Len Deighton

And, uh, was it, is it, is that...

Did you just say the Len Deighton book? Was that-

Len Deighton, SS-GB.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was...

You know, I loved people like Len Deighton.

I don't know if you've, if you read the IP- Ippress File, but he's got this hero who's incredibly sardonic.

Mm.

But in the spy genre, yeah, there is the totemic figures.

And you're constantly being kind of compared to them and going up against them, whether it's Le Carre or Fleming or Dayton, Ludlam and so forth.

Right.

And when you're writing a book, I know that you're an ardent follower of public events and things that are happening not only in Britain, but around the world.

Okay.

And above all, there was Len De- Len Deighton's SS-GB-

Of course.

Yeah.

Uh, well, let's talk first of all about Eric Ambler.

George, why, why should s- who is Eric Ambler for people who are sitting there going, "Why is anyone obsessed with Eric Ambler?" So he is a spy novelist, wrote a number of foundational spy novels in the 1930s that brought a sort of new seriousness and, and realism to the genre, and were a great influence on, you know, later writers like le Carré and, and Deighton.

But then, yes, after- But they were actually, actually a great influence on real spies as well, I can tell you, because-

Oh, okay

Since 2017, host Shane Whaley and Spyberry field agents around the world dispatch reviews and interviews with authors, historians, and fellow spy fans.

We discuss everything from John le Carré, Len Deighton, Paul Vidich, Graham Greene, Mick Herron, Charles Cumming, Ben McIntyre, and many more.

Spyberry is available on all good podcast apps and at spyberry.com.

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It would go down as one of John F. Kennedy's finest speeches and a highlight of his presidency.

So if few in the audience that day could have misinterpreted Kennedy's words, then where did the I am a jelly donut myth come from? As far as historians can tell, the myth originated in Len Deighton's 1983 spy novel, Berlin Game, in which protagonist Bernard Samson states, "'Ich bin ein Berliner,' I said.

It was a joke.

A Berliner is a donut.

She puts the idea to talk to him out of her mind.

She gets food, then sits in one corner of the lounge and starts to read The Berlin Game by Len Deighton that she bought in the airport.

Three hours later, the Airbus A320 lands in London.

Gabby lets Dominic disembark before her, so she can watch where he goes as he leaves the airport and continue her surveillance of him.

It's playing in it, I imagine, one of those-

Well, it's all the, the Len Deighton books that I've been reading.

They did make...

I think I might have mentioned in a previous pod, they did make a TV series of it, but it wasn't, um-