- Paperback: 512 pages
- Publisher: Phoenix; New edition edition (4 Nov 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1857997832
- ISBN-13: 978-1857997835
- Product Dimensions: 3.2 x 12.7 x 19 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
49,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Film > Business Issues
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Review
"As good as any Bond novels, it proves that facts can be equally as fascinating as any fiction" (SUNDAY MERCURY )
"This is a revealing biography of a man who lived life in the fast lane" (GOOD BOOK GUIDE )
"This is a revealing biography of a man who lived life in the fast lane" (GOOD BOOK GUIDE )
GOOD BOOK GUIDE
"This is a revealing biography of a man who lived life in the fast lane"
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a wonderful example of what, to me, illuminating biography should be. Lycett has exhaustively picked over every kind of source - the man's work, those who knew him, their letters & comments, the media & added his own low-key, rarely judgemental assessment to make Fleming really alive in the mind's eye without ever having met him himself. It is also so much a book about relationships, warts and all. I especially appreciate the manner in which the reader is left, from such a wealth of information, to draw their own conclusions about the subject.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Andrew Lycett's superb biography is the story of a shallow man, disastrous husband and hopeless father. And yet, as Fleming lived his heavy drinking, self centred life in an upper crust mileu where his values were often accepted, and desirable work owed more to public school and family conections than merit, Lycett produces a sympathetic portrait. Fleming's mother was never going to rear an emotionally mature man and placing him at Eton did nothing to ameliorate her destructive influence. He developed as an excellent writer and in his fantasy figure James Bond seems to have been invested with many of the qualities Fleming would have liked to posses himself. Reading the excruciating details of Fleming's inability to halt his slide to an early death - e.g.70 cigarettes a day and heavy drinking - is like watching a train crash in slow motion.
He loved facts, he admired and read great writers, he was passionate about the marine environment and he worked hard on his writing. He wanted fame and fortune but when it came the satisfaction was muted. In one way he never compromised: he lived his life on his own destructive terms to the end. This is a magnificent biography, the detail and sharp insights - often supplied by astute observers such as Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene - are stunning. And the portrait of Fleming, at the end, is sympathetic. He was a deeply flawed, chronically disatisfied man who sought happiness in a material world which alone could never provide it. But this same man produced James Bond who thrilled millions, allowed them for a time to escape their own mediocrity and melancholy, and Fleming himself acheived a celebrity on a par with his hero.
He loved facts, he admired and read great writers, he was passionate about the marine environment and he worked hard on his writing. He wanted fame and fortune but when it came the satisfaction was muted. In one way he never compromised: he lived his life on his own destructive terms to the end. This is a magnificent biography, the detail and sharp insights - often supplied by astute observers such as Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene - are stunning. And the portrait of Fleming, at the end, is sympathetic. He was a deeply flawed, chronically disatisfied man who sought happiness in a material world which alone could never provide it. But this same man produced James Bond who thrilled millions, allowed them for a time to escape their own mediocrity and melancholy, and Fleming himself acheived a celebrity on a par with his hero.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I should start by saying I am a massive James Bond fan and have always been fascinated by Ian Fleming - you see the TV programmes and the newspaper articles describing him as a complicated man who based James Bond on himself.
This book certainly provides a very detailed and highly researched account of Fleming's life, and for that the author must be given credit. However, I found this ended up having a quite negative effect. The book is written in a very encyclopedic style - one that lacks any life and you feel it is written by your old English teacher. Yes, Fleming met many people throughout his life, but do we really to have incredibly in-depth analysis of each of these people? Then, we get reams of pages dedicated to exploring each and every one of these relationships with Fleming.
This results in a book with no flow, huge sentences and ultimately causing the reader to get completely lost. Chapters don't seem to follow each other and the book ended up becoming a maze. In the end, I did something that I have never done with a book before, I decided to skip chapters and ultimately could not finish the book. Which is a real shame.
If you're a student of Fleming history then this is certainly the book for you. If you are a James Bond fan and want to know a bit about Fleming and how he came to write about Bond, then this is definitely not the book for you. This is more of a text book than a good read.
This book certainly provides a very detailed and highly researched account of Fleming's life, and for that the author must be given credit. However, I found this ended up having a quite negative effect. The book is written in a very encyclopedic style - one that lacks any life and you feel it is written by your old English teacher. Yes, Fleming met many people throughout his life, but do we really to have incredibly in-depth analysis of each of these people? Then, we get reams of pages dedicated to exploring each and every one of these relationships with Fleming.
This results in a book with no flow, huge sentences and ultimately causing the reader to get completely lost. Chapters don't seem to follow each other and the book ended up becoming a maze. In the end, I did something that I have never done with a book before, I decided to skip chapters and ultimately could not finish the book. Which is a real shame.
If you're a student of Fleming history then this is certainly the book for you. If you are a James Bond fan and want to know a bit about Fleming and how he came to write about Bond, then this is definitely not the book for you. This is more of a text book than a good read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Superb biography of a fascinating man
This is a superb biography of Ian Fleming, and well worth reading if you're interested in him. It makes two substantial additions to the picture provided by John Pearson in his... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Jeremy Duns
an insite into the creator of 007
I found this book hard to put down. This book written by a friend is a well structured insite into the creator of 007 and Chitty chitty bang bang. Read more
Published on 8 Dec 2000
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