Len Deighton

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy six, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:29

Our castaway this week is the writer Len Dayton. Mr. Dayton, what are your views on this desert island existence? Could you take loneliness?

Len Deighton0:38

Well, I could take it, but I don't think I would enjoy it very much. I like my family life. I could be isolated if my family were with me. In fact, we live a very isolated life. We have very, very s few social occasions.

Presenter0:51

Uh

Len Deighton0:51

Uh

Presenter0:51

What would you be happiest to have got away from?

Len Deighton0:53

Well, there's nothing. I I enjoy life so much I can't think of any I mean, I could say to you uh the phone ringing, but my wife always answers the phone when it's ringing. I

Len Deighton1:02

Uh I can't I suppose politicians perhaps would be the one thing I would like to get away from and reports of them. What about music? Is it important in your life?

Len Deighton1:12

Yes, I it's impo very important, really. I find that when I'm away from home, after a few days I become agitated if I don't hear a little Mozart. In fact, I go into record shops and pretend I want to buy records in order to

Presenter1:26

No, I'm a tank.

Len Deighton1:27

Here something.

Presenter1:28

What was your plan in choosing your eight record?

Len Deighton1:31

Well, I suppose chronological nostalgia is the uh system that I've deployed. Chronological in the order in which I discovered them.

Presenter1:39

Where do we start?

Len Deighton1:40

Well, I was at school in North London at the William Ellis School. That was during the war, and I can remember that there was a little boy in the class who was permitted every day to play Faure Lies, the Beethoven uh piece of music. He only played this one piece. I suppose it was the only piece which he could play well enough, that was introducing assemblée.

Presenter3:04

Beethoven's Furalese, played by John Ogden.

Presenter3:08

Did you show promise at school?

Len Deighton3:11

No. In fact, I can remember there was a boy called MacDonald, who, if he's listening to Brigham, perhaps he will remember it himself, who one day came up to me in the in the playground, and he said

Len Deighton3:22

Dayton, I've been thinking that

Len Deighton3:26

Every boy in the class is either good at lessons or good at sport, and you're not good at either. Why do you think that is?

Presenter3:33

Yeah.

Len Deighton3:33

Yeah. What did you want to be?

Len Deighton3:36

The war was on, and I

Len Deighton3:38

I was devoted to aeroplanes and I suppose my first ambition was to fly an aeroplane. I wasn't very fussy what sort of aeroplane I wanted to fly an aeroplane. I was also very interested in drawing. I mostly was drawing aeroplanes I suppose at that time. And luckily for me some teachers discovered this and I can remember I was encouraged to go to school all day Saturday to draw. And finally I ended up at art school full time.

Presenter4:05

By the time you were called up into the Royal Air Force the war was over.

Len Deighton4:09

Yes. I think I went into the Air Force in nineteen forty seven. They permitted me to choose the trade I wanted, and so I spent two and a half years as an Air Force photographer.

Presenter4:19

And when you were demoted? You studied at St Martin's in London.

Len Deighton4:22

That's right. I went to Saint Martin's for three years and then I took the entrance exam for the Royal College of Art and did three years at the Royal College. I was the world's oldest child protege, as someone pointed out by that time.

Presenter4:35

Pointed out by that time.

Len Deighton4:39

Well, during the time when I was an art student, we were lucky enough to have an old subterranean apartment in Gloucester Road. And I suppose Benny Goodman was one of the standard uh sounds coming out of that place by day and by night. And one evening when we were listening to a Jack T. Garden vocal on Stars Fell on Alabama, we noticed that

Len Deighton5:02

The lyrics all had a double meaning.

Presenter5:06

Yeah.

Len Deighton5:06

Mm-hmm.

Presenter5:07

Yeah. My imagination

Len Deighton5:07

Imagination

Presenter5:10

A situation so heavenly A fairy land where no one else could enter

Presenter5:20

And in the center

Presenter5:22

Just you and me there.

Presenter5:26

My heart beats like a hammer.

Presenter5:30

My arms wound around you tide.

Presenter5:35

Jack Teagarden and some new light on Stars Fell on Alabama.

Presenter5:40

You graduated from the Royal College of Arc. Where were you headed?

Len Deighton5:43

During the time there I changed from being a graphic designer to being an illustrator, and I decided then that to spend um

Len Deighton5:53

my final year or so in drawing, in doing as much drawing as possible for

Presenter5:57

What was the next step towards earning a living?

Len Deighton5:59

Well, by then I was about 26 and I did feel I wanted to do something that was realistic. I wanted to come out and find out what the world was about. So I applied to BOAC for a job as a steward with the idea of doing that for a year. And to my surprise, they accepted me. They accepted me largely because I went into a room and they said, do you speak a foreign language? And I said yes, German, which was a terrible and blatant lie, which I flush to remember now. And the examining committee spoke with each other and one of them said, well, we can't test your German since none of the examiners here speak German.

Presenter6:32

And

Len Deighton6:41

And uh on the basis of that I became a VOAC steward.

Presenter6:41

And

Presenter6:45

And after that?

Len Deighton6:47

Well, the mecca for illustrators and graphic designers then, and I perhaps to some extent now, was New York. And I suppose I wanted to find out what uh America was like, and I I lived there for a year, but um I found all sorts of things which I hadn't allowed for, including the New York summers, which I found were really a little bit too much for me. I suppose if I'd been able to afford an air conditioner, I'd be there still.

Presenter7:13

Now, your time in New York, your time in the United States, brings us to your next record, I believe.

Len Deighton7:18

Yes, I can remember not so long ago driving uh across California uh in a rented car and seeing these enormous trucks. I'm no great lover of trucks actually I must say, but in America seeing these huge things in bright colours and enormous lettering and gigantic logos and there was something very beautiful about it. And I switched on the uh radio in order to drown out the noise of people complaining about my bad driving and out of it came a s Johnny Cash recording. It's a litany of the names of these big trucking organisations. And he makes no attempt to rhyme them or or set them up. He merely recites them and yet by some magic

Len Deighton8:06

It becomes music as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 28:10

Yeah.

Presenter8:10

The right

Speaker 28:10

No easy run.

Presenter8:11

I drove for Navajo, Rate, Goose, D.C., North American, Allied, Baltimore, Freight, Phi, New Mac, Curtis, Eastern and NX, Garrett, Ace, Federal and ETM, Neptune, Heron, Bricks and C-Lab, Verse Dudley, Dorsey, Beacons and Billingham, Cooper, Detroit.

Presenter8:40

Johnny Cash, there ain't no easy run.

Presenter8:43

When you came back from the United States, what?

Len Deighton8:46

I I came back to Europe and I worked as a freelance illustrator because it was much easier to sell illustrations than design. And I went into an advertising agency on a six months contract to work as a full-time agency employee, which was the first time

Len Deighton9:07

I'd had a job in the world of design and so on. Of course, it was an entirely different sort of life to any. I began to see things I hadn't seen before. That I was made a director of the company, and every other director was not only a graduate of Eton, they'd all been there at the same time, and they all called each other by names like Piggy and Wiggy and that sort of thing. And I felt rather out of place. And I suppose that that more than any other thing, that experience of being the only

Speaker 19:33

Yeah.

Len Deighton9:42

the sort of uh grammar school boy on a a high powered board of directors like that, was really how I came to write Ibcrest file. Ibcrest file is about spies on the surface, but it's also really about a a grammar school boy among public school boys and the difficulties he faces.

Presenter10:02

It was a spectacular success for a first book, The Ipcress File. It was immediately bought for film, and Your Spy was a very unglamorous character compared with James Bond.

Len Deighton10:12

Harry Saltzman once said to me that one of the problems with James Bond is that no one worries if he's going to get hurt.

Presenter10:17

Yeah.

Speaker 210:17

Hmm.

Presenter10:17

Yeah.

Len Deighton10:17

Well, I did try to write it as realistically as I could. I tried to talk to to people. I was helped enormously by newspaper men who

Len Deighton10:26

were able to give me stories that they couldn't use not headline stories, but uh asides and contributive material that uh they had no use for for one reason or another.

Presenter10:38

You went ahead and wrote four more, one a year, all with different backgrounds, meticulously researched. A lot of travelling was obviously necessary.

Len Deighton10:47

Yes, I I

Len Deighton10:49

I suppose that probably the the tax system encourages one to do a lot of research. I like the research better than I like writing books. I mean the best thing of writing books is being at a party and telling some pretty girl that you write books. The worst thing is sitting at a typewriter and actually writing the book. But as a in between those two extremes then probably research is not at all bad uh thing to be doing. So I did do a lot of research.

Presenter11:14

And all the stories were told in the first person by an anonymous narrator. He never had a name.

Len Deighton11:19

Yes, I think perhaps some people felt that was a contrivance, but in fact I kept putting off inventing a name for him.

Len Deighton11:27

until I got to the end of the book and then realized that I could actually finish the book without giving him a name.

Presenter11:32

Now your next book was Right Away from Spies, Only When I Love, about Conmen.

Len Deighton11:37

It was the most simply made book that I have ever uh done. And in order to give myself this discipline, I decided it shouldn't be a spy book, but it uh uh I would write it about conmen, which of course is very like writing about spies, really. The sort of the element of deceit and so on is still there. It's a it's an allied subject.

Presenter12:00

And you produced the film version yourself.

Len Deighton12:01

Well, I'd already put money down for film rights to the show Oh, What a Lovely War, which I thought was wonderful. Joan Littlewood's stage production moved me en enormously. And I thought that because I loved it so much that

Speaker 112:14

Yeah.

Len Deighton12:17

I could probably.

Len Deighton12:18

um do a good job in the film script even though it needed

Len Deighton12:22

Quite.

Len Deighton12:23

Fierce draconian changes to to come on to the screen. I felt it was better that I did it than that someone uh did it just as a job of work. And then someone mentioned that Dickie Attenborough uh wanted to try his hand at directing, and uh gradually that uh came to be, but uh Dickie Attenborough wasn't going to be available for another year, so we had a sort of a set up without a film, and it was during that time that uh suddenly it seemed a good idea to make a film of Only When I Laugh.

Presenter12:56

Which was followed by a water.

Len Deighton12:58

Oh What Lovely War, yes, the following year we made the film Oh O Was Lovely War. And my next recording would be a memory of those days. I haven't chosen either the

Len Deighton13:10

uh film version or the stage version, because I've now been able to discover a most interesting recording from the passing show of nineteen fourteen.

Len Deighton13:21

in which we can hear one of the most important, most moving, indignation forming, perhaps, tunes of the show sung as it was actually sung during the First World War.

Speaker 213:36

I walk back with a third, I see I see the miasa. I could see a house with a baby but gown, and when the old

Speaker 113:40

Be a king to my son

Speaker 213:55

He's a captain of the world.

Speaker 213:59

Uh

Presenter13:59

Come here, to make it feel, to make a family.

Presenter14:06

Gwendolyn Brogdon singing I'll make a man of you from The Passing Show of 1914. You took your name off the the film of Oh What a Lovely Woman.

Len Deighton14:16

Well, I think probably I wouldn't have done that had

Len Deighton14:19

It not been a show based upon history, but

Len Deighton14:23

Although the script was exactly the script I'd written, I felt that in too many cases the the film sought out the sentimental response from an audience when I was trying to seek

Len Deighton14:38

uh indignation from the audience and this is I think what uh the the Joan Littlewood show did so beautifully that the men on the stage were trapped in a lethal trap but their response to this was to make you laugh heartily and this agonizing conjunction of of anguish and and laughter was what I think made her show magical and I think we failed and I take just as much responsibility as anyone else does we failed to get that into the film I believe.

Presenter15:13

Mm-hmm.

Presenter15:15

You wrote a serious book about the Second World War, Bomber.

Len Deighton15:19

I

Len Deighton15:20

Looking back and speaking to you now, I suppose that as we juxtapose it, it must be that one was a direct result of the other. I think that probably I went off to write Bomber simply because there was something that I'd not been able to say through the film of Oh, what a lovely war and I wanted to say it through uh a book. Let's have another record.

Len Deighton15:44

Well I think the next record has always uh interested me because it is said that that Ravel hated the Wals format very much and that he wanted to write something which would undermine it and parody it and put it in bad repute, because the Wals has survived Ravel's attack as we know all too well.

Presenter17:07

An excerpt from Rabel's Lavals

Presenter17:10

The Swiss Romond Orchestra conducted by Ernest Onseme.

Presenter17:13

After seven years away from the spy's daughter, you went back to it. You have a new one just out, Twinkle Twinkle, Little Spy. What's the setting of that one?

Len Deighton17:21

Well, I uh was asked if I would like to go on, I think, one of the longest car rallies that had ever been, not as a driver, but as a controller.

Len Deighton17:32

And I said yes, I would like that very much. And I was on the section where the cars went down into the Sahara Desert. I couldn't bear to have had that experience without using it some way. So this book begins in the Sahara Desert and it ends in the Sahara Desert. And roughly speaking, it is about the passing of information through Earth satellites. It's called Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy because it concerns that particular technique.

Presenter18:03

Record number six.

Len Deighton18:05

I've chosen um a piece played by Ingrid Hebler, who is my favourite exponent of Mozart. I would like to hear her playing just one uh section from something which I want to say is not perhaps the greatest uh Mozart of all time, but is of this incredible high standard.

Presenter19:30

Ingrid Hebler as Sir Lewis

Presenter19:32

In the second movement of Mozart's piano concerto, number eleven, in F Koekel four one three.

Presenter19:38

What kind of a castaway do you think you would be? Could you rig up a shelter of some sort?

Len Deighton19:44

Yes, I think I probably could fix up some sort of shot. Uh it wouldn't be uh awfully good. Uh in fact I

Len Deighton19:50

Would be

Len Deighton19:51

tempted to try to uh rig up a a kite because I think that a kite would provide a very good radar reflection. I mean I would try to get rescued, let me uh say that first of all I certainly would try to get rescued and flying a kite um I think uh providing you had flat surfaces on it would reflect the light and with luck would would uh reflect some sort of uh impulses that could be caught picked up by military uh forces.

Speaker 120:03

Do I

Presenter20:20

And you'd rely on the kite rather than try to build a crop.

Len Deighton20:25

Yeah, well, it would have to be a pretty awful desert island to have me face the ocean in preference.

Presenter20:32

I quite agree. Record number seven we got to.

Len Deighton20:34

I thought Neil Diamond singing Crackling Rosie. Not all pop music is uh noise. Uh I think this is uh a a very good example of of recent uh pop music.

Speaker 220:48

Ah, crackling rosy, get on board!

Speaker 220:53

We gonna ride till there ain't no more hooko Taking it slow

Speaker 221:01

And Lord, don't you know?

Speaker 221:04

Have me a time with a poor man's lady Itching on a twilight train

Speaker 221:11

Ain't nothing here that I care to take all along Maybe a song

Presenter21:18

Neil Diamond and Crackling Rosie. Let's have your last record. What's that to be?

Len Deighton21:23

Well, uh a couple of weeks ago I came across a leader written by Mahler when he was twenty-five.

Len Deighton21:30

and uh I suddenly thought it was rather terrific. In this uh song I I very much like the way in which, musically, Mahler has been able to combine the idea of sadness and the idea of happiness into one musical, very tightly fitting form.

Presenter21:55

Make more

Speaker 122:06

One thing thou might know

Presenter22:40

Janet Baker singing Ginghoit Morgan Uebesveld from Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer. If you could take just one disc out of your eight, which would it be?

Len Deighton22:50

The Marlowe is the one I understand least, and so it's the one from which I would hopefully get the most continuing and growing enjoyment.

Presenter23:00

And you're allowed to take one luxury with you.

Len Deighton23:02

If I took a dark room, could I have unlimited um

Len Deighton23:06

Film and uh paper and chemicals.

Presenter23:09

Oh, yes, we'll have to put you on the honour system here. You have to promise to lock it up at nightfall. You're not to sleep in it.

Len Deighton23:15

I would pro I'd promise. I I'd even settle for one without a roof and uh only work at night. How about that thing?

Presenter23:21

All right. And one book apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and big encyclopedias.

Len Deighton23:25

Well, just from a nostalgia point of view, perhaps I could have the art of modern French cooking, which is an anthology of recipes of the great chefs.

Presenter23:35

The Art of Modern French Cooking. Right. And thank you, Len Dayton, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Len Deighton23:42

Thank you for having me.

Presenter23:43

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 123:53

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.

Speaker 224:24

Uh

Len Deighton24:24

Uh Uh