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George Markstein was a journalist whose assignments included time as a military correspondent in Europe during the Cold War of the 1950s, and also work on the crime pages and the police beat in London. He was, thus, well-prepared when he turned to screenwriting, specializing in thrillers. His credits include serving as story editor for the series The Prisoner (in addition to co-writing the pilot script) and adapting the novel The Odessa File (1974) to the screen. Additionally, he wrote nine crime and espionage thrillers, and served as story editor at Thames Television. Markstein collaborated on the script for Robbery (1967), which won the British Writers' Guild prize for Best Original Screenplay. He passed away early in 1987, of kidney failure, after a long illness. Markstein also made one uncredited onscreen appearance during his career, which has put him into many thousands of DVD households around the world -- he played the bald man behind the desk in the opening credits of The Prisoner, to whom series star Patrick McGoohan, playing Drake (the future No. 6 in The Village), angrily submits his resignation.