We are delighted to welcome the esteemed author, historian and QC Mr. Brian Lett to interview him about the parallels between the real life heroes from the SOE and Ian Fleming’s fictional heroes and plots, most notably M and Moonraker. 1. With so many potential inspirations for ‘M’ from Ian Fleming’s life and career, what drew…
This week we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Christopher Moran in from the cold. He is the author of Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain and was a historical consultant to the International Spy Museum in Washington DC, assisting on the popular exhibition ‘Exquisitely Evil: 50 Years of James Bond Villains’, sponsored by the makers of…
This month The Folio Society, in conjunction with Ian Fleming publications, release a lavish edition of Ian Fleming’s classic début novel ‘Casino Royale‘. The beautiful artwork was commissioned for acclaimed illustrator Fay Dalton with an introduction by Booker-Prize winning author John Banville. Another must-have item for devoted literary James Bond collectors! We spoke with Sheri Gee, the…
2015 has been a bonanza year for Ian Fleming fans with multiple book releases about his life and a surge in interest in James Bond’s creator. One book that might have slipped under the radar for some, is the established author Andrew Cook’s The Ian Fleming Miscellany. A small volume in comparison with the more…
To many literary Bond aficionados, Mr. Duns’ research into the world of James Bond and Ian Fleming provides indispensable intelligence to Bondologists. Here we catch up with him on the eve of his new spy thriller – Spy Out the Land out on January 14, 2016. Has Ian Fleming influenced your own thriller writing, notably your…
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…
To a 1950s postwar audience, Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels were an escape. For the war-weary man, Bond’s adventures represented the ultimate fantasy down to the finest detail — including food, a facet largely absent from the nearly two dozen 007 films. With Dying to Eat, food stylist Charlotte Omnès and photographer Henry Hargreaves return…
The Man with the Golden Typewriter by Fergus Fleming, contains numerous unpublished letters by Ian Fleming, which have been sourced from the Fleming Archive, the Cape Archive and private collections from around the world On 16 August 1952, Ian Fleming wrote to his wife, Ann, ‘My love, This is only a tiny letter to try out…
We are delighted to welcome Dr. Lisa Funnell in from the cold to hear about her new book For His Eyes Only, a collection of essays on the femininity and feminism in the Bond series. Interview by Matthew Chernov It’s impossible to discuss the world of James Bond without examining the fascinating female characters that make the…
This week we caught up with Oliver Buckton, whose new book Espionage in British Fiction and Film Since 1900, explores the origins of the British spy story while keeping in focus the essential role of the “changing enemy”—the chief adversary of and threat to Britain and its allies—in the evolution of spy fiction and cinema. Using an innovative structure,…
This week we talked with Edward Milward-Oliver about Raymond Hawkey, the award-winning graphic designer and author who had a close association with Ian Fleming as well as Len Deighton. Artistic Licence Renewed: We have a special interest in the work of Richard Chopping, in particular his nine jackets for Ian Fleming’s novels. Raymond Hawkey’s work, with…
This week we welcome Damian Stevenson in from the cold to talk about his two books about the fictional adventures of Ian Fleming: The Ian Fleming Files. 1. You have now written two books in ‘The Ian Fleming Files’. How does the second compare to the first and how do you approach your research of Ian’s…
On the eve of the publication of Trigger Mortis, we are absolutely thrilled to gain a quick exclusive interview with the 6th James Bond continuation novelist – Anthony Horowitz! How did you settle on the book’s title ‘Trigger Mortis‘? The title is probably the hardest part of getting a Bond book right! (And I hope…
This week we thought we’d learn a bit more about the Per Fine Ounce author Peter Vollmer and find out a bit more about the heir to South Africa’s greatest thriller writer and friend of Ian Fleming, Geoffrey Jenkins 1. When did you start writing thrillers and what drew you to the genre? From about ten,…
We are delighted to welcome Joseph Oldham from the University of Warwick, who is one of the organisers alongside Toby Manning, behind the inaugural ‘Spying on Spies‘ conference at The Shard in London from September 3-5. The conference aims to provide a timely forum for a retrospective discussion of the genre’s development and evolution across multiple…
After a long search of intelligence gathering, Artistic Licence Renewed managed to track down the artist Trevor Scobie, who was responsible for three of John Gardner’s James Bond book covers in the 1980s. We are particularly thrilled to present this look back on these jackets by Trevor. *** “One of my first commissioned book jackets…
Since 2010, Gerry Wadsworth has been painting in watercolor and for the past two years has been working on “An Homage to James Bond” – a series of visual interpretations of books of Ian Fleming and the James Bond films. We welcome him in from the cold to answer to debrief. What ignited your passion…
We are very excited to welcome the former intelligence analyst for the CIA and author of 25 novels, Francine Mathews. Here new novel ‘Too Bad to Die, a tense and enthralling historical thriller in which British Naval Intelligence officer Ian Fleming attempts to foil a Nazi plot to assassinate FDR, Churchill, and Stalin at the…
This week we caught up with Richard Schenkman, of ‘Bondage‘ magazine – the original Bond fan publication, which ran until 1989. Schenkman brought behind the scenes news and details to American Bond fans – the first of it’s kind – which began as one or two sides of a sheet of mimeograph paper, and grew…
This week we welcome Nicholas Anderson in from the cold. Nicholas (his nom de plume of course) is a 19-year veteran of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (known also as MI6). In 2002-2007 he was recalled a second time to active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is now retired and resides in the French…
