By Oliver Buckton Let me begin by saying I never actually met John Pearson in person. The closest I came to a “live” meeting was a phone conversation, somewhere back in 2019, when I called him from my office at Florida Atlantic University. The phone, reaching across the Atlantic to the UK, seemed to ring…
Newly published by The Queen Anne Press, are the notes that John Pearson made in 1965 while researching The Life of Ian Fleming. They chart not only Fleming’s life – with details that never made it into the finished biography – but John’s own journey while investigating his subject. As such, they form less a…
One of the rarest pieces of Fleming literature is possibly Ian Fleming’s 128-page scrapbook, in which he wrote down ideas, plot outlines, short sentences and even lengthy excerpts which he considered to feature in future Bond adventures. The scrapbook was never published officially, the known excerpts were jotted down by a reporter of the Daily…
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 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…
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,…
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 by Craig Arthur *** A quirk of the combination of Ian Fleming’s For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy story collections in the new Quantum Of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories, is that the book begins and ends with Bond day-dreaming about a woman named Solange. In the opening story, From a View…
Article by Benjamin Welton; Featured Image by George Almond Ian Fleming was fortunate in that he had a lot to draw from once he sat down to create James Bond. Not only did he have literary forbearers such as W. Somerset Maugham, Sapper, and Raymond Chandler to emulate, but his actual life was swimming in…
Article by Dr. Wesley Britton Most fans of the literary 007 know something about the history of the lost James Bond continuation novel, PER FINE OUNCE. Without question, the researcher who’s provided us with the most credible background information is writer and novelist Jeremy Duns. But now that we have Peter Vollmer’s new PER FINE…
There have been many portrayals of Ian Fleming on screen at this point with varying success; but has anyone ever nailed it? Will anyone ever be able to? After the recent lackluster and frankly inaccurate interpretation ‘Fleming‘, patience is running out and Fleming fans must be concerned about the likelihood of seeing him again for some…
Words by Revelator After reading Mathew Parker’s book it will be impossible to over-estimate the importance of Jamaica to James Bond. Beginning with Fleming’s wartime discovery of the island, Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born is a chronological countdown of his years there, interlaced with a concurrent history of country. Goldeneye, Fleming’s Jamaican residence, mirrored the…
Words by Edward Biddulph There are two books that represent the holy grails for fans of Ian Fleming. One is Ian Fleming’s account of Kuwait and its oil industry, State of Excitement, which was suppressed by the Kuwait government. The other is what might have been the first continuation Bond novel, Per Fine Ounce, by…
We are privileged to welcome Matthew Parker in from the cold, to discuss his latest book about Ian Fleming and his beloved second home in Jamaica. Matthew is in the unique position as someone who has lived in the Caribbean and is a successful author of many books including about the Battle of Britain, the…
John Pearson graduated from Peterhouse Cambridge with a double first in History, then worked on the Economist Intelligence Unit and as a BBC trainee producer before being offered a job by Ian Fleming as his assistant on the ‘Atticus’ column for the Sunday Times. James Bond: The Authorised Biography is a fictional biography of James Bond and…
Artistic Licence Renewed 