Harry Palmer
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Protagonist of The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, Billion Dollar Brain, An Expensive Place to Die, Spy Story and Catch a Falling Spy - though Deighton has supposedly said that the protagonist of Spy Story is not the same character as the previous books.
Portrayed by Michael Caine in the film versions of the first three titles listed. He was first named Harry Palmer when the first film was being produced:
Jim Henley: It's important to note that the name "Harry Palmer" exists in the movies only - the protagonist goes deliberately unnamed in the novels. Actually, he swaps names from book to book and even within them. Any real name is obscured. He has a real enough history - in one novel he lives in fear that he'll end up having to investigate British leftists he grew up with in working-class London. "Palmer" is a grammar-school boy in the tony and Tory world of 1960s British Intelligence.
Deighton invented a fictional employer for Palmer too, called WOOC(P), a bureaucratic rival of Army intelligence and MI-6 that seems primarily to focus on counterintelligence. Deighton never parses the abbreviation in the books, though I'm pretty sure he tells us that the "(P)" stands for "provisional," which is a grim joke - it's one of those temporary bureaucracies that reified itself.
Michael Caine's biography relates an amusing story about the choosing of the name. Caine was still trying to get the part when he got into a conversation with producer Harry Saltzman about the need to come up with something to call the anonymous hero in the movie.
It has to be a "nothing name," like Harry, or - Caine said, then figured he'd put his foot in it. Yeah, Saltzman said, not batting an eye. Like Harry.
[edit] Biography
Some details regarding the character's biography are dropped in passing. For instance, we learn in The IPCRESS File that he went to school in Burnley in England, and that he was probably born in 1922 or 1923, making him around 40 when the novel's action took place: "For example; take the time my picture appeared in The Burnley Daily Gazette in July 1939, when I won the fifth form mathematics prize" (The IPCRESS File, p. 25). It is also mentioned in passing that he served in World War II.
