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 Minister of Defence, thus making the novel itself the 'IPCRESS File' of the title. The events begin soon after his transfer from military intelligence to WOOC(P), a small civilian intelligence agency reporting directly to the British Cabinet, where he works under the command of a man named Dalby. An intelligence broker code-named "Jay" is suspected to be behind a series of kidnappings of highly placed and influential British VIPs with the intention of selling them to the Soviets, and the protagonist is assigned to meet with Jay to secure the release of "Raven", a high-ranking scientist and his latest target.