June 27th, 2013
by David Leigh
While Greece may not be one of the first countries you think of when it comes to James Bond, it does have a couple of Bond connections. The first of those is Colonel Sun, by “Robert Markham”, but for most people the greater link is with For Your Eyes Only, Roger Moore’s fifth outing as […]
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June 24th, 2013
by David Leigh
While most Bond fans are aware of James Bond’s paternal Scottish lineage, many who have not read the books are unaware that his mother was actually Swiss; Bond’s (premature) obituary in You Only Live Twice tells us that his mother was Monique Delacroix of the Canton de Vaud. Bond visits Switzerland while engaged on two […]
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June 20th, 2013
by David Leigh
Although Italy hardly appeared in the books at all, James Bond has visited the country a number of times in the films, most recently with Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. In the short story Risicco, James Bond visits first Rome and then Venice while trying to break up a heroin smuggling operation, meeting Kristatos […]
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June 17th, 2013
by David Leigh
Although it may not much feel like it at the moment, summer is fast approaching after a long winter that seemed to takeover spring, but finally the weather (at least where I live) has turned. The central heating is off at long last and although the mountains in the distance still have plenty of snow […]
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June 6th, 2013
by David Leigh
A number of years ago I bought a copy of Gary Giblin’s “James Bond’s London” on Amazon. The book takes a pretty exhaustive look at the London locations from the books and films up until The World Is Not Enough, as well as locations related to Ian Fleming; in fact it was from Giblin that I […]
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May 23rd, 2013
by David Leigh
Recently I watched Octopussy and then The Man With The Golden Gun on successive nights, which was an interesting experience as it allowed me to compare two Roger Moore Bond films from the late and then early part of his reign. The Man With The Golden Gun is frequently ranked by fans towards the bottom […]
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May 15th, 2013
by David Leigh
January 2014 Note: The swimming shorts identified as being in Thunderball discussed in this article later turned out to be no such thing, despite appearing in the Designing 007 exhibition. In two of the three Daniel Craig Bond movies James Bond has appeared in brief scenes clad in nothing but swim shorts, but going back to […]
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April 25th, 2013
by David Leigh
Depending on your point of view the Kindle is either a miracle device, or the work of the Devil. While some people like their device – or love the ability to read Amazon’s Kindle ebooks on an iPad or other device – many see the move towards putting books into an electronic format as destroying […]
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April 16th, 2013
by David Leigh
On Monday it was announced that the next James Bond novel, written by William Boyd, was to be called Solo. Boyd explained the title: saying “events conspire to make Bond go off on a self-appointed mission of his own, unannounced and without any authorization” and “as soon as I wrote down Solo on a sheet […]
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April 13th, 2013
by David Leigh
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, on April 13th 1953. Ian Fleming had written the book in 1952 while spending the winter at Goldeneye, his home in Jamaica, and just 4,728 copies were printed. The initial printing quickly sold out and today copies complete with original […]
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