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…
There is a certain paradox about James Bond’s relationship with all things America. Devoted to the Anglo-American war against Communism, there is a level of contempt that runs through the novels during a time when the British Empire was winding up and the new American one was burgeoning. The contempt tended to be about material…
Graham Greene and Ian Fleming are often mentioned in the same breath by espionage fans as two of the most influential of all time. They had many differences in their literature and also shared a personal and slightly fractious relationship. Fleming’s admiration for Greene was there from the beginning, having feasted on novels such as…
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…
The late Christopher Hitchens was one of Britain’s most revered, influential, antagonistic, polarizing, brilliant, erudite, eloquent, intelligent and entertaining writers. If you have not read any of his books and articles or watched him speak interviews and discussions, then it’s time you started. Much like his comrade the late, great Kingsley Amis, Hitchens was a…
Artistic Licence Renewed 