Len Deighton, a prolific writer whose tough, stylish spy thrillers featured on bestseller lists for decades, has died. He was 97.
Deighton’s literary agent, Tim Bates, said he died on Sunday. No cause of death was given.
Deighton’s first novel, The Ipcress File, helped set the tone of cool and gritty 1960s thrillers and was made into a Bafta-winning film starring Michael Caine that helped launch long and stellar careers for both author and actor. It was then remade as an ITV series starring Peaky Blinders actor Joe Cole in 2022.
“Len was a Titan,” Bates said on Tuesday. "He was not only one of the greatest spy and thriller writers of the 20th century but also one of our greatest writers in any genre.”
Born to a working-class family in a wealthy part of London in 1929 – his father was a chauffeur and his mother a part-time cook for a wealthy family – Deighton grew up with a keen eye for the intricacies and absurdities of Britain’s class system.
In 1940, he saw his mother’s client, Anna Wolkoff, dragged away by the British Security Services and accused of being a wartime spy – a moment that proved pivotal in his later decision to try his hand at spy stories.
He served in the Royal Air Force as part of Britain’s then-mandatory national service, learning necessary spy skills such as flying, photography and scuba diving. He also studied art and worked as a waiter, pastry chef and flight attendant before having success as a book and magazine illustrator. His designs included the first UK edition of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in 1958.
He wrote The Ipcress File to amuse himself during a holiday. The story of a secret agent confronted with duplicity and bureaucracy from his own side while investigating a Soviet kidnapping ring, it was published in 1962 and went on to sell millions of copies.
The novel was adapted into a 1965 film, with Caine in a star-making performance as Deighton’s protagonist, a sardonic working-class sophisticate with a love of gourmet food. The character is unnamed in the book, though Caine’s character was given the name Harry Palmer.
Deighton’s depiction of espionage as a grubby, error-strewn business contrasted sharply with the glamour of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.
“I had never read a James Bond book,” Deighton said in a 1997 BBC interview, but by chance The Ipcress File was sold to a publisher the month the first 007 movie, Dr No, was released, as the success of the Bond film helped rouse interest in the spy genre.
His book’s gritty mood, like the murky spy world of John le Carré’s fiction, chimed with the times, and Deighton said he benefited from a backlash against Bond’s huge success. He recalled a friend telling him that “You’re a blunt instrument that the critics have used to smash Ian Fleming over the head.”
Subsequent thrillers Horse Under Water, Funeral in Berlin, Billion-Dollar Brain and An Expensive Place to Die all featured the same hero. Funeral in Berlin and Billion-Dollar Brain were both also filmed with Caine in the starring role.
Deighton took great interest in the filming process and often spent time on-set – it is his hands that break two eggs simultaneously as Harry makes an omelette, as Caine could not get the hang of it.
He had a firm rule that his books would not be loaded with violence, as Fleming’s often were: “When I started writing I had rules,” he told The Telegraph in 2009. “One was that violence must not solve the problem, and I cannot have the hero overcome violence with a counterweight of violence.”
“Berlin Game,” published in 1983, was the first of 10 novels featuring the smart, cynical MI6 officer Bernard Samson. Along with Mexico Set and London Match it was adapted into the 1988 TV series Game, Set and Match.
Deighton set several novels around World War II, including Bomber (1970), which depicted the air war from both British and German viewpoints, and SS-GB (1978), an alternative-history novel set in a Nazi-occupied Britain.
It was made into a BBC series in 2017 starring Sam Riley and Kate Bosworth, reviving interest in Deighton’s books after a period when they had been fully supplanted by the 007 film juggernaut.
Deighton wrote more than two dozen novels in all. The last book in his final trilogy, Faith, Hope and Charity, was published in 1996, and marked the end of his fiction career.
Yet he continued to write, including historical non-fiction such as his book about the assassination of President John F Kennedy, and Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain.
Another passion was food. Deighton was food correspondent for The Observer newspaper in the 1960s and wrote several cookbooks aimed at men – at that time a novel idea – including Len Deighton’s Action Cook Book (1965), with recipes illustrated like comic strips.
“It was entirely due to my mother that I started cooking,” he told The Independent in 2010. “Her steak and kidney pudding was superb and when I served her version to Michael Caine he enjoyed it as much as I did.”
He was credited with helping to introduce French cuisine to the UK, with works such as Ou Est le Garlic (Where is the Garlic), a companion book to The Len Deighton Action Cookbook aimed at young singles living away from home for the first time.
Deighton’s first marriage, to illustrator Shirley Thompson, ended in divorce. He later married Ysabele de Ranitz. They had two sons.
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