Spy writing legend Len Deighton has died at the age of 97. The former chef and cookery writer, whose early break came when his ‘cookstrips’ – a combination of a recipe and cartoon – appeared in the Daily Express in 1961, is widely regarded as having helped introduce modern spy fiction. “I wrote out the recipes on paper, and it was easier for me to draw three eggs than write ‘three eggs’. So I drew three eggs, then put in an arrow. For me it was a natural way to work,” he explained.
A year later his first novel, The Ipcress File, was published, becoming a bestseller and eventually shifting more than 2.5 million copies in three years. It became a 1965 film starring Michael Caine as Deighton’s previously unnamed protagonist, who became Harry Palmer on screen. In 2022, it was rebooted as an ITV drama starring Peaky Blinder’s Joe Cole.
Deighton was born in London in 1929, his father was a chauffeur to the keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum and his mother was a hotel cook.
As an 11-year-old in 1940, his neighbour in Gloucester Place Mews was arrested for spying. At the subsequent trial of Anna Wolkoff, it emerged she was a German spy who was having an affair with a cipher clerk at the American embassy. It was like the plot of one of his spy thrillers and would inform his later books.
Having completed his national service in the RAF, he studied at St Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London,m finding work as an illustrator before turning to writing full-time. During a career lasting more than 50 years he published some 39 novels and several cookbooks and bestselling non-fiction histories of the Second World War, including Blitzkrieg and Blood, Tears and Folly. His last novel, Charity, was published in 1996.
Spy writer Alex Gerlis, author of The Second Traitor, said: “Len Deighton was a master storyteller and a very clever and skilled writer of espionage novels. His books have stood the test of time and helped to define the genre of espionage fiction. He’s always been held in high regard among current writers of espionage fiction, who’d happily admit to admiring his plots, his characters, writing style – and his output.”
He is survived by his second wife, Ysabele, and their two sons.