action cook book

For all of the Bond v Bourne debate, recently refinding this book reminded me that the spy you really want to be is Harry Palmer. Mostly because it's just about imaginable. Palmer spends most of his life in dull meetings, wrapped up in petty red tape and worrying about not being paid enough.  It's not a very glamorous life. But it's aspirational and desirable enough. It's all in the  opening titles:

ipcress titles from russelldavies on Vimeo.

It's all there isn't it? The pyjamas, the kitchen, the specs. He starts the day with grinding coffee and checking the racing form in the paper. (And we all know that he shouldn't press his coffee so soon, but we've got to get on with the film haven't we?) He doesn't even seem to bother with a shower, that unhealthy obsession with cleanliness not seeming to have crossed the Atlantic yet.

Palmer wins (and gets the girls) because he knows about food. Bond is a fussy little snob so he carefully specifies what he eats (eggs from French Marans hens, Tiptree marmalade, Norwegian Heather Honey) but it's almost always clubbable comfort food. Nothing with brio. And seemingly nothing he's ever cooked himself. So to be Bond you have to be wealthy, to be Palmer you just have to learn to cook.

Of course Palmer's love of food comes from Mr Deighton himself, who trained as a graphic designer and did these cookstrips for The Observer. (Also featured in Ou Est Le Garlic). And AceJet tells us that Mr Deighton features in The Ipcress File as the hand cracking the egg, because Michael Caine couldn't do it in the impressively single-handed way the script and the seduction demanded.

Comments

[pilgrim]

Hell yeah. The scene in The Ipcress File where Palmer leans over Sue Lloyd, adjusts his specs and says, in his inimitable (actually, very imitable indeed, now I think of it) way:

"I am going to cook you the best meal you have ever tasted in your life..."

made an enormous impression on my twelve year old self, back in the day...

[James]

Interestingly, the hero of the early Len Deighton books was apparently from the North of England rather than the cockney Harry Palmer of the films, but it's hard not to think of Michael Caine when reading the books.

[Rupert]

Great to see this sequence again. Amazing. Thanks.

[Dan Hill]

One of my favourite films! A corker. I have the OST on vinyl, thanks to my friend Steve. Features a cymbalum you know.

The sheer style in that sequence - and Palmer in general - is far more appealing than Bond (who is overrated, and actually devoid of genuine style. Bourne isn't even worth mentioning in the same breath.) As well cool of his accoutrements (specs, hair, pencil, gun etc.), the shirt, suit and tie are also 50s/60s graphic designer as much as spy, so interesting to know that about Deighton's background. That the great Ken Adam was the production designer also makes a lot of sense. Ah you've made me want to watch it again ...