LONDON (AP) — Len Deighton, a prolific writer whose tough, stylish spy thrillers featured on bestseller lists for decades, has died. He was 97.
Deighton’s literary agent, Tim Bates, said he died Sunday. No cause of death was given.
Deighton’s first novel, “The IPCRESS File,” helped set the tone of cool and gritty 1960s thrillers and was made into a film starring Michael Caine that helped launch both author and actor to long and stellar careers.
“Len was a Titan,” Bates said Tuesday. "He was not only one of the greatest spy and thriller writers of the 20th century but also one of our greatest writers in any genre.”
Born to a working-class family in a wealthy part of London in 1929 — his father was a chauffeur and his mother a part-time cook — Deighton grew up with a keen eye for the intricacies and absurdities of Britain’s class system.
He served in the Royal Air Force as part of Britain’s then-mandatory national service, studied art and worked as a waiter, pastry chef and flight attendant before having success as a book and magazine illustrator. His designs included the first U.K. edition of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” in 1958.
He wrote “The IPCRESS File” to amuse himself during a vacation. The story of a secret agent confronted with duplicity and bureaucracy from his own side while investigating a Soviet kidnap ring, it was published in 1962 and went on to sell millions of copies.
The novel was adapted into a 1965 film, with Caine in a star-making performance as Deighton’s protagonist, a sardonic working-class sophisticate with a love of gourmet food. The character is unnamed in the book, though Caine’s character was given the name Harry Palmer.
Deighton’s depiction of espionage as a grubby, error-strewn business was a contrast to the glamour of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.
“I had never read a James Bond book,” Deighton said in a 1997 BBC interview, but by chance “The IPCRESS File” was published the month the first 007 movie, “Dr. No,” was released.
His book’s gritty mood, like the murky spy world of John le Carré’s fiction, chimed with the times, and Deighton said he benefited from a backlash against Bond’s huge success. He recalled a friend telling him that “You’re a blunt instrument that the critics have used to smash Ian Fleming over the head.”
Subsequent thrillers “Horse Under Water,” “Funeral in Berlin,” “Billion-Dollar Brain” and “An Expensive Place to Die” all featured the same hero. “Funeral in Berlin” and “Billion-Dollar Brain” were both also filmed with Caine in the starring role.
“Berlin Game,” published in 1983, was the first of 10 novels featuring the smart, cynical MI6 officer Bernard Samson. Along with “Mexico Set” and “London Match” it was adapted into the 1988 TV series “Game, Set and Match.”
Deighton set several novels around World War II, including “Bomber” (1970), which depicted the conflict in the air war from both British and German viewpoints, and “SS-GB” (1978), an alternative-history novel set in a Nazi-occupied Britain. It was made into a TV series in 2017.
Deighton wrote more than two dozen novels in all. The last book in his final trilogy, “Faith,” “Hope” and “Charity,” was published in 1996.
He also wrote historical nonfiction, including a book about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and “Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain.”
Another passion was food. Deighton was food correspondent for The Observer newspaper in the 1960s and wrote several cookbooks aimed at men — a then-novel idea — including “Len Deighton’s Action Cook Book” (1965), with recipes illustrated like comic strips.
Deighton’s first marriage, to illustrator Shirley Thompson, ended in divorce. He later married Ysabele de Ranitz. They had two sons.
This Jan. 9, 1973 file photo shows British author Len Deighton who has died at the age of 97. (PA via AP)
This Jan. 9, 1973 file photo shows British author Len Deighton who has died at the age of 97. (PA via AP)
FILE - Author Len Deighton, center, poses for a photo with actors Frank Windsor, left and Sam West, who appear in a Radio 4 dramatisation of Len Deighton's book, "Bomber Harris", Feb. 8, 1995. (Sean Dempsey/PA via AP, File)
ATLANTA (AP) — Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed Tuesday, one day after powerful storms swept across the eastern half of the country and upended air travel in a cross-section of cities. Travelers have been facing additional jams at airport security checkpoints as a partial government shutdown strains screener staffing.
The disruptions come at an already challenging time for air travel, in part because the shutdown that began Feb. 14 has pressured staffing at some security checkpoints. At the same time, airports are crowded with spring break travelers and fans heading to March Madness games, the annual NCAA men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments.
Nearly 900 flights scheduled to fly into, out of or within the U.S. have been called off as of Tuesday morning, and nearly 1,800 were delayed, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware.
Flight delays and cancellations piled up Monday at some of the nation’s largest airports, including those in New York, Chicago and Atlanta. The storm system that dumped heavy snow across the Midwest raced toward the East Coast with high winds reaching gusts near 50 mph (80 km) in parts of New York, the National Weather Service said.
Kelly Price, who was trying to get home to Colorado after a family vacation in Orlando, Florida, said her Sunday night flight wasn’t canceled until early Monday.
“By that time the only place for us to sleep was the airport floor. So we’re all tired and frustrated,” she said, adding that the soonest she and her family could book another flight doesn’t leave until Tuesday afternoon.
The nationwide cancellations on Monday included about 600 in and out of Chicago O’Hare International, more than 470 at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International and over 450 at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, according to FlightAware.
Citing severe weather, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered ground stops at Hartsfield-Jackson and Charlotte Douglas International Airport and ground delays at JFK and Newark Liberty International Airport.
Danielle Cash found herself stranded in St. Louis on Sunday while trying to get home to Tampa, Florida, after a weekend girls’ trip to Las Vegas. Now she’s spending several hundred dollars more than planned on a hotel room in a snowy city she wasn’t dressed for.
“It was 80 degrees in Tampa when I left and then going to Vegas,” she said. “And it was 90 degrees in the desert.”
Cash said she’s now booked on a flight that will take her to Tennessee before finally returning to Tampa by Tuesday afternoon.
The storms unfolded just as airport security screeners missed their first full paycheck over the weekend. The current partial government shutdown affects only the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Transportation Security Administration.
Democrats in Congress have said Homeland Security won’t get funded until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year.
It is the third shutdown in less than a year to leave TSA workers temporarily without pay. Once the government reopens, employees will have to wait for back pay.
Some airports have reported longer security lines because of staffing shortages as more TSA workers take on second jobs, can’t afford gas to get to work or leave the profession altogether. Homeland Security has said more than 300 TSA agents have quit since the start of the shutdown.
TSA union leaders in Atlanta held a news conference Monday outside Hartsfield-Jackson, warning that air travelers could face increasingly long wait times as the shutdown continues. Even so, union leaders said, many officers are still reporting to work despite mounting financial strain.
Many TSA workers “are coping with eviction notices, vehicle repossessions, empty refrigerators and overdrawn bank accounts,” said Aaron Barker, a local leader with the American Federation of Government Employees. Supporters behind him held signs reading, “We want a paycheck, not a rain check.”
Travelers flying out of New Orleans on Sunday and Monday were advised to arrive at least three hours early “due to impacts from the federal government’s partial shutdown,” Louis Armstrong International Airport said on X. And the airport in Austin, Texas, shared a video on X taken at 5:30 a.m. local time showing the security line spilling out onto the sidewalk outside.
Back in Atlanta, Mel Stewart and his wife arrived four hours earlier than usual for their flight out of Hartsfield-Jackson to make up for longer TSA lines.
“I think it’s being politicized way too much — way too much,” Stewart said Monday of the shutdown. “And these people are working. They work hard, and for TSA people not to get paid, that’s silly.”
Yamat reported from Las Vegas. Associated Press reporters Margery A. Beck in Omaha, Nebraska, and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu contributed to this report.
People wait in a departure terminal at Ronald Reagan National Airport, in Arlington, Va., Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Travelers wait in line at a security checkpoint at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
People wait in a departure terminal at Ronald Reagan National Airport, in Arlington, Va., Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
A man sleeps in the baggage claim area of Ronald Reagan National Airport, in Arlington, Va., Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Jamie Sims left, and Carlos Serna, right, try to get some rest as they wait for their cancelled flight to El Paso, texas to be rescheduled at Love Field Airport in Dallas, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
