Features

Kathryn Smith looks at John Gardner’s second James Bond novel. The first chapter in For Special Services is just two pages long and, much like Licence Renewed, the novel starts with planes, airports and flights. Air traffic controller Frank Kennen, and to some extent the reader, is thrown into the deep end with a worrying […]

Eoghan Lyng reviews a short collection of essays inspired by Ian Fleming. It feels both reductive and redundant to refer to this collation as timely, but in the eyes of many readers, that is how it will appear. Chasing the waves No Time To Die started, the book ponders the imponderable aspects of 007’s social […]

After reading all Ian Fleming’s 007 adventures in 2019 Kathryn Smith started 2020 by delving into Colonel Sun. As I delved into the first chapter of the first 007 continuation novel Kingsley Amis (writing as Robert Markham) begins by having Bond reflect on how he is has no major assignments and that his life has […]

In the last of this three part series Kathryn Smith shares her thoughts and impressions of Ian Fleming’s final 007 books. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service I really did enjoy this book and found that it was very close to the film adaptation. There were still a few things mentioned in the book that were […]

This latest edition of Bond vs Bond is reviewed by Eoghan Lyng. This Coronavirus is a bugger. It’s buggered up the workplace, the shopping trips, even the Bond series. In fifty years, no one has proven bigger or stronger than Bond. Then an invisible disease arrives to scurry the film into an undisclosed corner for […]

In this second of three articles Kathryn Smith shares her thoughts and impressions of five more James Bond books by Ian Fleming. Read part 1 here At the end of From Russia, with Love Bond was poisoned by Rosa Klebb, leaving the series on a cliff hanger. But while he looked death in the face, […]

In the first of three articles Kathryn Smith pens her thoughts and impressions of Ian Fleming’s 007 books. Like many people around the world I enjoy the exploits of Britain’s greatest secret agent. But during 2019 I set myself the task of reading all of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books. Many of you must be […]

Eoghan Lyng reviews The Many Lives of James Bond by Mark Edlitz. Roger Moore was louche, George Lazenby brittle, two brilliant men with very different attitudes, philosophies and approaches to how James Bond could and should be presented. In a part deliciously malleable, many men have taken to playing him on and off screen and many […]

Eoghan Lyng reviews a book looking at Timothy Dalton’s two outings as 007. Finally, someone gets the Timothy Dalton films. Through Cary Edwards’ monograph, readers are invited on a methodological study through the narratives, strengths, virtues and zeitgeists presented throughout the two Dalton films. Sharply written, sharply presented, sharply edited, it sharply delves into the […]

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 […]