Bomber

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Bomber was announced, on 1 February 2010, as one of twenty-one titles longlisted for the " Lost Man Booker Prize" of 1970, a contest delayed by 40 years because a reshuffling of the fledgeling competition's rules that year disqualified nearly a year's worth of high-quality fiction from consideration. [4] The book did not make the shortlist. Immediately afterwards I was determined to find a better, more realistic book, but it is not a topic that attracts good authors. There is probably a mix of shame and the feeling everything is just too random to make a story seem meaningful. Or it's just a depressing topic.

Only When I Larf (1968)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 10 March 2016 . Retrieved 28 March 2020. But Leighton does not leave Archer alone: we have in SS-GB a fantastic gallery of powerful characters, all perfectly sculpted in their multifaceted personalities. Find out who is in the Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame here: https://pimaair.org/about-us/arizona-aviation-hall-of-fame/ The characters and plot are nothing that stands out, but that's all part of the subtle English charm of the book. It is a very, very gray novel. Even the Nazis refuse to be cast as genocidal monsters; merely self-interested conquerors who are taking advantage of the moment to loot everything not nailed down. And of course, there is little honor or glory in collaboration--even collaboration which might soften the iron grip of the Third Reich.Whitworth, Damian (11 February 2017). "There's a Nazi in No 10 and the SS in Scotland Yard". The Times.

Loved some of the dialogue here with the characters well builted and I must say that the book has all that it needs not to be let off hand when started. Archer had a hard road to walk. He attempted to do his job as a police officer, as a detective and solving crimes. However, this meant working with the Germans, and that obviously put him at odds with the general population who opposed the Germans being there in England. I think the book brought to light how hard it could be for a man who saw himself as honorable and wanting to make a difference in a very difficult situation. I do not know what it is like to exist under an occupying force that will execute as easily as let you live; I cannot adequately imagine how hard that must have been. Douglas Archer, Archer of the Yard, is an inspector at Scotland Yard, a near celebrity for the astuteness he has shown for solving cases. His boss is General Fritz Kellerman of the German army. His other boss is SS-Standartenfuhrer Dr. Oskar Huth, who is from Heinrich Himmler’s personal staff. His Detective Sergeant is Harry Woods, a surrogate father who is a member of the resistance. His secretary Sylvia, who he was having a torrid affair with, has disappeared. Archer soon discovers that she too is a member of the resistance. Part of the reason for the ponderousness of Bomber is the literary weight of what Deighton is trying to do - conveying the brutality of war, the waste of a generation of young men, while making his portrayal evenhanded with the reader caring for people on both sides. The unpleasantness of twentieth century warfare and its wastefulness is a common theme from All Quiet on the Western Front to Mash, but it is far harder to think of other examples of war novels which do not just concentrate on one side. In many cases, the ability this gives to have a small number of central characters makes the writing more effective than it is here - the main characters in All Quiet on the Western Front form a single platoon of German soldiers, and M.A.S.H. never looks far beyond just two doctors. By contrast, there are dozens of characters in Bomber of approximately equal importance, which causes serious difficulties - they tend to be introduced with dull and lengthy biographical sketches, holding up the plot, and it is hard for the reader to remember who is who. (This second is a problem even in War and Peace, the most famous "cast of thousands" novel.) I certainly had the impression that Deighton's ambition here overreached his technique. Nevertheless, there are things to admire about the novel. Bomber is meticulously researched, with close attention to detail. (In current TV terminology, Bomber would definitely belong to the genre of docudrama.) Baker, Brian (2012). " 'You're Quite a Gourmet, Aren't You, Palmer?' Masculinity and Food in the Spy Fiction of Len Deighton". The Yearbook of English Studies. 42: 30–48. doi: 10.5699/yearenglstud.42.2012.0030. ISSN 0306-2473. JSTOR 10.5699/yearenglstud.42.2012.0030. S2CID 190558061.

Wikipedia citation

Krueger, Christine L. (2014). Encyclopedia of British Writers: 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-0870-4. Drama series based on the novel by Len Deighton. It is 1941, and the Germans have won the Battle of Britain. Detective Douglas Archer finds himself working under the brutal SS in occupied London. Kerridge, Jake (14 February 2009). "The Deighton file: a life of reluctance and intrigue". The Daily Telegraph. p.10. Masters, A (26 October 1985). "Deighton still the master of the spy thriller". The Courier-Mail. p.21. He also wrote travel guides and became travel editor of Playboy, before becoming a film producer. After producing a film adaption of his 1968 novel Only When I Larf, Deighton and photographer Brian Duffy bought the film rights to Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop's stage musical Oh, What a Lovely War! He had his name removed from the credits of the film, however, which was a move that he later described as "stupid and infantile." That was his last involvement with the cinema.

In England they’re filled with curiosity and keep asking, ‘Why doesn’t he come?’ Be calm. Be calm. He’s coming! He’s Coming!” It’s easier for a novel to take anti-war stance, and the most famous war novels – such as the aforementioned All Quiet on the Western Front – do just that. Bomber is unique in that it doesn’t tell you that war is hell. It shows you that hell in relentlessly grim and graphic vignettes. This is a book that gave me actual nightmares and left me troubled and unsettled.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. stars for the premise and the strong start, but after the first two chapters, this entire novel fizzles away and collapses completely. Deighton had an amazing opportunity here and he squandered it for the mundane and mediocrity. He may have had a lot of knowledge about that period, but none it is felt in the novel. Putting aside the fact that there are way too many subplots that are never truly touched upon, the pointless, meandering dialogues and the plodding plotting and writing style- this just not feels like life under a Nazi rule. At all. Maybe I'm being unfair, but having read so many novels about that period (and based on stories told by both my grandmother and grandfather), there are many authors out there that describe to the nth degree the life under the Nazi occupation, with all the paranoia, uncertainty, and fear. Len Dighton's idea of describe such a life is endless info-dumps of bureaucracy. People seem to live fairly well under the occupation, as if nothing actually happened (even London, as a city, doesn't seem affected by the disasters its been through). The Nazis don't even behave like Nazis at all (well, maybe except for Huth, but even he is too bland). In fact, I dare you to find any differences between the Germans and the English portrayed in this novel. You won't, because there aren't any. That's how bland the writing style is. Sampson, Anthony (1982). The Changing Anatomy of Britain. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-3945-3143-4.

Skilled Royal Air Force bomber pilot Sam Lambert is exhausted, and his veteran crewmen have just been replaced by an inexperienced new team. Victor von Löwenherz, a German night fighter pilot who intercepts RAF bombers in his Junkers Ju 88, looks on with horror at the Nazi regime. And Hansl, a German boy in the small market town of Altgarten, sleeps at home. Lambert and his crew prepare for a bombing raid on the Ruhr area. It’s a night that many will never forget. 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. The fifteenth-century altarpiece, the carved pulpit and the painting of the martyrs that was said to be a Van der Weyden were gone forever… Len Deighton—one of the masters of twentieth-century espionage fiction—combines his expertise as both historian and novelist in Bomber, the classic World War II novel that relates, in devastating detail, the twenty-four-hour story of an allied bombing raid. As for characters, the English police are distant and unforgivably dull. "Archer of The Yard" is for all intents and purposes an AI police robot in human form, just without the warmth and charm one associates with robots.

Milward-Oliver, Edward (1987). The Len Deighton Companion. London: Grafton. ISBN 978-0-586-07000-0. Several of Deighton's novels have been adapted as films, which include The Ipcress File (1965), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Billion Dollar Brain (1967) and Spy Story (1976). All feature the books' unnamed character, but they were given the full name " Harry Palmer" for the films; either the actor Michael Caine—who played Palmer in the films—or the producer for two of the three films, Harry Saltzman, came up with the name. [70] [71] Two television films also featured Palmer: Bullet to Beijing (1995) and Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996); they were not based on Deighton's stories. All the films except Spy Story feature Caine as Palmer. [72] Deighton's hands were used in The Ipcress File in place of Caine's for a scene in which Palmer breaks eggs into a bowl and whisks them. [73] In March 2022 The Ipcress File, a television adaptation of Deighton's novel, was broadcast on UK television. Joe Cole was Palmer; Lucy Boynton and Tom Hollander also appeared in major roles. [74] [75] SPOILER): Both books involve neat additional twists on history - Fatherland's detective is trying to expose the Holocaust, which in this story is still a well-kept German secret; while SS-GB involves Germany's attempt to develop an atomic bomb, which they could then use to invade America. (END SPOILER)