Thrills and grills: How best-selling author had secret life in the kitchen
As a thriller writer, Len Deighton was one of Britain’s best but the author was also no slouch in the kitchen.
And he was happy to give Michael Caine some culinary tips before a famous scene in The Ipcress File when Harry Palmer prepares an omelette, deftly cracking the eggs with one hand.
However, all the close-up cooking was done by Deighton. The decision, although made out of necessity, was appropriate, as Caine wasn’t the first ’60s bachelor Deighton taught to cook.
In addition to his fiction writing, he was also the food correspondent for The Observer newspaper, creating weekly “cookstrips”, which were designed to be “man-friendly” in an age when husbands rarely even entered the kitchen.
The simple instructions, illustrated with line drawings, were inspired by Deighton’s own shorthand, which he developed as a student working in hotels and restaurants in London and Paris.
“I was buying expensive cookbooks,” he explained in a 2014 interview with The Observer. “I’m very messy, and didn’t want to take them into the kitchen. So, I wrote out the recipes on paper, and it was easier for me to draw three eggs than write ‘three eggs’. So, I drew three eggs, then put in an arrow. For me it was a natural way to work.”
The series, which ran from 1962 until 1966 – clippings of which can also be seen in the background of the The Ipcress File scene – were later collated in two bestselling books, Action Cook Book and Où Est Le Garlic?, cementing Deighton’s position as Ian Fleming meets Fanny Craddock.
Deighton added: “Generally, you stand a better chance of succeeding in something if whatever you create, you also like to consume. I’ve never written books for people more clever than I am, or more stupid than I am. I’ve always tried to direct things at people like me. Whatever I was cooking, that’s what went into the cookstrips.”
Deighton, now 93, wrote a total of five cookery books, 27 fiction novels, and military history books on topics including The Battle of Britain.