RIP Len Deighton.
Deighton's working class spys in books such as the Ipcress File & Funeral in Berlin were a major shift in the literature of espionage...but for me, his best work was Bomber.
And the reason: my father pilot & Squadron Leader in Bomber Command during WW2, thought it was the best depiction of what he had gone through, he ever read & this from a man who refused for the most part to discuss his role in what he had subsequently concluded was a war crime.
Pas beaucoup traduit en français
Yes, my father was on Lancsasters, pretty much all the time after training (a I recall)
see earlier reply in this thread
Yes, it cast a very dark shadow over the rest of his life (my father that is)
Yes, he joined fare being a pacifist (after reading Lewis Mumford's Why Men Must Act - central message: for good to triumph all that is required is for good men to do nothing), and then flew for the latter part of the way on the massive 'area' raids.... which after the war, he was pretty sure would have been prosecuted as war crimes had the allies lost. But he thought WW2 overall was a just cause.
Indeed, see previous reply (he was also over Dresden)
@ChrisMayLA6 And this is how I find out :(
I read SS-GB on a whim last year and I couldn't put it down. It was smarter than I expected, and despite the bleak subject matter Len knew when a precise moment of levity was needed. It was an outstanding read.
agreed; great book.... its the classic case of a 'popular' writer who was master craftsman being under-rated by the cultural elite because his work wasn't 'literature' - he was a brilliant *writer*
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