Cookstrip home as a weekly feature in The Observer. The first cookstrip, "Cooking Beef: Part 1", appeared in The Observer on March 18, 1962 eight months before the release of Deighton's debut novel, The IPCRESS File. The "Len Deighton's Action Cookbook" which expanded these cookstrips into a full-length book was published March 1965, timed to coincide with the release of the film of "The Ipcress File" starring Michael Caine. Deighton chose the menu for the movie's press lunch and everyone was presented with a copy of the book. In the movie, Caine's character, Harry Palmer, is seen cracking eggs with one
Harry Palmer been theorised that the protagonist in another of Deighton's spy novels, "An Expensive Place to Die" (1967), also written in the first-person-anonymous narrative, is also 'Harry Palmer'; however, differences in characterisation and plotting indicate this is someone else other than Palmer. "The IPCRESS File" novel came out just after the release of the first James Bond film "Dr. No" (1962). When the novel reached best-seller status, Eon producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli approached Deighton to write the script for the second Bond film, "From Russia With Love" (1963). Little of Deighton's screenplay was actually used on the shoot. Saltzman