About “Harry Palmer”

The character of Harry Palmer, as played by Michael Caine in three movies in the 1960s, is rightly identified as anti-Bond, in that he is defiantly working-class, operating in a far grubbier milieu than the Etonian 007 knows, and has rather less success with women. There’s a crossover with his more famous fellow-agent in that he’s apparently something of a foodie (although the hand breaking the eggs in his first outing, The Ipcress File (1965), belongs to the character’s creator Len Deighton, who doubled as a food writer for The Observer).

The label of Harry Palmer was of course created for the movie; in Deighton’s novels he’s not even blessed with a name. (He’s also about a decade older than the film character, and comes from Burnley in Lancashire of all places.) And, re-reading The Ipcress File (1962), it becomes clear that the enigmatic spook has interests in far more than the sophisticated grub he buys in Soho delis and the vichyssoise he enjoys in the Officers’ Mess. He reads the New Statesman, and does the crossword; knows pre-Islamic mythology and Mozart symphonies and the dates of the Fourth Crusade. Bond, by comparison, is rarely seen even glancing at a book. When a supercilious colleague assumes Not-Palmer is unaware of the geography of northern Switzerland, our hero deadpans, “Forgive me if my lack of ignorance is an embarrassment to you.” He would have been bloody great on University Challenge.