By Jim Wright Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966), the last of Ian Fleming’s 14 novels and short story collections, is often considered the least of the lot. After all, the first edition weighs in at just 95 pages, and the title seems increasingly off-putting. That’s a shame because the two short stories of the…
Article by F. L. Toth Ian Fleming was often criticized, sometimes rightly, for getting the facts wrong about the things for which he is best known, such as fine food, guns, wine, and bath products of all things. He seems, in fact, to have been the most annoying of dilettantes: the man who learns just…
In the wake of the announcement of Bond 25 at Ian Fleming’s Goldeneye retreat where the 007 books were written, it seems appropriate to revisit the road to Bond 25 and the roots of Fleming’s writing which remain in the films. This history is contained in the paperback of Matthew Field’s and Ajay Chowdhury’s “Some…
We are proud to present Gerald Wadsworth‘s latest James Bond inspired work, The Hildebrand Rarity … …in which Bond helps his friend, Fidele Barbey, pilot a yacht to the Seychelle Islands, for business tycoon Milton Krest. Krest is determined to kill, capture, or buy as many rare species from the Island that he can and sell them to the Smithsonian. Arrogant…
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…
Since 2010, Gerry Wadsworth has been painting in watercolor and for the past two years has been working on “An Homage to James Bond” – a series of visual interpretations of books of Ian Fleming and the James Bond films. We welcome him in from the cold to answer to debrief. What ignited your passion…
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…
Article by Revelator After the narrative slack of Diamonds Are Forever, Fleming decided to better himself with From Russia with Love. Because its story was entirely structured around a deathtrap for one man, it was important for that man to be human enough to hold the audience’s empathy. This demanded a more rounded Bond, and…
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…
Artistic Licence Renewed 