Thrilling find made my day

BROWSING in a second-hand bookshop I came across a paperback of Len Deighton’s spy thriller Berlin Game written in the 1980s. Had I read it? I wasn’t sure and there’s nothing worse than starting a book and then realising you’ve read it before. But it was only two quid so I bought it. And was instantly hooked by the plot and the descriptions of East Berlin only a few years before thewall came down.

But what a different world – no mobile phones, no Google and with daisy wheel printers being the latest technology.

The central character is an agent called Bernard Samson, a truculent hardboiled spy amid his Oxbridge-educated colleagues.there are loads more Samson books for me to read.

What’s more I now realise I haven’t actually read any Len Deighton at all. Some writers are such household names you sort of absorb them and feel you must have read them. But the truth is I’ve never even read The Ipcress File – though I loved the movie with Michael Caine as Harry Palmer. So that’s my autumn reading list sorted.