Stuck on Crab Key Island with … Graham M. Thomas

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…

Thrilling Cities Redux: Hong Kong

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…

Torao Saito mid 1950s

Who was the real Tiger Tanaka?

Article by Graham M. Thomas The dedication in You Only Live Twice reads, ‘TO Richard Hughes and Torao Saito BUT FOR WHOM ETC…. Richard Hughes and Torao ‘Tiger’ Saito were two friends of Fleming’s. Both were journalists, both had accompanied Fleming on his travels through Japan, and both had now been metamorphosed into characters in…

Richard Hughes in Sydney in 1955 (Photo: Sydney Morning Herald)

Richard Hughes: Ian Fleming’s Man in the Orient

In the original typescript to Ian Fleming’s You Only Live Twice, held at the Lily Library in Indiana, there is a very interesting “Author’s note” prefixing the manuscript. Fleming wrote that on his second visit to Japan, he followed “as closely as prudence would allow, in the footsteps of James Bond.” He was accompanied by the…

Ian Fleming’s Thrilling Cities: Tokyo

Article by Graham M. Thomas Is there a more thrilling city than Tokyo? Today it would certainly come near the top of many people’s bucket list and, from a personal perspective, it comes top of mine. After all I lived there for five years and although home is now in south-western Japan, a visit to…