• From the blurb to "Horse Under Water" [Penguin 2322 (1965)]:
  
  • Description - Dark complexion, 14 stone, 6 feet tall. Cruel, sardonic sense of humour. Large hands, stubby fingers used to punctuate rapid neurotic speech. Bayonet scar palm right hand. Drinks warily, seldom smokes.
  • Skills - Extensive knowledge military history, modern control systems, aircraft (especially helicopters), vehicles, weapons, tactics. Marksman; never hunts animals. Good cook.
  • Experience - Railway lengthman, Picadilly waiter, Madison Avenue adman, Vogue fashion artist, photographer R.A.F. Mosquitoes, manager Aldgate gown factory. Seen Vista-Vision blue films in pre-Castro Cuba, typhoon in Tokyo, hurricane passing New York. Given talk over Soviet radio. Once fell into Hong Kong harbour, fatty tissue saved him.
• From the blurb to "Funeral in Berlin" [Penguin 2461 (1966)]:
  
  • Description - Fair complexion, nine stone, five feet six tall. Warm generous sense of humour. Small hands, long sensitive fingers used to emphasize slow lazy drawl. Complex tattoo - in doubtful taste - on back of right hand. Chain smokes except when drinking heavily.
  • Background - Eldest son of a Governor-General of the Windward Islands. After an uneventful education at Eton and Worcester College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics and was President of the Union, he signed on as a deckhand on a Japanese whaler for four consecutive six-month voyages.
  • Experience - After working as a translator for the BBC Welsh service, clerk in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and manager of a chain of boutiques in Leeds, he became the Manchester stringer for The Times. He was unable to find a publisher for his first book which was lavishly praised by Kingsley Amis. Likes: being under the bonnet of a vintage motor car, public bars, ballroom dancing and cricket.

• Len Deighton was trained as an illustrator at the Royal Collage of Art in London. His writing career began with The IPCRESS File which was a spectacular success and was made into a classic film starring Michael Caine.

  Since then he has written many books of fiction and non-fiction. These include spy stories and war novels such as Goodbye Mickey Mouse and Bomber which the BBC recently made into a day-long radio drama in "real time". Last year Deighton's history of World War Two, Blood, Tears and Folly, was published to wide acclaim - Jack Higgins called it "an absolute landmark"

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