A special treat for our readers this week, as we welcome renowned historian and documentary producer Henry Chancellor in from the cold. In the canon of James Bond reference books, Henry’s book in collaboration with Ian Fleming Publications, stands as one of the best. We asked him how this book came to be. 1. Why…
The common perception of a Bond girls, as damsels in distress waiting for our hero James Bond to save from the clutches of the villain and also themselves, is not without its flaws. In a recent interview I did with Robert Caplen, author of Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond, when asked this same question he…
Article by Revelator After For Your Eyes Only Bond was no longer a wonderful machine. Nor was he a fully-dimensional, complex human being—that would involve surrendering his role as a male-fantasy projection—but he was considerably more human than before. Why? Because Ian Fleming failed. He explained why in an interview with Counterpoint: Now, you’ll notice that…
Words by Edward Biddulph Ian Fleming described him as “one of the great secret agents of the last war”, and a man that “has a magnetic personality and the quality of making anyone ready to follow him to the ends of the earth.” No, not James Bond, but Sir William Stephenson, who in 1940 on…
Article by Revelator After the narrative slack of Diamonds Are Forever, Fleming decided to better himself with From Russia with Love. Because its story was entirely structured around a deathtrap for one man, it was important for that man to be human enough to hold the audience’s empathy. This demanded a more rounded Bond, and…
Words by Revelator Here is part 1 of 3 that we’re calling “the three ages of Bond.” Thanks to Daniel Craig (and his underrated predecessor Timothy Dalton) we’ve heard a lot of the phrase “Fleming’s Bond,” as in “Craig comes closest to Fleming’s Bond, the ruthless government assassin” and so on. This phrase has always rang…
If James Bond was on Facebook, you could be sure his relationship status would be set to ‘it’s complicated.’ Of course Ian Fleming famously hadn’t married until he was 43, so putting it off for Bond was easy. Much like his own life, Fleming’s man can count being married once and nearly once prior. In Diamonds Are…
With a flurry of James Bond continuation novels in recent years, literary Bond seems to have picked up some steam in the slipstream of the rejuvenated film franchise. This is good news of course and the quality of the continuation novels is getting better. William Boyd‘s Bond outing – Solo – was a solid thriller…
The name Goldfinger is probably the most synonymous title in the Bond canon with the most famous Bond girl, Bond villain, Bond film and Bond line: “No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.” But what about the book as a whole in the collective memory? It stands as one of the longest in the…
Casino Royale stands out as among the best of all the Bond novels and often assumed that it created the narrative template for the series. It certainly laid the ground and introduced Bond to the world but it can be argued that it does not conform to the familar conventions that Ian Fleming developed over…
Article by Benjamin Welton The espionage novel is one part “imperial adventure story” and one part detective tale. The former, which is extensively examined by Dr. Caroline Reitz in her slim study entitled Detecting the Nation: Fictions of Detection and the Imperial Venture, often details the exploits of Englishmen abroad, specifically those educated Englishmen who…
Philip Larkin, the greatest English poet of the second half of the past century (and a genuine Bond fan), reviewed Licence Renewed in the June 05, 1981 issue of The Times Literary Supplement. His review is really about Fleming’s legacy, and he makes the case–with more eloquence and insight than anyone since–for why Bond-continuation novels…
Article by Revelator Doctor No is definitely one of the better Fleming novels. The novel is divisive only because it caused an idiot at the New Statesman named Paul Johnson to write an article accusing Fleming of “sex, snobbery, and sadism,” a phrase still used by lazy journalists. Johnson went on to attack The Beatles with equal viciousness…
Shortly after handing over an early manuscript of Moonraker to William Plomer, Ian Fleming told him: “In my opinion, it isn’t much of a book, but it should make a good film.” How wrong he was to be as it turned out. A film version never materialized in his lifetime and when it did, it…
Article by Edward Biddulph During his career as the author of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming received hundreds of letters from his readers. Readers wrote to express their admiration for the latest novel or to point out errors or an incorrect reference to some luxury product. Some readers simply wrote to ask for Fleming’s…
In September 1965, Kingsley was offered the opportunity to write his own Bond story after the success of both his literary critique The James Bond Dossier and tongue-in-cheek The Book Of Bond (Or Every Man His Own 007). Shortly afterwards, in 1966, official Bond publisher Glidrose Productions Ltd. commissioned novelist Geoffrey Jenkins to also write a Bond novel. Set in South…
Article by Revelator: Philip Larkin is perhaps was the first critic to connect Major Smythe to Fleming, and at first glance, Smythe’s similarities to Fleming are many and obvious. Both are in their mid-50s and dealing with a sagging belly, heart trouble, and a soured marriage. Either could be described as “the remains of a…
Widely regarded as the greatest English poet to arise after the second world war, Philip Larkin was, like his close friend Kingsley Amis, a fan of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. In the following article, published in the July 8, 1966 issue of The Spectator, he reviews the final Bond book. These two stories, according to…
In 1982, Bond aficionado and the first Bond continuation author – Kingsley Amis – wrote a review of John Gardner’s ‘For Special Services’. By Kingsley Amis Ian Fleming’s last novel, The Man With The Golden Gun, appeared in 1965, a year after its author’s death. I published Colonel Sun: a James Bond Adventure under the…
by Benjamin Welton I’ve sat in enough literature classrooms to know the refrain well. A young woman full of earnest conviction but enough neo-Marxist and Lacanian theory to sink a dreadnought will speak up and say “I cannot relate to this.” During one such case, a peer of mine took it step further by claiming…
Artistic Licence Renewed 