Raymond Hawkey time at the Royal College of Art Hawkey first encountered Len Deighton when Deighton (another RCA scholarship student at that time) gatecrashed a literary party that Hawkey was helping to organise. Instead of ejecting the intruder, Hawkey found much in common with him and they became "lifelong friends" (Dempsey, "ibid"). In 1962, Hawkey was Deighton's choice to design the cover of his first novel "The IPCRESS File", which some regard as the template for the covers of all subsequent airport novels. He went on to design covers for Deighton's books, including "Horse Under Water", "Funeral in Berlin" and "The Action
The IPCRESS File his attempt to sell information to the protagonist had been a test of his loyalty, which the protagonist had passed by rejecting it. The novel ends with the protagonist concluding his report to the Minister, revealing that Jay has turned and began working for the British, while Dalby has been executed and his death covered up as a car accident. In 1992 Deighton said that the inspiration to write the novel came from his real-life neighbour Anna Wolkoff, a White Russian émigré who collaborated with a cipher clerk from the American embassy to spy for Germany in World War II.