On April 12, 2020 we lost one of the greatest racing drivers and Britons in Sir Stirling Moss aged 90. In a quite remarkable life in which Moss cheated death a few times, he crossed paths with Ian Fleming and inspired a short story that would find life again in Anthony Horowitz’s novel Trigger Mortis.…
Jack Barclay Bentley, the world’s oldest Bentley dealership, is hosting a free James Bond exhibition from 11-16 June in partnership with Peter Harrington Rare Books. The Mayfair dealership will play host to original Bond cars and visitors key objects from the genesis of the James Bond story. The first James Bond cars – from the…
Edinburgh Spy Week is in its sixth year of celebrating spy fiction, film and history. This year a Bond theme runs throughout the week (5th to 12th April), so three of the Spy Week team, Simon Cooke, Penny Fielding and David Sorfa, sat down to talk about Casino Royale. 001. Casino Royale was a new kind…
Luxury holiday provider eShores have developed a new James Bond holiday package, touring locations used in the filming of Casino Royale, which the company was inspired to create the package by requests from customers. Gavin Lapidus, co-founder of eShores, said about the new package: “We’re always looking for great new ways to engage our customers…
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 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…
Article by Matthew Bellamy On May 25th, 1951, Guy Burgess arrived at the house of Donald Maclean. The two Foreign Office diplomats packed a few bags and boarded the Falaise, a pleasure boat headed to Saint-Malo. Though Burgess shouted “Back on Monday!” to one of the dockworkers as he boarded the boat, neither man would…
In February, Artistic Licence Renewed visited Estoril in search of the real-life origin for Ian Fleming’s debut Casino Royale. We joined author Larry Loftis at the Palacio Hotel and Casino Estoril on his media tour for the Portuguese release of his international bestseller INTO THE LION’S MOUTH: The True Story of Dusko Popov—World War II Spy, Patriot,…
Article by Larry Loftis Nothing is what it seems. Whether the subject is screenwriting, novel plotting, or espionage, the goal is the same—deception. As Hollywood scribe Robert McKee explains in his legendary book, STORY, “If the scene is about what the scene is about, you’re in deep sh*t.” On February 14-17, I will be giving…
Marina Marinshe was one of the photographers chosen by Ian Fleming Publications in collaboration with Algoritam Publishing (Zagreb, Croatia) to shoot the first James Bond book covers in Croatia. She produced the covers for the books Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace (short story collection) and Live and Let Die. We are delighted to welcome her in…
Article by Larry Loftis Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Britain’s Director of Naval Intelligence during World War II, had always said that his personal assistant was such a great administrator and intelligence planner that the roles should have been reversed. The assistant, of course, was Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming. In the early days of 1941, when…
This week, our special guest is the actor and playwright Mark Burgess. Mark has an esteemed association with 007 as the man who brought the one-man play about Ian Fleming to the stage and also has adapted Fleming’s works for BBC radio working alongside Ian’s niece Lucy Fleming. What drew you to write the play…
Review by Revelator This is a wonderful book, a long overdue one. For anyone who cares about Ian Fleming’s work, The Man With the Golden Typewriter will be a must-have reference, deserving to rest on the same shelf as Fleming’s biographies, Kingsley Amis’s Bond Dossier, Matthew Parker’s Goldeneye, and Henry Chancellor’s James Bond: The Man…
On this Bastille Day, we are delighted to welcome our French cousins commander007.net at Station F, to contribute their thoughts on James Bond in France. Profitez! In 11 novels and 9 short stories, Bond travels five times through 1950’s France. While Bond is now famous for being a great globe-trotting spy, it is surprising that Fleming, an author…
On a cool August evening in 1941, a Serbian playboy created a stir at Casino Estoril in Portugal by throwing down an outrageously large baccarat bet to humiliate his opponent. The Serbian was a British double agent, and the money which he had just stolen from the Germans belonged to the British. From the sideline,…
Sophie is also well known throughout the world for designing the legendary Algerian Love Knot necklace and earrings for the James Bond film Casino Royale which further endorses her British credentials. How did the collaboration with the Bond film franchise come about and what was the inspiration behind the designs? The Bond collaboration came about…
We are delighted to welcome notable journalist and author Sean Egan in from the cold, to discuss his latest book, which takes a look into the enthralling story of how the espionage fantasies of a rather melancholy journalist came to captivate the world. It exposes the setbacks behind the triumphs, from Fleming’s increasing boredom with his…
Article Benjamin Welton In Jules Dassin’s classic crime film Rififi, Louise (played by Janine Darcey) chides her husband, the gangster Jo le Suedois (played by Austrian actor Carl Möhner), for moral cowardice. Specifically, Louise, in a fit of frustration, tells her husband that it’s not the criminals or those who have chosen to flee the responsibilities…
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…
Artistic Licence Renewed 