Len Deighton

Len Deighton was born on February 18, 1929 in Marylebone, London, England as Leonard Cyril Deighton.

Having had enormous success as a novelist through most of the 1960s, he wanted to move into films at a time when the film industry in Britain was booming. He co-produced two films with his friend Brian Duffy, the well-known photographer-Only When I Larf (1968), based on Deighton's novel, was a box-office failure, but Deighton hoped for better from their second film, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), which he also scripted. However, he fell out markedly with the film's director, Richard Attenborough (who had starred in "Only When I Larf"). It was a subject close to Deighton's heart, and he was infuriated by Attenborough's extensive changing of his screenplay, changes that he claimed had softened the film, diluting the anger of his writing. As a result, he withdrew his credit as both writer and producer--the film has no writing credit at all. Deighton produced no more films.

Has written series about two different characters who go unnamed. The first series, also known as the "Harry Palmer" series (from the name given the character in the movies) comprises five books: "The Ipcress File" (1962), "Horse Under Water" (1963), "Funeral in Berlin" (1964), "Billion-Dollar Brain" (1966) and "An Expensive Place to Die" (1967). The second series, aka the "Patrick Armstrong" series (from an alias used by the character in one book), comprises "Spy Story" (1972), "Yesterday's Spy" (1975) and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy" (1976). The two series are distinguished by vastly different styles of plot, humor and characters, but because the hero is unnamed in both, and because the books feature some of the same secondary characters, they are often thought to star a single, continuous character. This was not helped by the publisher, which put photos of Michael Caine (as 'Harry Palmer') on the covers of all the books.