That Other Secret Service Feller
It’s Pistols for Two When Ian Fleming Meets his Latest Rival
By Peter Evans (Daily Express, March 27, 1963)
He selected a cigarette, placed it in his ebony holder and lit it with a gold lighter. It was all done with the studied rhythm of a man playing for time while thinking of exactly what to say.
“I look forward to meeting this fellow,” Ian Fleming said finally, tilting his head towards the ceiling and gently blowing smoke after his words.
With one finger he pushed aside the curtains of the private room over the restaurant not very far from Tottenham Court-road and looked down-into the street.
“Yes, indeed,” he said after another long moment, “It should be a most fascinating encounter. Even perhaps memorable.”
The threat
Indeed. For the missing guest was Mr. Len Deighton, the author whose first spy book, The Ipcress File, has made him the biggest threat to the suave Mr. Fleming and his equally suave hero James Bond since Smersh.
Deighton’s unnamed agent has been snapped up by Bond’s own publishers, Jonathan Cape, and signed by the producers who filmed Doctor No.
What is even more fascinating is that where Mr. Fleming is reputed partly to have modelled Agent 007 on himself, so Deighton’s fumbling, cheapskate hero has more than a touch of his curious creator.
Mr. Fleming, who himself nominated The Ipcress File among the [Sunday Times] Books of the Year, said “I simply have to meet him, you know. It is important to know the kind of fellow you are up against.”
Some fifteen minutes late, Deighton arrived—an untidy man in one or those 1963 suits with the 1957 price tags. He made it look lumpy. On his cuff-links were colour pictures of Littlehampton. He is a man who looks in a perpetual state of surprise.
“This is a bit posh, isn’t it?” he said, shaking Fleming’s hand. “They very nearly didn’t let me in downstairs.”
A silence
Mr. Fleming arranged his face into a bleak smile. “It is rather a pleasant little restaurant,” he said, searching his rival’s face like a map-reader searching for a bearing.
There was the kind of sharp silence that occurs in the first round at a boxing match, when the crowd is waiting for the first punch to be thrown.
Mr. Fleming opened up. “My favourite restaurant is Scotts, actually. Almost got arrested there during the war, as a matter of fact. They suspected I was a German spy. Awfully amusing.
“I was working for [Naval] Intelligence and giving some U-Boat commander a slap-up lunch. The idea was to pump him for information. Cost about £20 and the blighter didn’t talk. Saw right through it obviously,” Fleming admitted pleasantly.
“Anyway, the waiters heard us yapping away in German and in no time we were surrounded by police. I got a most frightful rocket when I got back to my office.”
Deighton’s head began to rock slowly backwards and forwards, as if mesmerised by Mr. Fleming’s story.
“You were in intelligence yourself, weren’t you?” Mr. Fleming put the question across like an angry schoolmaster who has caught one of his pupils dozing.
“Yes. Air Intelligence,” admitted Deighton.
“I guessed as much,” said Mr. Fleming, a look of satisfaction seeping over his face like a blush. “You get pretty near the knuckle in some parts, I must say. Anyway, I realized you knew what you were talking about—as indeed I do.”
The cars
“Your next book,” said Deighton slowly, is set in Japan.”
“Correct,” said Mr. Fleming, his face a mask. “It’s called You Only Live Twice. I’ve just been to Tokyo actually. Ran over on the old willow pattern route. Very jolly. Saki and kimonos and all that damn bowing amuses me enormously. Ever been to Tokyo?”
“Yes,” said Deighton.
“Fly?”
“BOAC,” said Deighton.
“Pleasant?”
“I was a steward,” said Deighton.
Again that circling, first-round silence. “I have a rotten feeling,” Deighton said moodily, “that my car’s going to be towed away.”
“What do you drive, old boy?” asked Mr. Fleming, perhaps sensing a common bond in cars.
“A beaten-up old Volkswagen, actually,” said Deighton, adding brightly, “but I’ve installed a telephone. Yours?”
A joke
“I’ve just got one of those new Studebaker Avantis. Naught to 60 in 4.5 seconds, 175 miles an hour with four passengers up. Supercharged, of course. I must say I adore it,” said Fleming.
Silence. Then: “You know what we should do?" asked Mr. Fleming suddenly. “We should start a running joke in our books. Like those chaps Crosby and Hope. I’ll get Bond to knock your chap—you really should give him a name, you know—and you can get him to tear the hell out of Bond.”
“Super,” said Deighton, “I’d love to knock Bond. You remind me of him in many ways.”
The smile
A thin smile traced across Mr. Fleming’s face. “Really? Well, I do identify myself with him in a few things.”
Mr. Fleming smiled a sad smile. “But of course Bond has a far better digestion than I have, and his prowess with women is considerably greater than mine, unfortunately. Needless to say, he has more guts.”
Deighton asked: “Do you honestly like Bond?”
Mr. Fleming thought about this question for a minute, then: “I began by disliking him intensely. I’ve grown to like him. To be honest, I think your fellow is rather more solid—indeed, Bond is often quite cardboard—but I have put him through so much it would be too disloyal not to like him now.”
It was, as Mr. Fleming predicted, a most fascinating encounter.
Note: Fleming afterward wrote to Raymond Hawkey, who had also attended the meeting: “Thank you also for the amusing photograph of me and Len Deighton. I am sorry to say I thought Evans’ piece was pretty skimpy, but don’t tell him I said so!”
Hawkey, an art college friend of Deighton, had designed the cover for The Ipcress File and went on to design the Pan paperbacks of the Bond series. Fleming acclaimed Hawkey’s first Bond cover (for Thunderball) as “really brilliant…I think it is quite splendid and I don’t think the filthy little Pan sign spoils it too much.”
Fleming did indeed mention Deighton in his contribution to the Sunday Times “Books of the Year” feature (Dec. 23, 1962), though with reservations:
“The Ipcress File, by Len Deighton (Hodder & Stoughton), was a brilliant firework, but rather too ‘scatty’ for my taste. I don’t think thrillers should be ‘funny.’”
In a letter to his close friend William Plomer, dated May 20, 1964, Fleming discussed Deighton’s Funeral in Berlin:
“Amusing cracks but I simply can’t be bothered with his kitchen sink writing & all this Nescafe. Reminds me of [John] Bratby. I think Capes should send him to Tahiti or somewhere & get him to ‘tell a story’. He excuses his ignorance of life with his footnotes & that won’t stand up for long –- nice chap though he is.”
Deighton worked on the screenplay of From Russia With Love, though it seems his contributions were mostly disregarded. He later collaborated with Kevin McClory and Sean Connery on the script for the unmade Bond film Warhead. In 2012 he published the ebook James Bond: My Long and Eventful Search for His Father. I haven’t read it, but the Amazon review by John Cork (the Bond expert) suggests the book has some problems.