Bomber

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Not only did Deighton live through World War II as a teenager—he was born in 1929—he thoroughly researched this topic. SS-GB is alternate history of the first rank. The story behind Bomber is a kind of techno-thriller in its own right, a story about the emergence of a new kind of text, a technotext, mediated not by computer software but by a sophisticated electro-mechanical device for storing and manipulating written words. Yet just as Bomber broke new ground with its complicated portrayals of characters on both sides of the Channel, so too is the story behind the book one of more complex kinds of relationships. The historical coincidence with Steinhilper is one. Another is the role of Handley, the woman who actually operated the MTST as part of an intense collaborative system for producing, organizing, and revising the prose of the novel. The words of this groundbreaking technotext indisputably belong to its author, Len Deighton. But the hands on the high-tech machine that processed them—a true literary first for English literature—belonged to Ms. Ellenor Handley, she who had once “felt very much a part of the process and grew with the book.” Twigg, Melissa (9 March 2022). "The Ipcress File costumes bringing the 1960s drama to life; How class, history and the 1965 film inspired costume designs for the new series, writes Melissa Twigg". The Daily Telegraph. p.24.

The book is not a great literary piece but it's a valuable counter point to the war propaganda. And a reminder that there are few good guys in a war. It is also, intentionally or accidentally, rather mean against British upper class officers. In the foreword Deighton says it didn't come out as he intended and he regrets that he created a fault line between the NCOs and the officers. Maybe because it's distracting. Maybe because it's misleading. The bombs are loaded into the Lancasters, the German radars "warm up", and the fighter pilots adjust their night vision. Superstitions, rites, and rituals are respected as the combatants ready themselves. Find out who is in the Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame here: https://pimaair.org/about-us/arizona-aviation-hall-of-fame/ Douglas Archer is one of the Yard's keenest minds, but even he is unsure about a man murdered in a London flat which is obviously not his own. There is no identification on the man and there are no clues about his death, but even so the new German masters of the Yard seem very interested in the case. That could make Archer's work easier, or more difficult, depending on what he finds. And depending on whether other interested parties let him live long enough to find anything at all.

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Grella, George (1988). "Len Deighton". In Reilly, John M. (ed.). Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-349-81366-7.

Deighton follows in the same literary tradition of British espionage writers as W. Somerset Maugham (left) and Graham Greene (right). Bomber is a novel by Len Deighton that was published in the United Kingdom in 1970. It is the fictionalised account of "the events relating to the last flight of an RAF Bomber over Germany on the night of June 31st, 1943", [1] a deliberately impossible date, in which an RAF bombing raid on the Ruhr area of western Germany goes wrong. In each chapter, the plot is advanced by seeing the progress of the day through the eyes of protagonists on both sides of the conflict. One exception is this book, by Len Deighton, one of the major thriller writers of the second half of the 1900s. This is not a thriller, but, as he describes it, a story about how the war machine chews up people and throws out bodies. Paraphrased.Len Deighton’s Bomber might be the best war novel I have ever read. I should say, however, that I mean “war novel” in a very specific way. This novel bears no resemblance to other, better-known classics like The Naked and the Dead or All Quite on the Western Front. There is very little inward soul-searching about the nature of man as he indulges his ultimate trade. The characterizations are almost nonexistent. The prose, at times, is barely a step up from technical writing (it is, of course, an important step). The stress is on war. Its mechanistic functions. Its technological contours. Its body-shredding consequences. During the mid-1960s Deighton wrote for Playboy as a travel correspondent, and he provided a piece on the boom in spy fiction; An Expensive Place to Die was serialised in the magazine in 1967. [32] In 1968 Deighton was the producer of the film Only When I Larf, which was based on his novel of the same name. [33] He was the writer and co-producer of Oh! What a Lovely War in 1969, but did not enjoy the process of making films, and had his name removed from the film's credits. [5] [34] In 1970 Deighton wrote Bomber, a fictional account of an RAF Bomber Command raid that goes wrong. [15] To produce the novel he used an IBM MT/ST, and it is possible that this was the first novel to be written using a word processor. [35] [36] Deighton was interviewed on Desert Island Discs in June 1976 by Roy Plomley. [37] [h] A group of aristocracy have approached Archer with a plan to liberate the king. Meanwhile, he is investigating the murder of an antiques dealer who appears to be much, much more than what his identity papers would presume. A sultry American reporter, providing quite the distraction for Archer, is mixed up in the intrigue and the murder. Archer soon realizes that everything is connected, and that every side is insisting that it is impossible for him to remain neutral. Rose, Lionel (1988). Rogues and Vagabonds: Vagrant Underworld in Britain, 1815-1985. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-4150-0275-2. Hines, Claire (2018). The Playboy and James Bond: 007, Ian Fleming and Playboy magazine. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1-5261-1616-1.

I have always found this the hardest of Deighton's novels to get into, partly because it is so unrelentingly serious, but mainly because its beginning is poor. The first chapter in particular has some really terrible, clunking dialogue, and the mechanics of introducing his large cast of characters are not well handled. Even further into the novel, the prose is ponderous and Bomber is very slow moving for a thriller.Only When I Larf (1968)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 10 March 2016 . Retrieved 28 March 2020. Brown, Geoffrey (February 1987). "The Thrillers and Spy Novels of Len Deighton". The Book and Magazine Collector. Diamond Publishing Group (35). ISSN 0952-8601.

The idea of Bomber is to describe a twenty-four hours in the air war towards the end of the Second World War, without demonising the Germans or idolising the British. The airmen on both sides, in particular, are presented as normal people under a lot of stress. (Some of the ancillary characters are a bit more stereotyped, like the German secret policeman who tries to prove that one of the fliers is sabotaging the war effort, but even he has a less formalised counterpart among the British officers.)On the Audible edition I listened to, the author speaks at length in an afterword about how he came to write Bomber and about the many sources he consulted. It’s a fascinating account of how a great novelist approached his work. And it casts a bright light on many of the stories included in the novel. I don’t know for sure that this material is included in the new, Kindle edition. If not, it may be worthwhile springing for the Audible book for the afterword alone once you’ve read the text.