By Wesley Britton. Re-published with additional material by Matt Sherman. It all began with Ian Lancaster Fleming’s richly descriptive James Bond novels. During the 1950s, when the first seven 007 books appeared, Bond was a globetrotting tourist with many travel scenes at a time when thrillers were designed for an international market. Descriptions of gentlemen’s…
Bond scholars rejoice! The International Journal of James Bond Studies, is the first of its kind to focus on one of British literature’s most famous characters. This week we find out more from its editor, Dr Ian Kinane. 001. Can you tell us about how the International Journal of James Bond Studies came into being? The journal…
This week, we hear from spy thriller writer Graeme Shimmin, on the influence of Bond on his book, A Kill in the Morning… ‘My dad had a whole collection of the 1960s paperback versions of the James Bond novels. I was something of a precocious reader and when I was about seven (definitely not more than…
Article by Jonathan Hopson “About three years ago, P. H. Muir of Elkin Mathews had a customer (I believe an Englishman) to whom he could sell practically any book (mainly XVIIIth and XIXth century) which was the first about any discovery or social innovation”. So wrote Graham Pollard, bookseller and bibliographer. He was also a…
“Have no fear,” Fleming advises reporter Antony Terry in 1955, “you are by far the best correspondent in Germany and all you have to do is to write what you think and not be afraid of it” (Lenart, Judith, comp. Yours Ever Ian Fleming: Letters to and from Antony Terry. Nelson, New Zealand: Printhouse Nelson…
Article by David Salter In “From a View to a Kill” the first short story in Ian Fleming’s collection “For Your Eyes Only” (1960) the reader gets a comprehensive but compressed description of James Bond’s Paris. Bond is sitting on the terrace of Fouquet’s in the Champs Elysees, drinking an Americano, one of the ‘musical…
This week see’s the launch of a new podcast that might interest a lot of James Bond fans. FROM TAILORS WITH LOVE is a new fashion based podcast then centres around the lifestyle of James Bond, chronicling the suits and brands from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig. FROM TAILORS WITH LOVE is a fortnightly podcast…
Ian Fleming’s literary debut of British Secret Service agent 007 is stylishly adapted to the sequential art medium by Van Jensen and Denis Calero in the official James Bond: Casino Royale graphic novel. Sent to a French casino in Royale-les-Eaux, Bond aims to eliminate the threat of the deadly Le Chiffre by bankrupting the ruthless…
Article by Paul Dettman Patrick Leigh Fermor, known widely as Paddy, was friends with the Mitford sisters, Ian Fleming, and numerous high ranking celebrities. Many of those names have not made it through to our generation, but I believe Paddy’s crowning achievement is that he was immortalised on the silver screen by none other than…
Article by Graham M. Thomas It was 1999 when I last visited the island of Kyushu in southwest Japan. Literary007 was then just but a faint twinkle in an eye. Now in 2017, I decided to make a return visit in an attempt to retrace Fleming’s and Bond’s own journeys across the island. Within the…
This week finds Graham M. Thomas stranded on Crab Key Island, yet life won’t be too bad with these items to keep him company… 001. You Only Live Twice Two reasons, the first that it would allow me to remember and picture Japan as the story is largely a travelogue, but second it is the…
Mercifully, literary Bond fans did not have to wait forever and a day for Mr. Horowtiz’s second James Bond continuation novel since 2015’s TRIGGER MORTIS. In fact, rather than a continuation, his new effort is a prequel to CASINO ROYALE that provides him with a clean canvas to work with. The opening chapter starts off…
Article by Robert Rakison In 2015 Matthew Field’s and Ajay Chowdhury’s “Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films” was published by The History Press. On July 2nd, a revised and updated paperback edition is being issued which, we’re told, will include new chapters on Spectre, the upcoming Bond 25 and…
Article by Mike Ripley. If the release of the film Dr No in 1962 triggered an almost instant boom in British spy and thriller fiction and a positive tsunami of new authors, the same cannot be said of the publication of Casino Royale which gave birth to the Bond legend in 1953. New Arrivals, 1953…
The annual ABA Book Fair this year promises to be a remarkable affair, not least because one of the UK’s (indeed world-wide’s) leading specialists in Ian Fleming, James M. Pickard, will be there with some show-stopping items. For those of you who do not know him, James has been collecting Ian Fleming first editions and associated artwork…
Article by Graham M. Thomas (The author first visited Hong Kong in the 1980s, lived there during the 1990s, and still returns from time to time.) Almost sixty years ago, Ian Fleming set out on a world tour. Not to promote his books but because he had been asked by his employer The Sunday Times to…
Article by Frieda Toth “. . . Bond’s refined tastes and effortless embrace of the high life form an important aspect of his image.” JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier In 1962, Ian’s masterpiece came out. The Spy Who Loved Me was everything he had striven for, and he’d jettisoned everything tiresome. …
Article by Mike Ripley When I began to write Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, my ‘reader’s history’ of the boom in British thrillers in the 1950s and 1960s, it was clear that my starting point had to be the game-changer that was Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale in 1953. After the book came out, Len Deighton got…
This week’s unfortunate victim to Dr. No’s Caribbean island is Matt Sherman, who has thought out what he plans to eat and drink wisely! 001. The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming This highly underrated novel, from the ever-highly underrated novelist Ian Fleming, is a must-do for island fun. Like me awaiting rescue,…
We are delighted to showcase the latest work by Gerry Wadsworth. Gerry has produced a triptych of Bond paintings, that will be sure to cement his legacy. Here Gerry talks about his process and inspirations. ‘The idea of a triptych came to me as I was completing “A Deadly Career.” I have always appreciated Japanese woodblock prints…
Artistic Licence Renewed 