Category Archives: Spies

‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy’: In praise of Where Eagles Dare

Posted on November 14, 2018 by Andrew Nette| 7 Comments

Like a quick and dirty mission behind enemy lines, last weekend I polished off Geoff Dyer’s love letter to the 1968 war thriller, Where Eagles Dare, ‘Broadsword Calling Danny Boy’.

It is a strange little essay. Not really a monograph, because it tells you very little about the making and impact of the film, the things a monograph usually does, and more an extended meditation on why it is such a great action film and the culture milieu into which it was born. A milieu that Dyer grew up in and which was pretty similar for a boy in Australia in the 1970s when I was growing up.

One of my favourite things about Dywer’s essay was the various cultural associations and memories it aroused. The war had only been over for a quarter of a century and, looking back then, it still felt strangely present, like it was not quite ‘history’ in the way it is now; war films were big business and our parents unselfconsciously took us, often at a very young age, to see them; newsagents were full of those graphic Sven Hassel paperbacks; we lived on British comics that were full of German soldiers barking basic English; and, the must have toy was a GI Joe, who amongst his many uniforms, could be dressed as a German soldier.… Read more

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Posted in Spies, War film

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Pulp Friday: Guns with plots

Posted on May 18, 2018 by Andrew Nette| 8 Comments

Let’s make one thing clear. I don’t own a gun. Never have and never will. Indeed, the only guns I want to see are in film or on the cover of books like the ones featured in today’s Pulp Friday post.

For a while now I have been obsessed with the cover above of the 1964 Panther edition of Len Deignton’s The Ipcress File. The cover, done by influential English graphic designer, Ray Hawkey, who would go onto to do a number of paperback covers, exudes a style and tone I could never imagine being used today except as a deliberate retro homage.

It speaks to the everyday grime, drudgery and unglamorous boredom of the Cold War spy racket, which the Deighton novels featuring the working class spy, Harry Palmer, evoke so well. There is also the mess that comes with the trade: a cold cup of tea (probably cold); cigarettes, because in the sixties every fictional spy smoked; paperclips for the paperwork; and, a gun and bullets, because sometimes you have to kill someone.

It is a gritty, cluttered layout I associate with mass paperback novels of the type that were largely targeted at men in the 1960s and 1970s. As it turns out, a bit of a dig around reveals it was a style that was widely used in those two decades – but it also bled over into the 1980s – by mass market paperback publishers in the crime, mystery and espionage thriller categories.… Read more

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Posted in Belmont Tower Books, British pulp fiction, Crime fiction, George V Higgins, Ian Fleming, Neo Noir, Noir fiction, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Spies, True crime

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The Spies next door: The Americans

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

The Americans‘While The Americans is not without its flaws, a reliance on high tech gadgets and large-scale violence to move the story are not among them. The show is about as anti-Bond in its depiction of espionage as it is possible to get. Although Philip and Elizabeth do kill people, the main tricks of their trade are manipulation, blackmail and a sharp eye for any human weakness, which they ruthlessly exploit. Global politics, the growing arms race, superpower proxy wars in Latin America and Afghanistan, are frequently referenced, but the impacts are explored through the lives of Philip and Elizabeth – particularly the growing pressure on them to get results.’

My latest post on the Overland Magazine site is on the very underrated television show, The Americans. The anti-James Bond spy series that is also a very good text on 1980s politics, the Cold War and the decline of the traditional left in the United States.

You can read the article in full here.… Read more

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50th anniversary of The Ipcress File

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

ipcressfile1-1024

If the on-line excitement in response to teaser images from Spectre, the 24th James Bond film, is anything to go by, we’ve lost none of our fascination with the Bond franchise. Spectre promises to have a stripped back, almost retro feel, as evidenced by images of ditching his tailor made suit in favour of a black turtleneck and leather shoulder holster, harking back to previous Bond incarnations in From Russia With Love (1963) and You Only Love Twice (1967).

If you don’t want to wait until Spectre’s scheduled release at the end of this year for a dose of retro spy thrills, look no further than The Ipcress File, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary this week.

Based on the 1962 debut novel of the same name by Len Deighton, The Ipcress File hit UK cinemas on March 18, 1965. It was nominated for a Palme d’Or at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival and won the BAFTA for best British film the same year. The British Film Institute lists it number 59 on the hundred best British film of the 20th Century.

The Ipcress File was a major success for Canadian born director, Sidney J Furie (another being Lady Sings the Blues starring Diana Ross in 1972).… Read more

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Posted in Michael Caine, Spies

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Pulp Friday: Avakoum Zahov Vs 07 and Soviet spy fiction

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Avakoum Zahov versus 07 cover

“A battle to the death between two crack Secret Agents of East and West!”

This week’s Pulp Friday is one of the strangest cultural artefacts to come out of Australian pulp publishing in the sixties, the spy thriller Avakoum Zahov vs 07 by Bulgarian author, Andrei Gulyashki.

While spies first came to prominence as popular culture figures during World War One, it was the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, published in 1953, that really kick-started the modern fascination with spies. A host of well known authors as well as a legion of lesser know writers and pulp imitators, all followed in Bond’s wake.

These days it’s easy to view Bond as little more than a clotheshorse with a few snappy lines of dialogue and a lot of high-tech gadgets, facing off against the latest embodiment of the West’s global fears.

But in the fifties and sixties, Bond was a blunt weapon in dinner suit whose sole purpose was to smash the West’s enemies. He was also the epitome of sexual and social permissiveness, licensed to kill and swing. The casual sex, alcohol consumption, fine living and travel to exotic destinations were all potent symbols of the West’s economic and cultural affluence in the sixties.

Not only were the Soviet authorities aware of the global popularity of James Bond, they saw him as a major propaganda coup for the West.… Read more

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Posted in Horwitz Publications, Ian Fleming, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Spies, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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