Deighton, the London-born son of a chauffeur and a cook, wrote The Ipcress File, his first novel, on vacation in the Dordogne, France. It was, he writes in an afterword in the Penguin Modern Classics edition, a "holiday diversion". He was a commercial artist, trained at St Martin"s School of Art and the Royal College of Art. He had worked for ad agencies and publishers, and knew Soho like the back of his hand. He had also seen a fair bit of the world, having completed two and a half years of national service with the RAF, and worked as a flight attendant with British Overseas Airways.