CREDITS THE IPCRESS FILE, 1965 dir: Sidney J Furie Michael Caine Guy Doleman Nigel Green

“Insubordinate. Insolent. A trickster. Perhaps with criminal tendencies.”

First of three Harry Palmer spy movies from Len Deighton’s books (a series revived in straight-to-video productions years later). Director Sidney J Furie had little faith in the script (he claims to have set fire to a copy on the first day of shooting), and tricks the movie out with modish sixties angles and framings.

The film was made on location around London. The station from which the scientist is abducted at the opening is Marylebone Station, NW1 (a relatively quiet station, often used for filming, featured in The Beatlesí first movie, A Hard Day’s Night).

When Palmer (Michael Caine) consults his cop pal for the lowdown on “Grantby – a right master criminal”, it’s at the original Great Scotland Yard building at Derby Gate on the Victoria Embankment, before the Met Police move to Victoria.

The Ipcress File location: Harry Palmer is summoned to the 'Ministry of Defence': Admiralty Building, The Mall

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office Building, the old Admiralty Building, at the foot of The Mall alongside Admiralty Arch, became the ‘Ministry of Defence’ building where Palmer is summoned to the office of Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman) to be transferred to Major Dalby’s (Nigel Green) outfit. Birdcage Walk, along the southern border of St James’s Park, is where Dalby and Ross plot their devious strategies. T108, the bench used for clandestine meetings, stood on Rotten Row in Hyde Park.

The Ipcress File location: Harry Palmer's flat: Stanlake Villas, Shepherd's Bush, West London

Harry Palmer’s flat can be found just north of Uxbridge Road in Shepherd’s Bush, W12. It’s 9 Stanlake Villas at Stanlake Road.

30 Grosvenor Gardens at Ebury Street, Victoria, was the ‘Dalby Domestic Employment Bureau’, the staffing agency used as a front for Major Dalby’s outfit, to which Harry Palmer gets transferred. Much of the movie was shot within the building, which was entirely taken over for the production.

It’s at the Science Museum Library, Prince Consort Road, South Kensington that Palmer makes contact with ‘Bluejay’. The library is open to the public for personal research. Furie perks up a fight scene by filming through the glass panes of a phone booth on the south side of the Royal Albert Hall, (there is no phone booth there).