Читать книгу Violent Ward - Len Deighton - Страница 5

Prompted by seeing the renderings of my two murals for Cunard’s new ship, Queen Elizabeth, Len Deighton suggested that I illustrate some of the covers of this next quartet of re-issues. I am delighted to be given the opportunity to draw once again, as it has been well over thirty years since my days as a regular illustrator for the Sunday Times.

It is amazing to think that it is also nearly twenty years since the 1992 Los Angeles riots, an event which looms large in this book. When first reading Violent Ward, it struck a chord with my wife and me as we had just moved into our new apartment in Hollywood when the riots took place.

On the first night we were awoken by loud shouting: ‘Get out, get out, your building is on fire!’ The warning came from a police officer who was banging his night-stick against our building’s wall. In the alley behind us were a couple of LAPD black-and-white patrol cars, and I could hear an officer speaking on his radio urging the fire department to come as quickly as possible. Meanwhile my wife, wielding a garden hose, attempted to douse the flames that were engulfing our neighbouring garages.

The next night, along with several neighbours armed to the teeth, we formed a vigilante watch on the roof of our remaining garage. Apart from the sounds of a stray cat I am pleased to report that it was an uneventful night.

In the morning I visited Samy’s, the professional camera store across from our home, to purchase a few rolls of film in order to record the damage of the previous day. A couple of hours later, while sitting at my desk, I heard three loud explosions. Looking out of the window, I saw an enormous mushroom-cloud rising up from the camera store, which had been torched. It appears that their large stock of photographic chemicals were responsible for the enormity of the explosions.

The following morning I ventured to the scene of the crime to discover the burnt-out shop front strewn with the remnants of expensive cameras, including a gold Leica that had become molten by the inferno, and a large shattered fish-eye lens. These later became part of an exhibit in the store’s new premises.

The composition on the front cover draws upon all these events, with the addition of a National Guardsman who stands ready, and perhaps too eager, to respond to the civil unrest and general chaos that is unfolding. For the book’s title I chose a bold font within which could burn the flames of civil unrest; the falling ‘D’ an apt symbol of the city’s descent into ‘war’.

The back cover collage includes a book match cover from the Beverly Hills Hotel, a valet parking stub with Murphy’s Cadillac circled, a couple of Hollywood postcards, and a movie clapper board. Sitting behind all these is an edition of the ‘Los Angeles Messenger’, beneath whose fictional masthead shouts a contemporary headline that was all too true. When applying some authentic fire damage, we did not realize how flammable the newsprint would be, and nearly ended up burning our apartment down – it’s a good job Isolde was standing by with a bucket of water! Each item in the montage has been selected to convey a facet of the City of Angels, its glamour and charm that is always just a hair’s breadth away from a seedy underbelly full of corruption and violence.

The book’s spine features an LAPD badge. Observant readers will notice that each of the spines in this latest quartet of reissues features a metallic object; a subtle visual link that draws together four books written and set in very different times and places.

I have taken the photograph for this book’s back cover with my Canon 5D camera, and my illustration was drawn with a HB Staedtler pencil.

Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI

Hollywood 2011