Close-Up
Published on 30. September 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
368 pages
978-0-241-50532-8 (ISBN)
Description
'Stylish and stimulating' The Times
Ageing Hollywood star Marshall Stone is scared. Scared that the parts are drying up. Scared of being forgotten. So when he hears an eminent author is writing his biography, Stone siezes the chance of immortality. But painful memories and suppressed scandals soon threaten to destroy the carefully-constructed fiction of his life. Inspired by Len Deighton's own experiences of the film industry, Close-Up is a brilliant expose of the sleaze, venality and betrayals of the studio machine.
'The richness, the sardonic humour, the wheeling and dealing ... the power of the book is undoubted' Evening Standard
Ageing Hollywood star Marshall Stone is scared. Scared that the parts are drying up. Scared of being forgotten. So when he hears an eminent author is writing his biography, Stone siezes the chance of immortality. But painful memories and suppressed scandals soon threaten to destroy the carefully-constructed fiction of his life. Inspired by Len Deighton's own experiences of the film industry, Close-Up is a brilliant expose of the sleaze, venality and betrayals of the studio machine.
'The richness, the sardonic humour, the wheeling and dealing ... the power of the book is undoubted' Evening Standard
Reviews / Votes
The film industry is in many ways the ideal subject for Mr Deighton's talents. * Times Literary Supplement * Immense skill ... a stylish and stimulating performance. * The Times * The richness, the sardonic humour, the wheeling and dealing world of the films with its parties, its highly coloured characters ... The power of the book is undoubted. * Evening Standard *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
280 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-50532-8 (9780241505328)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
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 Carre.
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 Carre.