Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming’s Commandos: The Story of 30 Assault Unit in WWII by Nicholas Rankin is available from all good booksellers today, including Amazon. The book provides an interesting history into the commando unit set up by Ian Fleming to recover all manner of Nazi secrets such as code settings, secret documents and new technology being […]

On Monday 5th August 1963, Ian Fleming was the guest on Roy Plomley’s Desert Island Disks, a long-running show on BBC radio that was first broadcast on 29 January 1942 and still runs today. The premise of the programme is simple; each week a famous guest (“castaway”) chooses eight pieces of music, as well as […]

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was written by Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond books, for his son Caspar. Inspired by a series of racing cars built by Count Louis Zborowski in the 1920s powered by aero engines, the story features an inventor – Commander Caractacus Pott – who renovates an old car, which starts […]

Thrilling Cities comprises of a series of articles written by Ian Fleming on two trips in 1959 and 1960 for the Sunday Times and published in book form in 1963. The articles were written with the aim of helping the reader find the type of excitement absent from more traditional travel writing, written from the […]

The Diamond Smugglers is an investigation by Ian Fleming of diamond smuggling operations out of South Africa. Originally written as a series of articles in the Sunday Times, the book expanded upon the original material and was first published in 1957.

All Ian Fleming’s short stories are collected on one volume, entitled Quantum of Solace. For the first time the stories from For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy & The Living Daylights are found within the covers of a single volume. You can order it from the outlets below: Amazon UK Amazon US

Ian Fleming’s last full-length novel was published the year after his death. As was his custom he wrote the first draft while in Jamaica but cut down on his daily word count because of increasing ill health. Author: Ian Fleming Publication date: 1st April 1965 Publisher: Jonathan Cape Cover artist: Richard Chopping Search for first edition copies on […]

Best read after Thunderball and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the reader finds Bond with a personal score to settle with Blofeld after being widowed on his wedding day. Author: Ian Fleming Publication date: 26th March 1964 Publisher: Jonathan Cape Cover artist: Richard Chopping Search for first edition copies on Abebooks With his life in tatters after Tracy […]

Ian Fleming experimented radically with The Spy Who Loved Me. The story is told in the first person by the heroine, Vivienne Michel, and James Bond only appears in the last third of the book. Author: Ian Fleming Publication date: 16th April 1962 Publisher: Jonathan Cape Cover artist: Richard Chopping Search for first edition copies on Abebooks The […]

Based on the screenplay for an aborted film project, Thunderball is notable for introducing SPECTRE to the series. The book is the first in what is sometimes known as the “Blofeld trilogy”. Author: Ian Fleming Publication date: 26th March 1956 Publisher: Jonathan Cape Cover artist: Richard Chopping Search for first edition copies on Abebooks Fleming had been […]