Ian Fleming's niece, Lucy, did a short interview with GQ back in the Fall. She talked about the new 007 audiobooks that were just produced in England (I just finished David Tennant's reading of OHMSS- excellent!), the Bond actors, book and movie plots, and the continuation novels. On the subject of letters, she mentioned that her cousin was currently writing a book based on Ian Fleming's letters. I'm very interested to see that! There have been previous books inspired by Fleming letters, including The Letters of Ann Fleming and Yours Ever, Ian Fleming. As always, I was most interested to hear her thoughts on uncle Ian:
From GQ: "Do you think that when your uncle was writing the
books he could have imagined their success? I think he would have been very
pleased. The books did incredibly well in their time - he became as much of a
celebrity as a writer could in those days. He loved the films and saw two of
them being made into films: Dr No and From Russia With Love. He loved the
detail of filmmaking and all the excitement that comes along with it. He would
have perhaps turned his nose up at some of the continuation novels that have
come out, but I don't know. I think he would have been thrilled. He was
always quite ambitious for them. When he wrote the first one he was really
nervous about it, he didn't show it to anyone at first. He was nervous about
people mocking him. Once the publisher had given him the go ahead, that gave
him a great boost and he wrote one book a year for the last twelve years of his
life. Which is a hell of a lot of books - you don't see that nowadays. He wrote
very quickly - he'd been trained as a journalist. He said 'I never look
back, otherwise you never get a book written. Just write it, write it, write
it.' He went out to Jamaica to write them and had a very strict routine.
Then he'd come back to England and edit it, look up facts and details. He was
very into getting things right." More at GQ. First Edition of Casino Royale below available from James Bond First Editions.
Congratulations again to all of the Spy Vibers who won vintage prizes in our birthday give-away contest! What else is new here in the lair? Scroll down for posts about Ian Fleming's desert island interview, new Fleming book designs, Fantomas on Kindle, Spy Smasher cliffhanger serial, the new Barbarella tv show, Man From U.N.C.L.E. illustration, British spy comics in the 1960s, Piper Gates retro spy designs, Cinema Retro celebrates James Bond, and Spy Vibe's 2012 top ten, including my review of Skyfall. Want to support Spy Vibe? Please make a small donation with our secure Paypal tip-jar link at the top left of the main page. Nothing is too small to help cover the increasing bills for the domain, web-forwarding and other costs to maintain the site. Thank you!
