Len Deighton

Leonard Cyril Deighton (; born 18 February 1929) is a British author. His publications have included cookery books, history and military history, but he is best known for his spy novels. After completing his national service in the Royal Air Force, Deighton attended art school in London, and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1955. He had several jobs before becoming a book and magazine illustrator—including designing the cover for first UK edition of Jack Kerouac's 1957 work On the Road. He also worked for a period in an advertising agency. During an extended holiday in France he wrote his first novel, The IPCRESS File, which was published in 1962, and was a critical and commercial success. He wrote several spy novels featuring the same central character, an unnamed working-class intelligence officer, cynical and tough. Between 1962 and 1966 Deighton was the food correspondent for The Observer and drew cookstrips—black and white graphic recipes with a limited number of words. A selection of these were collected and published in 1965 as Len Deighton's Action Cook Book, the first of five cookery books he wrote. Other topics of non-fiction include history, particularly military history. Several of Deighton's works have been adapted for film and other media. Films include The Ipcress File (1965), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Billion Dollar Brain (1967) and Spy Story (1976). In 1988 Granada Television produced the miniseries Game, Set and Match based on his trilogy of the same name, and in 1995 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a "real time" dramatisation of his novel Bomber.