Features

While the films had only a simple alteration in the chronological continuity in 2006 with the reboot given by Casino Royale, starring Daniel Craig as James Bond, the novels’ continuity after Raymond Benson stopped writing for the Ian Fleming estate has been more irregular. In 2008, to celebrate Ian Fleming’s centenary, we had Sebastian Faulks […]

Seventy-five years ago today – May 20, 1941 – Lt Commander Ian Fleming checked into the swanky Palacio Hotel in Estoril, Portugal’s version of the Côte d’Azur.

A truly comprehensive look at the James Bond films that belongs on every Bond fan’s bookshelf. Available from Amazon UK and Amazon.com After receiving a copy of Some Kind of Hero: The remarkable history of the James Bond films my first response was to joke on Twitter that I’d be using it as a door stop. What struck […]

When I recently received a review copy of Blood Sweat and Bond: behind the scenes of SPECTRE it was a while before I was able to take a proper look.  Available online from Amazon UK and Amazon.com Normally it goes something like this. I pick up a package from the post office, drive home and unwrap […]

Robert Harling’s recently published memoir of Ian Fleming sheds further light on James Bond’s creator. Buy from Amazon UK One book that seems to have largely flown beneath the radar over the last few weeks is Robert Harling’s personal memoir of Ian Fleming. Harling was a typographer, designer, journalist and novelist who knew Fleming well. They […]

Although not expecting much from this slender volume, it turns out to over-deliver. A handy pocket companion for all Bond fans. Buy from Amazon UK or Amazon.com. Back in the 1980s I once bought a Bluffer’s Guide. It was fun, but very superficial.  Short. It covered modern art, just a sentence or two for each […]

Guest author Edward Biddulph revisits his childhood with the James Bond 007: Ultimate Sticker Collection from Dorling Kindersley. Buy from Amazon UK or Amazon.com I don’t know about you, but when I was young, I loved collecting Panini football stickers every four years when the World Cup was on. Saving up my pocket money to buy […]

By the time A View To A Kill was released in 1985 I was over 007. The last James Bond movie I’d seen on the big screen was For Your Eyes Only (1981) and by the time Octopussy came out two years later I decided to stick with the Connery films and the books. Available from […]

Last month saw the publication of The Man With The Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming’s James Bond Letters, edited by Fleming’s nephew, Fergus. Here he answers a number of questions posed by The James Bond Dossier.  I understand that you have no memory of meeting your uncle, who died when you were 5 years old. When did […]

The thing about the James Bond continuation novels is this. There comes a moment in each of the books when the author makes a misstep that jars. The result? As a reader I am taken out of the story completely. So, I wondered, how long it would be until the first misstep in Trigger Mortis, Anthony Horowitz’s latest […]