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…
Article by David Craggs In October 2016, this sexagenarian espionage aficionado waxed lyrical about Fleming’s legacy and the door he opened for realistic spy fiction. A literary furrow that was initially plowed with great aplomb by Len Deighton and Le Carre and which has been studiously followed ever since. Although Fleming can be credited for…
A spy is dead. A legend is born. This is how it all began. Within the war offices of ALR, we are fizzing with excitement of the announcement of Mr. Horowitz’s new James Bond continuation novel. Mark your calendars everyone, the game’s afoot! *** Anthony Horowitz’s second James Bond novel using original material by Ian…
In 1952, Ian Fleming penned the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, at Goldeneye, his winter home in Jamaica. Each successive Bond novel was written at Goldeneye, and several of the most memorable and exciting novels were set in Jamaica. 2018 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Ian Fleming’s fifth James Bond novel, Dr No, (1958)…
Luxury clothing brand Sunspel, have just announced a new Ian Fleming collection – manna from heaven for sartorial Fleming fans. Ian Fleming was a devoted fan of Sea Island cotton. He frequently wore the fabric, and often dressed his literary creation, James Bond, in it too. In homage, Sunspel and The Ian Fleming Estate have…
Article by Graham M. Thomas Who else could have co-founded Alcoholics Synonymous but Richard Hughes (aka Dikko Henderson), after he had moved from Tokyo to Hong Kong. And when Ian Fleming flew in to the colony (as it was then) in November 1959, it was natural that on his first night in town, his friend…
Artistic Licence Renewed 