Bernard Samson is a fictional character created by Len Deighton.
16 Facts About Bernard Samson
1.
2.
Bernard Samson undergoes sacrifice in his duties and is often ignored by his superiors, being passed over for promotion or sent to Berlin during Christmas.
3.
Bernard Samson is the name of a Swiss Franciscan seller of indulgences, who was denounced by Zwingli in 1516.
4.
Bernard Samson is the son of Brian Samson, a British SIS operative who worked undercover in Germany during World War II and who became head of the Berlin Field Unit after the war.
5.
Brian Bernard Samson plays a small role in Deighton's 1987 prequel novel Winter.
6.
Bernard Samson grew up in post-war Berlin before the wall was built and received a typical German education rather than a privileged English one and never went to university.
7.
Bernard Samson worked for his father from a young age with his best friend Werner Volkmann.
8.
Bernard Samson quit being a Berlin field agent after a mission in which a friend was killed and he was lucky to escape to the West alive.
9.
Bernard Samson is troubled by all the violence he has both suffered and inflicted, has recurring nightmares and drinks too much.
10.
Bernard Samson hoped to get the German Desk but was passed over for Dicky Cruyer, an Oxford man with no field experience.
11.
Bernard Samson is continually being tipped to take over the Berlin Field Unit if Frank Harrington ever retires.
12.
At the start of the novels, Bernard Samson's wife Fiona, who went to Oxford with Dicky and got her job through Bernard Samson, is working on the top floor and is a rising star in the department.
13.
Much of what happened to Bernard Samson was done in order to keep him in the dark about his wife's real mission and he is led to believe that she is a KGB agent who used him, betrayed all his missions in exchange for keeping him safe and then defected to the East.
14.
Bernard Samson is very stubborn and believes he knows better than his superiors who are all just desk men.
15.
Bernard Samson is biased, especially towards his superiors, and is prone to regarding himself too highly.
16.
Bernard Samson was played by Ian Holm and Fiona Samson by Mel Martin in a 1988 Granada Television adaptation of the first trilogy, entitled Game, Set and Match, transmitted as twelve 60 minute episodes.