Morphet, JR;
(2014)
Spies in the Suburbs Bringing the Cold War to the suburbs: re-locating the post-war conflict in Le Carre and Deighton.
In:
Proceedings of The Cultures of the Suburbs International Research network 2014 Conference: 2014 Conference: Imagining the Suburbs.
The Cultures of the Suburbs International Research network: UK.
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Abstract
The development and recognition of the Cold War as a major shift in world conflict from ‘over there’ where battle was conducted in uniforms by the armed services to one that was to be fought on the new home front through spies was a significant plot component in the first novels of both John Le Carre, ‘Call for the Dead’ (1961) (later filmed as The Deadly Affair) and Len Deighton’s ‘The Ipcress File’ (1962). In both novels, the sleepy suburban milieu becomes the centre of Cold War espionage discovered and resolved by two iconic outsider characters, George Smiley and Harry Palmer, introduced in these works. Smiley and Palmer were seemingly dissimilar in almost every way including their age, class and war records. However these characters were united in their metropolitan provenance and experience and there has been little consideration of them in relation to each other and in their role together in re-situating the potential threats of the post-war period into a UK domestic setting from mainland Europe. An examination of the fiction of Deighton and Le Carre suggests a different world where the locus of external danger was in the suburban midst of Surrey or Wood Green. This paper will argue that these novels formed an essential role in reawakening the Home Front and alerting people to the removal of the safety and security once promised by the suburbs.
| Type: | Proceedings paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Spies in the Suburbs Bringing the Cold War to the suburbs: re-locating the post-war conflict in Le Carre and Deighton |
| Event: | The Cultures of the Suburbs International Research network 2014 Conference: Imagining the Suburbs |
| Location: | University of Exeter |
| Dates: | 19 June 2014 - 21 June 2014 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | http://suburbs.exeter.ac.uk/publications/working-p... |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Planning |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10064844 |
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