Horse Under Water

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Faith Return to Bernard Samson, the 40-something SIS agent, and the world of his friends and family, familiar to us from the previous six Samson novels. Most of the characters (and readers) are still reeling from the bloody shootout when his wife returned from her undercover mission to East Germany at the climax of the previous novel. This book re-acquaints us with all the well-loved characters from the previous stories, in a plot ostensibly about smuggling a KGB colonel out from the East, but is really about who knows the truth – and who is trying to cover up – the real cause of the Fiona-escape debacle. I first read this book over 50 years ago, when I was 14 years old. I thought at the time that the author had a great writing style, and that he seemed to be really knowledgeable and COOL. And re-reading the book now (for about the fifth time over the years), my opinion is just the same. Should we repaint the Last Supper because it is insufficiently diverse? Should Wagner's operas be expunged of any notes that might hint at German nationalism? Do we change the lyrics of 'Dear God' by XTC because the religiously minded don't like it? These are all alienation techniques – foregrounding the trivial, repressing the important, a continual textual self-consciousness which: Using pools and treadmills must be done under the guidance of experienced hands. This is to ensure the horse is introduced to them correctly and not overworked. Some horses with respiratory issues or draining wounds should not use a pool or treadmill. Always embark on using these tools under the advice of a vet.

Our anonymous secret agent from The Ipcress File is now working with his W.O.O.C.(P). boss Dawlish. Mexico Set Second of the first Bernard Samson trilogy (there are three trilogies ie 9 Samson books), in which our hero manages the defection of KGB agent Erich Stinnes from Mexico City, despite KGB attempts to frame him for the murder of one of his own operatives and a German businessman. All that is designed to make Bernard defect East and were probably masterminded by his traitor wife, Fiona. Corkscrew Hill Photo Roger Philip Dennis 1st Prize, National Poetry Competition 2014. Plus filmpoemThe secret weather buoys generally used by the wartime Kriegsmarine were not as sophisticated as the one described in the novel. They were not submersible and, at the end of their expected battery life of two months, they were supposed to self-destruct with an explosive charge. [1] See also Weather Station Kurt. Once again the plot is rather confusing but my advice is to just go with it as there's so much to enjoy in the set pieces and the dialogue, and it all makes a sort of sense by the end. This item is certainly an outlier in Deighton's catalogue. For a start, it's not a book. It's a folder, containing a number of loose-leaf items pertaining to the 1963 assassination, thematically presented to provide the reader with the basic information about the case and an insight into the discussion around it. These are: Deighton was born in Marylebone, London, in 1929. His father was a chauffeur and mechanic, and his mother was a part-time cook. After leaving school, Deighton worked as a railway clerk before performing his National Service, which he spent as a photographer for the Royal Air Force's Special Investigation Branch. After discharge from the RAF, he studied at St Martin's School of Art in London in 1949, and in 1952 won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1955.

Horse Under Water concerns a furtive British government attempt at providing covert financial assistance to a group of rebels who aim to overthrow Salazar's Portuguese dictatorship by bringing large amounts of counterfeit currency to the surface from a sunken U Boat. The whole enterprise is dubious to say the least and from the outset you get the feeling that our hero's paymasters in London are not being entirely straight with him.

The Deighton Dossier

This book is Deighton’s second. It is not as well known as “The Ipcress File” and “Funeral in Berlin”, probably because it was not made into a film like those two. (“Billion Dollar Brain” was also turned into a film, but in my view that film is best forgotten.) In a more conventional spy story the protagonist would be thinking through his issues and problems with us. The majority of text in the Alistair MacLean novels I’ve been reading consists of the hero thinking through very thoroughly all possible avenues of action, sharing and involving the reader in his high-tension predicament, then doing it all over again as the situations change and plans have to be adapted. The novel is also, famously, the first modern novel written on a true IBM PC, which at the time took up much of the room in Deighton's office in his ground floor flat in London, as I wrote about a number of years ago.

By keeping them on my shelves, and perhaps in future passing them on to someone else or selling them through a dealer, I feel some solace that I am undertaking an entirely passive, but revolutionary act, in the name of truth and reality, during this current period of cultural perturbation. Any book, by its very nature, is of its time, and so will also reflect the sensibilities and language of its time. And to that extent, I can see perhaps the sense of adding a publishers' note in the end papers advising readers of that fact. It's merely a guide, a sop to the more sensitive reader, that leaves the book unsullied The Ipcress File made Len Deighton famous overnight. It sold out repeat reprints and there were high hopes for this, the sequel. Ipcress had identified itself as ‘Secret File No.1’ and Horse Under Water had ‘Secret File No.2’ prominently displayed on the cover suggesting a direct link, but it is not so much a sequel as part of a series of novels about the same British spy (unnamed in the novels, though given the name Harry Palmer in the series of movies starring Michael Caine). Ie a spy series like the Bond books which started in 1953, or le Carré’s Smiley series which started in 1961 (and like numerous others I’m probably not aware of). Apparently, Deighton planned five novels but only four were published before he moved on to other things. Paratextuality and presentation I do wish someone would ask me to the races with him/her Dominic McLoughlin 2nd Prize, National Poetry Competition 2005

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A scale model in card paper of Deeley Plaza, which the reader can build to better understand the mise en scene of the assassination In my view, Deighton’s first few spy novels are by far his best: “The Ipcress File”; “Horse Under Water”; and “Funeral in Berlin”. I feel that after this period Deighton went downhill, losing the lightness of touch and sharpness that characterise these early books.