Your fascinating article (Len Deighton, spy novelist and author of The Ipcress File, dies aged 97, 17 March) and obituary (17 March) on Len Deighton refers to the wisecracking dialogue in his famous early thrillers. His descriptions were also often very funny. In Funeral in Berlin, for example, he wrote of Charlotte Street that it “runs north from Oxford Street and there are few who will blame it”.
The 1966 paperback edition of the novel begins with a spoof autobiography, in which this working-class author is described as the eldest son of a governor-general of the Windward Islands who has an “uneventful education at Eton and Worcester College, Oxford”. His “likes” are listed as “being under the bonnet of a vintage motorcar, public bars, ballroom dancing and cricket”. It was electrifying to encounter this as a teenage reader in the 1960s.
Henry Sherman
Teddington, London
• My brother and I have got into the habit of notifying each by text whenever one of us sees the death notification of someone famous that we share an interest in. So when I saw the article and obituary on Len Deighton, I sent my brother a text, complete with a picture of the cover of The Ipcress File. His reply: “So where’s the funeral going to be, Berlin?” Farewell Len, enjoyed the books, enjoyed the films.
Phil Coughlin
Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear
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