Article by David Salter Ian Fleming, like his alter ego James Bond was a Londoner. Born here in 1908, he lived and worked here all his life, until his death in 1964. This long attachment was broken up by his schooldays at Eton, childhood days at the family home, Joyce Grove in Oxfordshire, his time…
Article by David Salter and Jonathan Cull. For Bond devotees of London’s clubland, it is of some interest to watch Blade’s, M’s club, gradually turn, as the books progress, from a 20th century version of its sybaritic predecessor, the Scavoir Vivre*, into straightforward Boodle’s. Fleming usually lunched at Boodle’s and was devoted to it. He stated that a…
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…
Review by David Salter LA FRANCE DE FLEMING James Bond, une passion francais by Pierre-Olivier Lombarteix (Le Temps Editeur – 2017) In his new book Pierre-Olivier Lombarteix explores the relationship between Ian Fleming, his creation James Bond and France – in Fleming’s original books and in the films that followed. He goes further and looks…
Article by David Salter In 1953 “Clubland Heroes”, by Richard Usborne was published. This seminal work – “A nostalgic study of some of the recurrent characters in the romantic fiction of Dornford Yates, John Buchan and Sapper” – has become the go-to reference work for anyone interested in English thrillers of the immediate pre First…
Article by David Salter Although his notoriety, today, stems entirely from his creation of Britain’s foremost literary spy, Ian Fleming was, essentially and first-and-foremost, a journalist. It was his skill in reportage, honed in his early years during a period with Reuters and polished in his forties as Foreign Manager at the Sunday Times, that…
Article by David Salter James Bond lived in Chelsea, a pleasant and, these days very expensive, area south-west of Central London. Beyond that the information provided by Ian Fleming is pretty blurred. The most detailed source of information on this subject is “Moonraker”, possibly the most personal of the Bond books, taking place, as it…
Article by David Salter This is a tale from a bygone age, the 1960s. It almost certainly couldn’t happen today, as the components – cheap rents in Central London, relaxed working conditions and the buzz of excitement in the atmosphere, after the austerity of the post-war years, the emergence of pop music, rock’n’roll, discotheques and…
This week we welcome David Salter in from the cold, who has the distinction of having once lived in the birthplace of Ian Fleming at 27 Green Street. What is your favorite Chopping cover and why? From Russia With Love. It was the first hardback that I had bought on the day of publication and…
Artistic Licence Renewed 