Bomber

Product Information

Krueger, Christine L. (2014). Encyclopedia of British Writers: 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-0870-4. Barrett, Oliver Boyd; Herrera, David; Baumann, James A. (2011). Hollywood and the CIA: Cinema, Defense and Subversion. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-80676-6. An oddly blurry, non-atmospheric and largely unsatisfying alternate history "thriller" written in the '70s on the premise of "What if Hitler had managed to take the UK?".

King George is in the Tower, and fortunately, the Queen and the two princesses escaped to Australia. Sometimes the horror of war is brought home more vividly by almost dispassionately describing the raw facts. For example, a crew member’s chute fails to open after bailing out from his Lancaster. Falling from 16,000 feet at 120 miles per hour (his body's terminal velocity) he hits the ground in 90 seconds and makes an indentation 12 inches deep. Edwards, Martin, ed. (2020). Howdunit! A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club. London: Collins Crime Club. ISBN 978-0-0083-8013-7. Skilled Royal Air Force bomber pilot Sam Lambert is exhausted, and his veteran crewmen have just been replaced by an inexperienced new team.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.Dawson Scott, Robert (7 January 2006b). "A class act, not a class warrior". The Times. (subscription required) 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. Bomber was the first novel to be written on a word processor, the IBM MT/ST. [2] Plot summary [ edit ] SS-Huth is always kind enough to explain to Archer what the penalties are for any infractions against the SS.

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.

I thought the character development was decent, I guess. I could not quite decide if the ‘main character’ [Douglas Archer] is a neutral party, a collaborator, or a ‘patriot’ in sheep’s clothing. I still cannot quite decide what the man is. I know at the end of the book he appears to finally decide ‘where he stands’, but I am still not 100% certain of his motivations. Oskar Huth was an ‘interesting’ antagonist, I guess. He is an SS officer with his own motivations who was brought in to investigate the murdered man. He seemed to take an interest in Archer to the point of protecting Archer from some bad decisions as well as offering Archer a place on his [Huth’s] staff. Fritz Kellerman is the man in charge of occupied-England, and he wishes to see what he sees as stains on the German Army’s honor removed as well as to maintain his ‘kingdom’ in England. In 2017 Deighton described how he did not consider the character an anti-hero, but "a romantic, incorruptible figure in the mould of Philip Marlowe". [19] Deighton described the inspiration of using a working-class spy among the Oxbridge-educated members of the Establishment as coming from his time at the advertising agency, when he was the only member of the company's board not to have been educated at Eton. He said " The IPCRESS File is about spies on the surface, but it's also really about a grammar school boy among public school boys and the difficulties he faces." [23] [e] The RAF is organising a large raid on Krefeld in the Ruhr. The bomber crews relax and prepare for the ordeal. The men, their planes, weapons, responsibilities, attitudes, thoughts, and fears are described in great detail. There are frequent references to weather conditions, meteorological phenomena, and forecasts that add to the foreboding in the plot. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

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.Meanwhile, Resistance to the German occupation is growing. As one woman remarks to Archer, “‘In the towns it’s just bombs and murdering German soldiers. In the country districts there are bigger groups, who ambush German motorized patrols . . . ‘” But Resistance is underway at a much higher level: senior British officials in the puppet government are plotting to release the King from the Tower and spirit him off to the United States, where he can lead an eventual effort to bring the Nazis to account. Archer discovers that his seemingly straightforward murder investigation is closely related to this plot—and he becomes deeply involved in the dangerous action that follows. 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. Macdonald, Gina (1992). "Len Deighton". Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography. Detroit, MI: Gale Research. pp.35–55. ISBN 978-0-8103-7988-6. The crime commited is kind of a second plot, like I said the struggle for power of different factions of the Nazis and how the Brittish people try to cope with their new situation is the main course here. Burton, Alan (2016). Historical Dictionary of British Spy Fiction. London: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-5587-6.

Rose, Lionel (1988). Rogues and Vagabonds: Vagrant Underworld in Britain, 1815-1985. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-4150-0275-2. The use of such exacting details (the terminal velocity of a falling man; the number of shell fragments in an anti-aircraft burst; etc.) is part of Deighton’s attempt to demonstrate the gross modernity of mechanized warfare. He is not using Bomber to debate the rightness or wrongness of the Allied air campaigns over Germany (or, by implication, Japan). He uses it to express the conclusion that in war, all humans are victims of machines. Kerridge, Jake (14 February 2009). "The Deighton file: a life of reluctance and intrigue". The Daily Telegraph. p.10. I particularly enjoyed one exchange. August Bach, a German pilot, is returning to his base with his friend, Max, when they are held up by a convoy directed by Vichy police. With the army imposing martial law and a rounding-up of Resistance members, Archer faces life-changing decisions.Kemp, Stuart (4 November 2013). "Simon Beaufoy to adapt Len Deighton's spy novels for TV". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved 29 March 2020. 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.