spectar wrote, "has combined picaresque satire, parody, and suspense and produced a hybrid more humorous than thrilling." But G.W. Stonier in the New Statesman compared Deighton with James Bond creator Ian Fleming. Stonier found Deighton to be "a good deal more expert and twice the writer" and believes "there has been no brighter arrival on the shady scene since Graham Greene." Even in 1979, some seventeen years after the book's initial publication, Julian Symons of the New York Times Book Review was moved to call The Ipcress File "a dazzling performance. The verve and energy, the rattle of wit in the dialogue, the side-of-the-mouth comments, the evident pleasure taken in cocking a snook at the British spy story's upper-middle-class tradition—all these, together with the teasing convolutions of the plot, made it clear that a writer of remarkable talent in this field had appeared."

Deighton's reputation as an espionage writer was enhanced by Funeral in Berlin, a story revolving around an attempt to smuggle a defecting East German biologist out of Berlin. With the assistance of a high-ranking Russian agent, former Nazi intelligence officers, and a freelance operator of doubtful allegiance, Deighton's unnamed hero arranges the details of the defection. The many plot twists, and Deighton's enigmatic presentation of his story, prompted Stephen Hugh-Jones of New Statesman to admit, "I spent most of the book wondering what the devil was going on." Boucher found the mysterious goings-on to be handled well. "The double and triple crosses involved," Boucher wrote, "are beautifully worked out." Published at the same time as John le Carre's classic espionage tale The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, a novel also set in Germany's divided city, Funeral in Berlin compares favorably with its competitor. Boucher called its plot "very nearly as complex and nicely calculated," while Charles Poore of the New York Times maintained it is "even better" than le Carre's book. It is, Poore concluded, "a ferociously cool fable of the current struggle between East and West." Andy East of Armchair Detective claimed that Funeral in Berlin "has endured as Deighton's most celebrated novel."

Since these early novels, Deighton's style has evolved, becoming more expansive and less oblique. His "approach has grown more sophisticated," Mark Schorr related in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. "His more recent writings offer a deft balance of fact, scene-setting and the who-can-we-trust paranoia that makes spy novels engrossing." Peter Elstob of Books and Bookmen noted that Deighton "develops with each new book."

Of Deighton's later espionage novels, perhaps his most important work has been the trilogy comprised of Berlin Game, Mexico Set, and London Match. Here, Deighton spins a long story of moles (agents working within an enemy intelligence organization), defection, and betrayal that also comments on his own writing career, the espionage genre, and the cold war between East and West that has inspired such fiction. Derrick Murdoch of the Toronto Globe and Mail called the trilogy "Deighton's most ambitious project; the conventional spy-story turned inside-out."

The first novel of the trilogy, Berlin Game, opens with two agents waiting near the Berlin Wall for a defector to cross over from East Berlin. "How long have we been sitting here?" asks Bernie Samson, British agent and the protagonist of the trilogy. "Nearly a quarter of a century," his companion replies. With that exchange Deighton underlines the familiarity of this scene in espionage fiction, in his own early work and in the work of others, while commenting on the continuing relevance of the Berlin Wall as a symbol of East-West conflict, noted Anthony Olcott in the Washington Post Book World. Deighton, Olcott argued, "is not only aware of this familiarity, it is his subject…. Berlin and the Wall remain as much the embodiment of East-West rivalry as ever…. To read Berlin Game is to shrug off 25 years of acclimatization to the Cold War, and to recall what espionage fiction is about in the first place."

In Berlin Game, Samson works to uncover a Soviet agent secretly working at the highest levels of British intelligence. This, too, is a standard plot in spy fiction, inspired by the real-life case of Soviet spy Kim Philby. But, as the New Yorker critic pointed out, "Deighton, as always, makes the familiar twists and turns of spy errantry new again, partly by his grip of narrative, partly by his grasp of character, and partly by his easy, sardonic tone." Prescott claimed that the novel does not display the wit of Deighton's earlier works, but the book overcomes its faults because of Deighton's overall skill as a storyteller. "Each scene in this story," Prescott wrote, "is so adroitly realized that it creates its own suspense. Samson, the people who work for him, his wife, even the twits who have some reason to be working for Moscow, are interesting characters; what they say to each other is convincing. Besides, the book is full of Berlin lore: we can easily believe that Samson did grow up there and thinks of it as home."

Mexico Set continues the story begun in Berlin Game. In the first book, Samson uncovers the spy in British intelligence—his own wife—and she defects to East Germany. To redeem himself in the eyes of his superiors, who now harbor understandable doubts about his own loyalty, Samson works in Mexico Set to convince a Russian KGB agent to defect. But the agent may only be a plant meant to further discredit Samson and destroy his credibility. If Samson cannot convince him to defect, his superiors may assume that he is secretly working for the Russians himself. But the Russian may defect only to provide British intelligence with "proof" of Samson's treason. As in Berlin Game, Deighton relates this novel back to the origins of the cold war and, "just when you've forgotten what the Cold War was all about, Len Deighton takes you right back to the [Berlin] Wall and rubs your nose on it," Chuck Moss wrote in the Detroit News.

Samson's efforts to persuade the Russian agent to defect take him from London to Mexico, Paris, and Berlin. "Every mile along the way," Noel Behn wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "objectives seem to alter, friends and enemies become indistinguishable, perils increase, people disappear, people die." Behn found that it is Deighton's characters that make the story believable: "They strut forward one after the other—amusing, beguiling, arousing, deceiving, threatening—making us look in the wrong direction when it most behooves the prestidigitator's purpose." Writing in the Washington Post Book World, Ross Thomas reported that Deighton "serves up fascinating glimpses of such types as the nearly senile head of British intelligence; a KGB major with a passion for Sherlock Holmes; and Samson's boyhood friend and Jewish orphan, Werner Volkmann," all of whom Thomas found to be "convincing characters." Thomas concluded that Mexico Set is "one of [Deight-on's] better efforts."

In the final novel of the trilogy, London Match, the Russian agent has defected to the British. But Samson must now decide whether the defector is telling the truth when he insists that a high-ranking member of British intelligence is a Russian mole. The situation grows more complicated when the suspected mole, one of Samson's superiors, comes to Samson for help in clearing his name. London Match "is the most complex novel of the trilogy," Julius Lester wrote in the New York Times Book Review. But Lester found London Match's complexity to be a liability. He thought "the feeling it conveys of being trapped in a maze of distorting mirrors is almost a cliche in spy novels now." Similarly, Gene Lyons of Newsweek called London Match "not the most original spy story ever told." In his review of the book for the Washington Post Book World, J.I.M. Stewart criticized Deighton's characterization. He stated that "the characters, although liable to bore a little during their frequently over-extended verbal fencings, are tenaciously true to themselves even if not quite to human nature." But even critics with reservations about some of the novel's qualities find aspects of the book to praise. Stewart lauded Deighton's ability to recreate the settings of his story. "The places, whether urban or rural, can be described only as triumphs alike of painstaking observation and striking descriptive power," Stewart wrote. Lester found this strength, too, calling "the best character" in the book "the city of Berlin. It is a living presence, and in some of the descriptions one can almost hear the stones breathing."

Deighton continues Samson's adventures in the 1988 Spy Hook, the first story in a second trilogy about the British intelligence agent. In this thriller, Samson is charged with accounting for the disappearance of millions in Secret Service funds. At first, he suspects his ex-wife—who defected in the earlier Berlin Game—as the thief, but later Samson learns that his superiors have begun to suspect him for the crime. Spy Hook was chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and became a best seller. Critical reception of the work was generally favorable, with reviewers praising the book's carefully developed and intricate plot, detailed settings, and suspenseful atmosphere. A number of reviewers, however, reacted negatively to the book's ending, which they felt was too ambiguous. "Deighton's craftsmanship—his taut action and his insightful study of complex characters under pressure—is very much in place here, but many … unanswered questions raised in Spy Hook remain just that at the novel's conclusion," stated Don G. Campbell, for example, in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Several critics, though, shared Margaret Cannon's Toronto Globe and Mail assessment of Spy Hook as matching Deighton's previous achieve-ments in the espionage genre. The novel, she wrote, "promises to be even better than its terrific predecessors and proves that Deighton, the old spymaster, is still in top form."

Deighton followed Spy Hook with the trilogy's second installment, Spy Line, in 1989 and the concluding book, Spy Sinker, in 1990. Spy Sinker focuses on the clandestine efforts of Samson's wife to effect the fall of the Berlin Wall from inside East Germany. As it turns out, Samson's wife was working as a double agent all along. Her earlier defection and callous abandonment of her husband was ordered by British Intelligence as part of a long-term strategic plan to subvert East German internal order. "Here Spy Sinker shows Deighton at the top of his form, in his concentration upon the one player in this series whose story is not yet told," wrote Anthony Olcott in Washington Post Book World. Olcott added, "Deighton is able now to close in Spy Sinker by exploring what betrayal costs the betrayer, a woman who for higher loyalties leaves husband, home, and country, to incur even more betrayals in a cycle which may, in the end, destroy her."

According to Albert Hunt in New Statesmen & Society, "Everything slots together beautifully—Len Deighton has done as professional a job as Bernard Samson ever did." A Time reviewer similarly praised Spy Sinker, noting that Deighton accomplishes the near impossible—"winding up a closely plotted six-volume thriller … and still writing a credible novel. He makes a good job of it with a clever change of focus." However, New York Times Book Review contributor Morton Kondracke noted, "As a stand-alone spy novel, this book is implausible, often incomprehensible and, altogether, downright dull."

Deighton initiated another Samson trilogy with Faith and Hope in 1995. Set in Berlin in 1987, Faith involves Samson's participation in the defection of a Communist spy and relates complicated domestic circumstances surrounding the return of his wife after their long separation. "What raises Deighton's genre to art," according to Andy Solomon in Washington Post Book World, "is not only his absorbing characters but his metaphoric grace … droll wit … command of technical detail … and sure sense of place." Despite such praise, New York Times Book Review contributor Newgate Callendar described Faith as "dull and turgid." Likewise Kirkus Reviews criticized Deighton's "vapid characters, murky plot, and infelicitous descriptions." While noting slow passages concerning Samson's marital difficulties and Intelligence agency politics, Times Literary Supplement reviewer John-Paul Flintoff wrote, "Deighton throws in plenty of plausible details—tricks of the trade, gun specifications, a picture of Berlin as a local would see it."

Deighton followed with Hope, in which Samson pursues his Polish brother-in-law despite official evidence of his death at the hands of Russian army deserters. Commenting on the strained relationship depicted between Samson and his wife, a Times Literary Supplement reviewer describes Hope as "an unexpectedly ambiguous novel, complicated by repressed emotions and jealousies as well as by double crosses and false identities." Scott Veale complained in the New York Times Book Review, "there's more secrecy than action in this novel, and too often it's easy to get lost in the plot's numerous byways." However, Chris Petrakos praised Hope in Chicago Tribune Books, noting that "as usual" Deighton puts forth "a taut, enigmatic effort." Publishers Weekly also commended Hope and hailed Deighton as "the only author other than le Carre who deserves to be known as 'spymaster.'"

In the final book of the trilogy, Charity, Samson's wife has returned home after finishing her duties as a double agent while Samson becomes more disillusioned with both his job and his growing estrangement from his wife. At the same time, he is looking into what he considers the very suspicious death of his sister-in-law Tessa. Writing in Booklist, Emily Melton noted that "this story also shows a darker, more despairing Bernard, who is as much a victim of his own doubts and insecurities as he is of the system he serves. A brilliant new entry in Deighton's superb repertoire." A Publishers Weekly contributor called the story "well crafted and reliably satisfying."

Although Deighton is best known for his espionage fiction, he has also written best-selling novels outside the espionage field, as well as books of military history. These other novels and books are usually concerned with the events and figures of World War II. Among the most successful of his novels have been SS-GB: Nazi-Occupied Britain, 1941, and Goodbye, Mickey Mouse, which have earned Deighton praise as a writer of military history. Deighton's writing in other fields has shown him, Symons wrote, to be "determined not to stay within the conventional pattern of the spy story or thriller."

SS-GB takes place in an alternative history of World War II, a history in which England lost the crucial Battle of Britain and Nazi Germany conquered the country. The story takes place after the conquest when Scotland Yard superintendent Douglas Archer investigates a murder and finds that the trail leads to the upper echelons of the Nazi party. An underground plot to rescue the king of England, who is being held prisoner in the Tower of London, and the ongoing efforts of the Nazis to develop the atom bomb also complicate Archer's problems. "As is usual with Mr. Deighton," John Leonard wrote in Books of the Times, "there are as many twists as there are betrayals."

Deighton's ability to fully render what a Nazi-occupied Britain would be like is the most widely noted strength of the book. "The atmosphere of occupied England," Michael Demarest wrote in his review of SS-GB for Newsweek, "is limned in eerie detail…. In fact, Deighton's ungreened isle frequently seems even more realistic than the authentic backgrounds of his previous novels." "What especially distinguishes 'SS-GB,'" Leonard believed, "is its gritty atmosphere, the shadows of defeat on every page. Yes, we think, this is what martial law would feel like; this is the way the Germans would have behaved; this is how rationing and the black market and curfews and detention camps would work; this is the contempt for ourselves that we would experience." Paul Ableman of the Spectator criticized the plot and noted, "From about Page 100, the subversive thought kept surfacing: what is the point of this kind of historical 'might have been'?… I fear [the novel] ultimately lost its hold on me. We could have been given the same yarn set in occupied France." But Symons judged SS-GB a successful and imaginative novel and called it "a triumphant success. It is Mr. Deighton's best book, one that blends his expertise in the spy field with his interest in military and political history to produce an absorbingly exciting spy story that is also a fascinating exercise in might-have-been speculation."

Goodbye, Mickey Mouse, another Deighton novel about World War II, concerns a group of American pilots in England who run fighter protection for the bombers making daylight runs over Germany. It is described by Thomas Gifford of the Washington Post Book World as "satisfying on every imaginable level, but truly astonishing in its recreation of a time and place through minute detail." Equally high praise came from Peter Andrews, who wrote in his review for the New York Times Book Review: "Deighton's latest World War II adventure novel is such a plain, old-fashioned, good book about combat pilots who make war and fall in love that it defies a complicated examination…. 'Goodbye, Mickey Mouse' is high adventure of the best sort but always solidly true to life."

Not all reviewers were so enthusiastic, but even those with reservations about the novel's ultimate quality were impressed with the way Deighton presented the scenes of aerial combat. "As long as he keeps his propellers turning," Prescott allowed in his Newsweek review, "Deighton's book lives. He understands the camaraderie of pilots and to a lesser degree the politics of combat…. It's a pity that his people, like his prose, are built from plywood." Gifford of the Washington Post Book World interpreted the novel on a more serious level. Speaking of the generation who fought in the Second World War, many of whom are "approaching the time when they will one by one pass into our history," Gifford found Deighton's novel a tribute to that generation and its monumental fight. "Some of them," Gifford wrote, "are fittingly memorialized in Deighton's hugely assured novel."

The crucial Battle of Britain, which figures prominently in SS-GB, and the air battles of that period, which appear in Goodbye, Mickey Mouse, are further explored in the nonfiction Fighter, a history of the Royal Air Force defense of England during the Battle of Britain. A highly acclaimed popular account of what Noble Frank-land of the Times Literary Supplement called "among the handful of decisive battles in British history," Fighter "is the best, most dispassionate story of the battle I have read," Drew Middleton stated in the New York Times Book Review, "and I say that even though the book destroyed many of my illusions and, indeed, attacks the validity of some of what I wrote as an eyewitness of the air battle 38 years ago."

The Battle of Britain took place over several months of 1940. After overrunning France, the Nazi leadership focused their attention on softening up England for a land invasion. They launched extensive bombing raids against the British Isles, attacking the city of London, air bases, factories, and seaports. The Royal Air Force, vastly outnumbered by their opponents, bravely fought the Germans to a standstill, which resulted in the proposed invasion being delayed and ultimately canceled. Or so most historians relate the story.

Deighton dispels some of the myths about the Battle of Britain still widely believed by most historians. He shows, for example, that a major reason for the failure of the German offensive was the decision to shift the main attack from British airfields to the city of London. The Nazis hoped that bombing the civilian population would cause Britain to sue for peace. But leaving the airfields alone only allowed the Royal Air Force to launch their fighter planes against the German bombers. And when bomber losses rose too high, the Nazi invasion plans were called off.

Other insights into the Battle of Britain include the facts "that British anti-aircraft fire was ineffective, that some R.A.F. ground personnel fled under fire, that the Admiralty provoked costly skirmishes…. The book resounds with exploded myths," Leonard Bushkoff wrote in the Washington Post Book World. Deighton also shows that British estimates of German losses were far higher than they actually were, while British losses were reported to be less serious than was actually the case. But Bushkoff sees the importance of these revelations to be inconsequential. "Is debunking sufficient to carry a book that essentially is a rehash of earlier works?" he asked. In his article for the Saturday Review, George H. Reeves reports that "there is a profusion of detail in Fighter … that will delight the military history specialist, and Deighton's well-paced narrative and techniques of deft characterization will also hold the attention of the general reader." He believed that Deighton "has turned his hand with commendable results to the writing of military history."

In all of his writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, Deighton shows a concern for an accurate and detailed presentation of the facts. He has included appendices in several novels to explain to his readers such espionage esoterica as the structure of foreign intelligence organizations and the effects of various poisons. Part of Deigh-ton's research involves extensive travel throughout the world; he is reported to have contacts in cities as far-flung as Anchorage and Casablanca. These research trips have sometimes proven dangerous. For example, Russian soldiers once took him into custody in East Berlin. For Bomber: Events Relating to the Last Flight of an R.A.F. Bomber Over Germany on the Night of June 31, 1943, Deighton made three trips to Germany and spent several years in research, gathering some half million words in notes. Research for the books Fighter and Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk took nearly nine years.

Deighton turns to historical fiction in his 1987 book Winter: A Novel of a Berlin Family. The story of a well-to-do German family led by a banker and war financier, Winter depicts how cultural and historical factors influence the attitudes of his two sons, one of whom joins the murderous Nazi party, while the other moves to the United States and marries a Jewish woman. The mixed criticism for Winter revolved around Deighton's sympathetic portrayals of his Nazi characters and around the novel's wide historical scope, which some reviewers felt is inadequately represented, mainly through dialogue rather than plot.

"Unlike much of Deighton's work," wrote Gary Dretzka in Chicago Tribune Books, "'Winter' isn't much concerned with military strategy, suspense and spies as with people and relationships." According to Elizabeth Ward in Washington Post Book World, "Winter is neither fiction nor history but docudrama, running like a film script in a series of dutifully dated vignettes from New Year's Eve 1899 … to 1945." Favorably describing Winter as a fictional counterpart to William L. Shirer's acclaimed historical work The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Ward maintained that "Winter is an altogether silkier, less demanding and more entertaining read," adding, "Len Deighton certainly knows how to move a narrative along, build suspense and weave mysteries, even if history did write the larger plot for him." While praising Deighton's "scholarship and attention to detail," Dretzka noted, "In the end, it's almost as if the enormity of World War II devours the context of the novel, leaving little for the reader to feel except pity—which is fine for TV, but not enough for a serious, well-written piece of fiction about such a shocking period in history."

Deighton also produced City of Gold in 1992, another volume of historical fiction based on events during World War II. This novel is set in Cairo at the height of Nazi domination of North Africa under the command of General Erwin Rommel. The protagonist is Corporal Jim Ross, a British soldier who escapes court-martial by assuming the identity of Major Bert Cutler, a British Intelligence agent who dies of a heart attack on a train. With his new identity and security clearance, Ross (as Cutler) is assigned to uncover the source of Rommel's detailed information about Allied forces and their movements. Though critical of Deighton's unusually large cast of stereotyped characters, Michael Kernan wrote in Washington Post Book World, "The action scenes in the desert are as good as anything he has written." A Kirkus Reviews contributor praised Deighton's "terrific return" to the Second World War and the "rich drama of heroes and villains" in City of Gold. "In the finest Deighton form," wrote Dick Roraback in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, "the master sets up his row of people then surrounds them with the authentic sights, sounds, smells, the moods and mores of their locale."

Deighton's position as one of the most prominent of contemporary espionage writers is secure. Cannon, writing in the Toronto Globe and Mail described him as "one of the finest living writers of espionage novels." Writing in Whodunit?: A Guide to Crime, Suspense and Spy Fiction about his life as a writer, Deighton revealed: "I have no formal training and have evolved a muddled sort of system by trial and error…. My own writing is characterized by an agonizing reappraisal of everything I write so that I have to work seven days a week." Summing up his feelings about being a best-selling author, Deighton concludes, "It's not such a bad job after all; except for sitting here at this damned typewriter."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bestsellers 89, Issue 2, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989.

Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography: Contemporary Writers, 1960 to Present, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 4, 1975, Volume 7, 1977, Volume 22, 1982, Volume 46, 1988.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 87: British Mystery and Thriller Writers since 1940, First Series, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989.

Keating, H.R. F., editor, Whodunit?: A Guide to Crime, Suspense and Spy Fiction, Van Nostrand (New York, NY), 1982.

Symons, Julian, Mortal Consequences: A History—From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel, Harper (New York, NY), 1972.

PERIODICALS

Armchair Detective, winter, 1986.

Best Sellers, November 15, 1963; January 1, 1968.

Booklist, June 1-15, 1993; October 15, 1996, Emily Melton, review of Charity, p. 379.

Books and Bookmen, September, 1967; December, 1971.

Books of the Times, February, 1979; August, 1981.

British Book News, December, 1980.

Chicago Tribune Book World, March 18, 1979; January 19, 1986.

Detroit News, February 3, 1985; February 9, 1986.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), December 1, 1984; December 14, 1985.

Harper's, November, 1982.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 1992, p. 555; October 15, 1994, p. 1364.

Life, March 25, 1966.

London Review of Books, March 19-April 1, 1981.

Los Angeles Times, November 26, 1982; March 23, 1987.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 17, 1985; February 16, 1986; November 22, 1987; August 19, 1990, p. 8; July 26, 1992, p. 9.

New Leader, January 19, 1976.

New Republic, December 13, 1975.

New Statesman, December 7, 1962; September 8, 1964; May 12, 1967; June 18, 1976; August 25, 1978.

New Statesman and Society, September 14, 1990; September 6, 1991.

Newsweek, January 18, 1965; January 31, 1966; June 26, 1972; October 14, 1974; February 19, 1979; December 27, 1982; December 19, 1983; February 11, 1985; anuary 13, 1986.

New Yorker, February 3, 1968; May 7, 1979; February 6, 1984.

New York Herald Tribune Book Review, November 17, 1963, Robert Donald Spectar, review of The Ipcress File.

New York Times, January 12, 1965; October 17, 1970; October 16, 1976; September 20, 1977; May 13, 1981; June 21, 1981; December 7, 1982; December 12, 1983; December 21, 1987.

New York Times Book Review, November 10, 1963; January 17, 1965; May 21, 1967; January 14, 1968; October 4, 1970; April 13, 1975; July 9, 1978; February 25, 1979; May 3, 1981; November 14, 1982; January 8, 1984; March 10, 1985; December 1, 1985; January 10, 1988; December 25, 1988; September 2, 1990, p. 6; June 28, 1992; August 15, 1993; January 29, 1995, p. 21; February 25, 1996, p. 21.

Playboy, May, 1966.

Publishers Weekly, November 27, 1995, p. 53; November 4, 1996, review of Charity, p. 64.

Saturday Review, January 30, 1965; June 10, 1978.

Spectator, September 24, 1977; September 2, 1978; April 18, 1981.

Time, March 12, 1979; April 27, 1981; January 13, 1986; December 28, 1987; December 5, 1988; September 17, 1990, p. 79.

Times Literary Supplement, February 8, 1963; June 1, 1967; June 22, 1967; September 25, 1970; June 16, 1972; May 3, 1974; October 28, 1977; September 15, 1978; March 13, 1981; October 21, 1983; October 21, 1994; October 6, 1995.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), February 24, 1985; December 27, 1987; January 1, 1989; January 8, 1989; January 21, 1996, p. 6.

Village Voice, February 19, 1979.

Wall Street Journal, May 21, 1980.

Washington Post, October 9, 1970; December 20, 1987; December 13, 1988; December 12, 1989; July 12, 1992.

Washington Post Book World, September 29, 1974; June 4, 1978; March 20, 1979; April 14, 1981; November 7, 1982; January 8, 1984; January 27, 1985; December 15, 1985; December 20, 1987; September 23, 1990; February 12, 1995.