Len Deighton was born in 1929 in London. He did his national service in the RAF, went to the Royal College of Art and designed many book jackets, including the original UK edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. The enormous success of his first spy novel, The IPCRESS File (1962), was repeated in a remarkable sequence of books over the following decades. These varied from historical fiction (Bomber, perhaps his greatest novel) to dystopian alternative fiction (SS-GB) and a number of brilliant non-fiction books on the Second World War (Fighter, Blitzkrieg and Blood, Tears and Folly). 
 
His spy novels chart the twists and turns of Britain and the Cold War in ways which now give them a unique flavour. They preserve a world in which Europe contains many dictatorships, in which the personal can be ruined by the ideological and where the horrors of the Second World War are buried under only a very thin layer of soil. Deighton's fascination with technology, his sense of humour and his brilliant evocation of time and place make him one of the key British espionage writers, alongside John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming and John Le Carré.

Len Deighton

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Read stories inspired by the four Underground lines that run around and through areas of London - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tube with Penguin. 
 
Family, passion and fashion come together in four tales: 
 
The Circle Line: From Lucy Wadham, the bestselling author of The Secret Life of France, an autobiographical tale of bohemians, punk, the King's Road in the 1970s and family. 
 
The Metropolitan Line: Richard Mabey, one of Britain's leading nature writers, looks in A Good Parcel of English Soil at the relationship between city and country, and how this brings out the power of nature 
 
The East London Line: London is a centre of cutting-edge fashion - here, the creators of 'the best fashion mag out there', Fantastic Man, tell the story of London style through the history of the button-down shirt. 
 
The Waterloo &amp; City Line: Leanne Shapton, author of Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris and Swimming Studies, creates an authorly and artistic response to travel, work and being a passenger.

Circles and Diagonals: Penguin Underground Lines

Circle, Metropolitan, East London Line, Waterloo & City

Kerry Howley

In this darkly funny work of literary reportage, narrated by an excitable, semi-fictionalized graduate student named Kit, a bookish young woman insinuates herself into the lives of two cage fighters - one a young prodigy, the other an ageing journeyman. Kerry Howley follows these men for three years through the bloody world of mixed martial arts as they starve themselves, break bones, fail their families and form new ones in the quest to rise from remote Midwestern fairgrounds to packed Vegas arenas. With penetrating intelligence and wry humor, Howley exposes the profundities and absurdities of this American subculture.

Thrown

Colm Tóibín

From the melancholy and amusement within the work of the writer John McGahern to an extraordinary essay on his own cancer diagnosis, Tóibín delineates the bleakness and strangeness of life and also its richness and its complexity. As he reveals the shades of light and dark in a Venice without tourists and the streets of Buenos Aires riddled with disappearances, we find ourselves considering law and religion in Ireland as well as the intricacies of Marilynne Robinson's fiction. 
 
The imprint of the written word on the private self, as Tóibín himself remarks, is extraordinarily powerful. In this collection, that power is gloriously alive, illuminating history and literature, politics and power, family and the self.

A Guest at the Feast

Claire Tomalin

SEVERAL STRANGERS collects together the best of Claire Tomalin's literary pieces over a period of thirty years and - through three long, splendidly written 'introductions' - tells of the author's own involvement in literary journalism during that time. The result is a fascinating account of how a woman was able to survive in the male world of books and newspapers. Along the way there are brilliant portraits of Martin Amis, Andrew Neill and Julian Barnes amongst others.

Several Strangers

Writing from Three Decades

Ann Ingle

At 20 Londoner Ann Ingle fell madly in love with an Irish fellow she met on holiday in Cornwall. At the church to arrange their shotgun wedding she discovered that he hadn't even told her his real name. 
 
Sixty-odd years later Ann looks back and considers what she has learned from the life that followed - bringing eight children into the world, their father's years of mental illness and tragic death at 40, being a cash-strapped single mother in 1980s Dublin, coming into her own in her middle years - going to college, working and writing, and continuing to evolve and learn into her ninth decade, even as she accepts the realities of being 'old'. 
 
Candid about everything that matters - love, sex, heartbreak, money, class, religion, mental health, rearing children (and letting them go), reading and writing, ageing - Openhearted is a compelling story about living life in a spirit of curiosity and delight and with a willingness to look for good in others.

Openhearted

Eighty Years of Love, Loss, Laughter and Letting Go

'A father...is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses 
 
In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm Tóibín takes three of Ireland's greatest writers - Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce - and examines their earliest influences: their fathers. With his inimitable wit and sensitivity, Tóibín introduces us to Wilde Senior, the philandering doctor whose libel case prefigured that of his son; the elder Yeats, an impoverished artist who never finished a painting; and to John Stanislaus Joyce, the hard-drinking, storytelling father of James, who couldn't feed his own family. This is an illuminating study of how each of these men cast a long shadow not only over the lives of their famous sons, but over the works for which they are celebrated and cherished.

Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know

The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce

William Trevor

A remarkable collection of twelve new stories,mostly set in Ireland,which was greeted with universal acclamation when published in hardcover in 1996. The title story is a small, sad masterpiece, about a woman holidaying alone in an Italian hotel. 
 
&quot;A dazzling collection of short stories&quot; SUNDAY TIMES

After Rain

Charles Nicholl

History leaves traces of the people - Byron, Shakespeare, Rimbaud, Leonardo - living through it, in portraits, documents and books. In Traces Remain, Charles Nicholl, the acclaimed author of The Reckoning, The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street and Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind, transforms these glimpses through time into comic and poignant vignettes, and curious, intriguing puzzles. 
 
From a mysterious painting found in a Hereford house to the death of an alchemist, and from a new Jack the Ripper suspect to a gold hunt in El Dorado, Nicholl's twenty-five fascinating essays take in two murders, three disappearances and a missing Shakespeare play to show the marvel and tenacity of these wonderful historical traces. 
 
'Our finest literary and historical detective ... Deliciously readable' Financial Times 
 
'Charles Nicholl confirms his role as literature's historic Holmes ... thoroughly captivating' Scotsman 
 
 'Some writers are so good at what they do that they can take you anywhere. Charles Nicholl is one of them' Irish Times

Traces Remain

Essays and Explorations

Adam Phillips

Throughout his brilliant career, Adam Phillips has lent a new and incisive dimension to the art of creative non-fiction, and in so doing revived the form for audiences of the new millennium. Collected here are nineteen pieces that have best defined his thinking - including 'On Tickling', 'On Being Bored' and 'Clutter: A Case History' - along with a selection of new writings and an introduction by Booker prize-winner John Banville. One Way and Another is an affirmation of Phillips's position as one of the most important, imaginative and accessible literary essayists today.

One Way and Another

New and Selected Essays

Marcia Willett

'We'll always be together, won't we?' 
 
Childhood friends and cousins Leo and Alice had imagined their whole lives playing out on their beloved Devon beach. But one night when they are teens, sitting on the sand beneath the stars, Alice tells Leo a secret that must never be shared with anybody else . . . then packs her bag and flees. 
 
Leo is left to build his own life - without Alice. He surrounds himself with other family and friends and on the whole is content and fulfilled. But he is left with a sense of what - or who - is missing. So decades later, when he receives a note from Alice asking if she can come home, he doesn't hesitate to agree. 
 
But as the stars align and their reunion draws near, Leo is left to consider their separation and what so many years apart means for a relationship solidified in youth and a secret which could affect the whole family.

Starry, Starry Night

The escapist, feel-good read about family secrets

Tim Robinson

Long recognized as perhaps the greatest non-fiction writer at work in Ireland, for his vast, polymathic accounts of nature and culture in the Aran Islands and Connemara, Tim Robinson is also an essayist of genius whose fascinations range across the globe. In Experiments on Reality, he shines the light of his intelligence on his own life, and on some of the most fascinating questions in science and culture. 
 
Robinson brings us to his boyhood in Yorkshire, National Service in Malaya in the 1950s, and his years as a visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London. He revisits some of the scenes of his researches for the maps he made of Aran and Connemara, places that continue to throw up remarkable stories and puzzles. And he performs astonishing literary thought-experiments, playing with the boundaries of the essay form, scientific inquiry, and storytelling. Experiments on Reality is a masterpiece from one of the great minds of our time.

Experiments on Reality

The Last Essays

J. D. Salinger

An American soldier has a strange encounter with an orphaned English teenager the night before he leaves for war. A four-year-old boy runs away from home in a dinghy. A missionary's child is kidnapped by Chinese bandits. A honeymoon in Florida goes awry with tragic consequences. 
 
 Including the first stories to feature J. D. Salinger's beloved Glass family characters, this brilliantly varied collection offers a vivid introduction to the work of one of the most admired and widely read American novelists of the twentieth century. Witty, urbane and frequently affecting, For Esmé - with Love and Squalor is a gem to be passed down for many generations to come.

For Esmé - with Love and Squalor

And Other Stories

William Morris

Visionary English Socialist and pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris argued that all work should be a source of pride and satisfaction, and that everyone should be entitled to beautiful surroundings &ndash; no matter what their class. 
 
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves &ndash; and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives &ndash; and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Useful Work v. Useless Toil

John Mortimer

Who rose to enduring fame on Blood and Typewriters, told the pregnant Portia of the Chambers it would come out in the end, advised Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C. to adopt a more judicial attitude, returned in the tender gloaming of each evening - via Pommeroy's and a glass of Chateau Fleet Street - to She Who Must Be Obeyed? The answer is Horace Rumpole whose legal triumphs, plundering sorties into the 'Oxford Book of English Verse' and less-than-salubrious hat are celebrated here in this first omnibus edition which includes 'Rumpole of the Bailey', 'The Trials of Rumpole' and 'Rumpole's Return'.

The First Rumpole Omnibus

Penelope Lively

'Anyone artistic needed Abroad in the 1950s.' 
 
Paul and his girlfriend are artists in need of subject matter. Arresting, evocative subject matter. So they decide to go Abroad, as much as possible, for as long as possible. Because Abroad is full of well furnished scenery. Particularly peasants. Real, earthy, traditional peasants. Except you shouldn't really call them peasants should you? 'Country people'. Abroad is full of country people. 
 
In this funny, deftly written short story, Penelope Lively satirises an arty student of the 50s, a precursor of the gap year traveller, who hasn't learnt as much from her time Abroad as she likes to think . . .

Abroad

Esmé Weijun Wang

'I've inherited a love of a writing and a talent for the visual arts from my mother, as well as her long and tapered fingers; I've also inherited a tendency for madness' 
 
Esmé Weijun Wang was officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2013, although the hallucinations and psychotic episodes had started years before that. In the midst of a high functioning life at Yale, Stanford and the literary world, she would find herself floored by an overwhelming terror that 'spread like blood', or convinced that she was dead, or that her friends were robots, or spiders were eating holes in her brain. What happens when your whole conception of yourself is turned upside down? When you're aware of what is occurring to you, but unable to do anything about it? 
 
Written with immediacy and unflinching honesty, this visceral and moving book is Wang's story, as she steps both inside and outside of her condition to bring it to light. Following her own diagnosis and the many manifestations of schizophrenia in her life, she ranges over everything from how we label mental illness to her own use of fashion and make-up to present herself as high-functioning, from the failures of the higher education system to how factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease compounded her experiences. Wang's analytical, intelligent eye, honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford, allows her to balance research with haunting personal narrative. The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core and provides unique insight into a condition long misdiagnosed and much misunderstood.

The Collected Schizophrenias

Thomas De Quincey

'People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed - a knife - a purse - and a dark lane...' 
 
In this provocative and blackly funny essay, Thomas de Quincey considers murder in a purely aesthetic light and explains how practically every philosopher over the past two hundred years has been murdered - 'insomuch, that if a man calls himself a philosopher, and never had his life attempted, rest assured there is nothing in him'. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859). Thomas de Quincey's Confessions and an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings is available in Penguin Classics.

On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts

George Orwell

This unique collection brings together Orwell's non-fiction in one essential ebook. A rich treasure trove of material, it includes reviews, broadcasts, notebooks, diaries, articles, letters and famous essays such as 'Politics and the English Language', 'Why I Write' and 'Some Thoughts on the Common Toad'. 
 
Edited by Professor Peter Davison, the collection encompasses twelve annotated volumes and ranges across the whole of Orwell's writing life, from 1903 to 1950. Providing an unparalleled insight into Orwell's life and works, it will be an invaluable resource for fans, students and scholars alike.

The Collected Non-Fiction

Essays, Articles, Diaries and Letters, 1903-1950

Yiyun Li

'What a long way it is from one life to another. Yet why write if not for that distance?' 
 
Written over two years while the author battled depression, in and out of hospital, Dear Friend is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living. Interweaving personal memoir with a wide-ranging celebration of writers and books, this is a journey of recovery through literature. 
 
From William Trevor and Katherine Mansfield to Kierkegaard and Larkin, Yiyun Li traces the themes that have preoccupied these writers and herself: time and transformation, presence and absence, the impulse to abandon life and the impulse to carry on. Drawing on personal experiences - her unstable mother, her time in the Chinese army - she constructs a beautiful, interior exploration of selfhood and what is required to choose life.

Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Naomi Novik

A thrilling anthology of short stories from the Sunday Times bestselling author of the Scholomance Trilogy and Uprooted, spanning each of her realms and including a sneak peak into the world of her next series. 
 
From the gothic, magical halls of the Scholomance trilogy, through the realms next door to Spinning Silver and Uprooted, and the dragon-filled Temeraire series, this stunning collection takes us from fairy tale to fantasy, myth to history, and mystery to science fiction as we travel through Naomi Novik’s most beloved stories. Here, among many others, we encounter:<ul><li>A mushroom witch who learns that sometimes the worst thing in the Scholomance can be your roommate.</li><li>The start of the Dragon Corps in ancient Rome, after Mark Antony hatches a dragon’s egg and bonds with the hatchling.</li><li>A young bride in the middle ages who finds herself gambling with Death, for the highest of stakes.</li><li>A delightful reimagining of Pride & Prejudice, in which Elizabeth Bennet captains a Longwing dragon.</li><li>The first glimpse at the world of Abandon, the setting of Novik’s upcoming epic fantasy series—a deserted continent populated only by silent and enigmatic architectural mysteries.</li></ul> 
Though the stories are vastly different, there is a unifying theme: wrestling with destiny, and the lengths some will go to find their own and fulfill its promise.

Buried Deep and Other Stories

David Foster Wallace

Beloved for his brilliantly discerning eye, his verbal elasticity and his uniquely generous imagination, David Foster Wallace was heralded by critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Collected here are fifteen essays published for the first time in book form, including writing never published before in the UK. 
 
From 'Federer Both Flesh and Not', considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; to 'The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2,' which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; to 'Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young', an examination of television's effect on a new generation of writers, the writing collected here swoops from erudite literary discussion to open-hearted engagement with the most familiar of our twentieth-century cultural references. 
 
A celebration of Wallace's great loves - for language, for precision, for meaning - and a feast of enjoyment for his fans, Both Flesh and Not is a fitting tribute to this writer who was never concerned with anything less important than what it means to be alive.

Both Flesh And Not

Anne Youngson

'An extraordinary new writer' NINA STIBBE 
 
Six short stories full of colourful suspects and complicated motives by the winner of the Paul Torday Memorial prize for debut authors over sixty - perfect for fans of grisly mysteries set in the English countryside 
 
The village cleaning lady who holds everyone's house-keys opens a boot to find some unexpected baggage; a vengeful dinner party host serves more than just a roast to her six guests; hairdresser chat is not just idle gossip as an old man with a history gets a trim; driven to distraction by his new young wife, a man resorts to two grisly acts, in a gripping re-imagining of a famous Irish ballad. 
 
Ripping away the polite façade of small communities, these stories reveal the roiling emotions and frustration that can lead seemingly ordinary people to do bad things. Rich in compassion, pathos and humour, Anne Youngson offers us her dark take on human foibles, pettiness and rivalry in this sparkling, unputdownable collection.

The Six Who Came to Dinner

Stories by Costa Award Shortlisted author of MEET ME AT THE MUSEUM

C.L.R. James

It is the 1920s in the Trinidadian capital, and Haynes' world has been upended. His mother has passed away, and his carefully mapped-out future of gleaming opportunity has disappeared with her. 
 
Unable to afford his former life, he finds himself moving into Minty Alley - a bustling barrack yard teeming with life and a spectacular cast of characters. In this sliver of West Indian working-class society, outrageous love affairs and passionate arguments are a daily fixture, and Haynes begins to slip from curious observer to the heart of the action. 
 
Minty Alley is a gloriously observed portrayal of class, community and the ways in which we are all inherently connected. An undisputed modern classic, this is an exceptional story told by one of the twentieth century's greatest Caribbean thinkers.

Minty Alley

A collection of rediscovered works celebrating Black Britain curated by Booker Prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo

Various Authors

These eight stories by leading 20th century French writers offer fascinating insights into French life and literature and are accompanied by a parallel English text, making them valuable for both French and English language students. 
 
Among the diverse and entertaining stories in the collection are the wistful masterpiece &lsquo;Green Tobacco&rsquo; by Clair Sainte-Soline; the exuberant tale of &lsquo;The Ants&rsquo; by the post-war king of caf&eacute; society, Boris Vian, and a suspense in the nineteenth-century erotic tradition from Andre de Mandiargues.

Parallel Text: French Short Stories

Nouvelles Francaises

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-modern-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Modern_Classics_Series_26_06">Choose 3 timeless classics for only £21 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

'England is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family.' 
 
'England Your England' is one of the most compelling and insightful portraits of the nation ever written. Shot through with Orwell's deeply felt sense of patriotism and love for his homeland, the essay is at the same time unfailingly clear-eyed about the nation's failings: entrenched social inequality, a dishonest press and a class system that only works for those at the top. Written during the Second World War, as the bombs were falling on England, the essay today speaks to the nation's current moment of crisis just as urgently as it did in Orwell's own time. It is a crucial read for anyone who wants to understand who we are, and where we've come from.

England Your England

Kahlil Gibran

An inspirational, allegorical guide to living. 'The Prophet' is the most famous work of religious fiction in the twentieth century and had sold millions of copies in more than twenty languages. Gibran has his protagonist, called Simply the prophet, deliver spiritual, yet practical homilies on a wide variety of topics central to daily life: love; marriage and children; work and play; possessions; beauty; truth; joy and sorrow; death and many more.

The Prophet

David Lodge

In 2004 three major novels featuring Henry James as a character were published - one of them went on to win the Booker Prize. It was not David Lodge's AUTHOR AUTHOR. In this fascinating new book, a kind of postscript to his novel, Lodge traces the conception, writing and publication of his book, and reveals with extraordinary candour and revealingly comic moments the poignancy and indeed anguish of discovering too late that others were working on the same subject, and the odd feelings of rivalry and jealousy that this engendered. The result is a wonderfully comic work with serious psychological and literary insights which suggestsnothing less than a short story by the Great Master, James, himself.

The Year of Henry James

The Story of a Novel

Cast of Critical Role

Jess Barber

Martin Cahill

Rebecca Coffindaffer

Aabria Iyengar

Sam Maggs

Sarah Glenn Marsh

Rory Power

Nibedita Sen

Izzy Wasserstein

Kendra Wells

Liam O'Brien

In these ten stories, see the legendary adventuring party anew through the eyes of some of the most memorable characters whose lives were touched by Vox Machina. 
 
Within its pages: 
• Shaun Gilmore reflects on the life he has chosen, as told by Aabria Iyengar. 
• Raishan, racked by a pestilent curse, plots to release the Cinder King from his fiery prison, as told by Rory Power. 
• Trinket the Wonder Bear accompanies the next generation of Vox Machina on their first adventure, as told by Sarah Glenn Marsh. 
• Plus seven more hilarious, heartbreaking, and heroic tales featuring Kaylie, Doty, Kevdak, and more! 
 
The adventure began in 2015 with a group of friends sitting down in front of a camera to roll some dice, bring their characters to life, and tell a story that would become immortalized in their livestream tabletop roleplaying game: Critical Role. What started as a humble home game eventually grew into a worldwide phenomenon that has touched countless people with its poignant, larger-than-life storytelling – and in that same vein, this collection celebrates the characters whose lives were touched by Vox Machina but whose stories are yet to be told. 
 
Contributors: Foreword by Liam O’Brien • Jess Barber Martin Cahill • Rebecca Coffindaffer • Aabria Iyengar • Sam Maggs • Sarah Glenn Marsh • Rory Power • Nibedita Sen • Izzy Wasserstein • Kendra Wells

Critical Role: Vox Machina - Stories Untold

Greg Baxter

'Traditional autobiography is composed after the experience has passed. I wrote this book in the very panic of the experiences that inspired it ... ' 
 
In his early thirties, Greg Baxter found himself in a strange place. He hated his job, he was drinking excessively, he was sabotaging his most important relationships, and he was no longer doing the thing he cared about most: writing. Strangest of all, at this time he started teaching evening classes in creative writing - and his life changed utterly. 
 
A Preparation for Death is a document of the chaos and discovery of that time and of the experiences that led Greg Baxter to that strange place - an extraordinarily intimate account of literary failure (and its consequences), personal decay, and redemption through reading, writing, and truth-telling. Studded with vivid, loving portraits of the people closest to him - his Austrian grandmother, who narrowly survived the Second World War; his mother and father, both described with heartbreakingly close attention; and his cousin Walter, whose own demons provide a striking counterpoint to the author's - it is above all a stunningly vivid and searching self-portrait: possibly the most honest book you'll ever read.

A Preparation for Death

G K Chesterton

Immortalized in these famous stories, G.K. Chesterton's endearing amateur sleuth has entertained countless generations of readers. For, as his admirers know, Father Brown's cherubic face and unworldly simplicity, his glasses and his huge umbrella, disguise a quite uncanny understanding of the criminal mind at work.

Showing results for: ‘Len Deighton’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter