The great challenge I faced when asked to produce the covers for new editions of Len Deighton’s books was the existence of the brilliant designs conceived by Ray Hawkey for the original editions.
However, having arrived at a concept, part of the joy I derived in approaching this challenge was the quest to locate the various props which the author had so beautifully detailed in his texts. Deighton has likened a spy story to a game of chess, which led me to transpose the pieces on a chessboard with some of the relevant objects specified in each book. I carried this notion throughout the entire quartet of books.
Since smoking was so much part of our culture during the Cold War era, I also set about gathering tobacco-related paraphernalia.
On reading a reference in the text to a Cinzano ashtray, I instantly recognized a visual analogy in its unique triangular shape to the triumvirate of the Allied occupying forces and their zones in Berlin. The three lit cigarettes point at each other like the loaded barrels of guns. I then incorporated a spectrum of smokers’ accessories, including a packet of British Woodbine cigarettes and an American Camel Zippo cigarette lighter. To represent the Soviets, I included a KGB lighter and an identity pass, both of which I located in the Ukraine.
The ever-present pack of Gauloises cigarettes, belonging to the nameless protagonist of the book, along with a red pawn, is positioned behind the Iron Curtain on a map of Berlin.
A fallen bust of a German soldier lies over a list of names of concentration camp inmates, headed by that of Paul Louis Broum, the book’s ‘person of interest’.
The back of the jacket shows a US Army Berlin District patch, a DMR 5 Mark coin, a vintage Hotel Adlon baggage label, and a couple of story-related cigarette cards, the significance of all of which will become evident as you read this fine book.
I photographed the jacket set-up using natural daylight, with my Canon OS 5D digital camera.
Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI
LEN DEIGHTON
Funeral in Berlin
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape 1964
Copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 1964
Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2009
Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN 9780586045800
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN 9780007343003
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ALLEN W. DULLES (then director CIA):
‘You, Mr Chairman, may have seen some of my intelligence reports from time to time.’
MR KHRUSHCHEV:
‘I believe we get the same reports – and probably from the same people.’
MR DULLES:
‘Maybe we should pool our efforts.’
MR KHRUSHCHEV:
‘Yes. We should buy our intelligence data together and save money. We’d have to pay the people only once.’
News Item, September 1959
‘But what good came of it at last?’
Quoth little Peterkin,
‘Why, that I cannot tell,’ said he:–
‘But ’twas a famous victory.’
SOUTHEY, After Blenheim
‘If I am right the Germans will say I was a German and the French will say I was a Jew; if I am wrong the Germans will say I was a Jew and the French will say I was a German.’
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Most of the people who engaged in this unsavoury work had very little interest in the cause which they were paid to promote. They did not take their parts too seriously, and one or the other would occasionally go over to the opposite side, for espionage is an international and artistic profession, in which opinions matter less than the art of perfidy.
DR R. LEWINSOHN,
The Career of Sir Basil Zaharoff
Contents