Category Archives: Ian Fleming

‘Eerie gem’ of an unearthed Graham Greene story published in Strand Magazine

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A ghost story – unusual subject matter for the late author of political thrillers – features alongside little-known Ian Fleming story

A short ghost story by Graham Greene described by analysts as “an eerie gem” was published for the first time on Wednesday, a rare glimpse into the largely uncelebrated darker side of one of the giants of 20th-century literature.

Reading at Night appears in the 75th issue of Strand Magazine, a New York literary quarterly that has built a reputation for finding and publishing “lost” writings of well-known authors.

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Ian Fleming’s lost James Bond screenplay reveals a very different 007

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With no Moneypenny and no M, a previously unpublished script reveals the author’s original ideas for Moonraker

In the action-packed film Moonraker, James Bond escapes from Jaws, the metal-toothed villain, on a hang-glider that ejects from a speedboat just as he drives over the precipice of a waterfall. It is one of numerous outlandish scenes in the film that Ian Fleming never wrote in his original 007 novel. And it could not be more different to the author’s own version of the film, according to a previously unpublished script.

In 1956, a year after the Moonraker novel was published, Fleming wrote his own 150-page film treatment with a plot that is as serious as the 1979 film is lightweight, despite Roger Moore’s charm as the fictional spy.

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No Time to Die review: Daniel Craig dispatches James Bond with panache, rage – and cuddles

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The long-awaited 25th outing for Ian Fleming’s superspy is a weird and self-aware epic with audacious surprises up its sleeve

The standard bearer of British soft power is back, in a film yanked from cinemas back in the time of the toilet roll shortage, based on a literary character conceived when sugar and meat rationing was still in force, and now emerging in cinemas as Britons are fighting for petrol in the forecourts.

Bond, like Norma Desmond, is once again ready for his closeup – and Daniel Craig once again shows us his handsome-Shrek face and the lovable bat ears, flecked with the scars of yesterday’s punch-up, the lips as ever pursed in determination or disgust.

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