Article by Robert Rakison. With special thanks to Jon Gilbert and James Pickard. Collecting is a universal impulse and pastime, from football cards to Leonardo da Vinci. Book collectors do so for a variety of reasons – love of a particular author or character, period, literary quality, genre, illustrations, cover art, relationship to films, plays,…
The potency of James Bond novel literature is so strong, that many people have blurred the lines in their imagination between fictional and real life spies. A former naval intelligence man himself, Ian Fleming was able to draw from a rich seam of fellow members of the intelligence community. Here is a roll call of…
The Book Collector, set up by Ian Fleming 65 years ago and recently bought by his nephew James Fleming, celebrated this anniversary of the special Ian Fleming issue with not just one, but two parties. In true Bond style, two iconic book shops played host to the launch events – one at Daunt Books in Marylebone…
The Spring number of The Book Collector will be a special issue on the theme “Ian Fleming & Book Collecting”. Fleming was the publisher of The Book Collector from its start and its principal shareholder from 1955 until his death. After five decades at the helm Nicolas Barker sold his interest in the periodical to James…
2017 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Ian Fleming’s fifth James Bond novel, From Russia With Love and to celebrate there will be a 60th Anniversary Panel for the SAMLA 89 Conference in Atlanta, GA, from Nov 3-5 2017. The novel holds a special place in the Bond canon, for it was this novel that…
Peter Janson-Smith, who was the literary agent to Ian Fleming, passed away on April 15, 2016, at the age of 93. After Fleming’s death, Peter became the chairman of Glidrose Publications (now Ian Fleming Publications) and was directly responsible for hiring new authors to write new Bond novels. We pay tribute to him with various…
Sad news reached the offices of ALR recently of the death of John Griswold at only 65. John had been suffering from Alzheimer’s, the cruelest of afflictions, especially for someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of James Bond. John’s rich legacy however, is his book ‘Ian Fleming’s James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies for Ian Fleming’s Bond…
When artists Richard Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller died in their nineties, their friend Jon Lys Turner inherited an extensive personal archive. When he began to look through it, he discovered letters and other material that revealed Chopping and Wirth-Miller to be a previously missing link in the twentieth-century art world and pivotal figures in the…
To mark the 60th anniversary of the publication of Ian Fleming’s Diamonds Are Forever (and 45th birthday of the film version) a panel discussion will be held on the novel/film for the SAMLA conference held in Jacksonville, Florida from Nov 4-6 2016. Following the all-English setting of Moonraker (the third Bond novel), Fleming sought to…
Join us to celebrate the birthday of Ian Fleming on May 28, 2016! This special evening, in collaboration between literary007.com and Maxus Movie Walks, will begin with a special walking tour of Ian’s City life at 5pm from Bank station. This exclusive version of the Maxus Walks Ian Fleming Tour will include the actor Michael Chance, who played Ian in the one-man show, The…
No, this is not an April Fool’s joke for literary Bond fans! The third Whitstable Literary festival (WhitLit) returns from May 11-15 and this year the programme will take on a ‘super spy’ theme, celebrating James Bond creator Ian Fleming and his Kent connections. There will be a very special Ian Fleming evening on Friday…
2015 was a stellar year and you helped us to keep striving forward. We had the superb continuation novel Trigger Mortis from Anthony Horowitz and the film Spectre, which both provided us with plenty to talk about. It was a golden year for Ian Fleming’s legacy too, with multiple books coming out about his life…
The rich history of James Bond book cover jackets include such established artists as Richard Chopping, Raymond Hawkey and Trevor Scobie. For Anthony Horowitz’s 2015 Bond novel Trigger Mortis, the publishers chose a very different path in many ways. Not only did they choose to make the cover interactive, whereby it could be cut up to…
This competition has ended Artistic Licence Renewed has 3 signed copies of Ian Fleming’s nephew Fergus Fleming’s new book – The Man with the Golden Typewriter – to give away! View a sample of the book here: http://issuu.com/bloomsburypublishing/docs/the_man_with_the_golden_typewriter_ Terms and Conditions: 3 winners will be picked at random and we will ask you to provide your address…
There are two exciting James Bond reissues from Vintage Books to get your hands on. COLONEL SUN By Kingsley Amis with an introduction by the author The first ever Bond continuation novel, written by Kingsley Amis and originally published by Jonathan Cape in 1968, now in print for the first time since the 1990s. Kris Potter,…
This is Robert Harling’s account of his close and enduring friendship with one of the twentieth century’s most iconic writers, a relationship forged in the Second World War that helped define the lives of both men. Their paths met in the early 1940s upon the creation of 30 Assault Unit, a British Commando unit Fleming…
An exclusive clip of author Anthony Horowitz, reading an extract from his new James Bond book, Trigger Mortis
To mark the publication of one of the most anticipated books of the year, an interactive 1950s style pop-up experience is being placed within Waterstones Piccadilly for one week only. There will be a costumed actor, secret codes and clues to solve, a hidden door leading to an antechamber (no spoilers here!), and mysterious phone…
James Bond returns in Trigger Mortis, and Anthony Horowitz has taken him back to his ’50s heyday, complete with Pussy Galore, SMERSH and a diabolical foe – what more could fans want? Join bestselling writer Anthony Horowitz on the eve of publication of one of the most talked about books of the year. Anthony will…
Award-winning author and creator of ‘Foyle’s War’, Anthony Horowitz lifts the veil on one of the most hotly anticipated books of the year — his new official James Bond novel, Trigger Mortis. Taking inspiration from previously unpublished Ian Fleming treatments, Horowitz will take us back to the 1950s, where Britain’s best known secret agent embarks…
Artistic Licence Renewed 