Matthew Parker’s new book is both a biography of Ian Fleming from when he built Goldeneye on wards and the history of Jamaica during the period leading to independence and just after. I can remember when I first read the James Bond novels how little information there was about Ian Fleming. My 1960’s Pan edition […]
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A quick look at The James Bond Archives by Taschen, which weighs in at nearly 7kg. Buy it direct from Amazon Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
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The Man With The Golden Gun finds James Bond in Beirut on the trail of Scaramanga after MI6 is unable to pin the murder of 002 on the highly paid hitman; as Miss Moneypenny tells 007, “they never found the bullet”. There Bond learns from Saida, a belly dancer, that after his colleague was shot in the neck she removed the bullet from […]
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Reluctant as I am to admit it, Ian Fleming’s Bond novels were not terribly interesting when I first attempted to read them as an eleven year old. Fleming’s detailed verisimilitude – one of his key virtues when I returned to the books a few years later – and his interest in arcane research proved interminable. […]
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Before 007 appeared on the big screen Ian Fleming was involved in an aborted series for US television. When the project fell through many of the stories were reworked by Fleming and published in the collection For Your Eyes Only. At the beginning of last month Ian Fleming Publications announced a new James Bond novel to be written […]
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Can you imagine that soon after watching your first James Bond film you learnt your grandfather worked for Eon Productions? That’s exactly what happened to Mark O’Connell, who relates his story in Catching Bullets, reviewed here. Published back in 2012 in the lead up to Skyfall, I’d been meaning to get a copy of Catching Bullets by Mark […]
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We all know that James Bond will return. After all, we’ve been told as much by 23 movies. 007 originated in 1953’s novel Casino Royale and has been off and on the page ever since. For the most part, one adventure followed another and Bond slowly aged throughout the series. After 2002’s The Man With […]
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A secret agent? You wouldn’t think so from some of the films, when Bond’s name and reputation appear to be widely known. So, just how did 007 become the world’s most famous secret agent? The first chapter of Casino Royale is titled The Secret Agent and, in introducing the world to James Bond, Ian Fleming explains the […]
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In the novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service we get to share Christmas Day with 007 after his narrow escape from Piz Gloria. He visits M’s house to report on Blofeld’s activities and is served roast turkey, plum pudding, a small glass of old Marsala and most of a bottle of a bad Algerian wine that M […]
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Recently I was looking for information on 007’s cars from John Gardner’s books and was surprised to find that a definitive list doesn’t appear to exist. While the Saab 900 Turbo is well known from this era, it is a long way from being the only car Bond drives and the “Silver Beast” itself only […]
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