Remembering Len Deighton, spy writer who taught young men to cook

In 1962, a few weeks after the first James Bond film, Dr No, opened to full houses, another spy thriller caught the attention of book lovers. In several ways, it was the antithesis to the Ian Fleming-scripted blockbuster — its title, Ipcress Files, an acronym for “Induction of Psychoneuroses by Conditioned Reflex under Stress”, and its unnamed protagonist, a gritty civil servant, at home with office memos and bureaucratic rivalries. The book went on to sell more than 2 million copies in three years, establishing its writer, Len Deighton, who died on Monday, as a major voice in Cold War spy fiction. While Dr No found it difficult to fathom that the Sun had set on the British Empire, Deighton’s protagonist is unabashedly worldly — he solves crosswords, loves to rile his boss, cooks, and enjoys the smell of roasted chicken stuffed with pine-nuts and spices. He wears ill-fitting jackets and in his tinsel avatar — where he gets a name, Harry Palmer — Deighton’s spy wears glasses.

By the early ’70s, Deighton had cemented his place among writers such as Eric Ambler and John le Carré, who challenged spy fiction’s hero mythology, and whose characters were often aware of the compromises demanded by their profession. Deighton’s work was also distinguished by its understated wit. His 1970 work, Bomber , was praised as one of the finest post-war British novels. But it was also criticised for empathising with ordinary Germans at the receiving end of the British counter to the Blitz.

Deighton also brought his storytelling skills to works on popular history. His “Cookstrips”, illustrated step-by-step recipes in The Observer, were meant to nudge “young men living away from home to take up cooking”. Like several of his other works, that, too, was an evocative idea.