- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Aurum Press Ltd; New edition edition (27 Mar 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1854108980
- ISBN-13: 978-1854108982
- Product Dimensions: 18.8 x 12.6 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 401,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
It is now 40 years since the premiere of the very first Bond movie, "Dr No", with a youthful Sean Connery as 007: perhaps the most charismatic - and certainly the most durable - movie hero ever. The latest addition to the series will no doubt try and outdo all its predecessors in the scale of its pyrotechnics and special effects. But James Bond was invented by one man, Ian Fleming, a wartime intelligence officer and Sunday Times newspaper man who lived to see the beginning of the Bond cult, but not its astonishing growth into a multi-million-dollar industry. John Pearson knew him well, as his assistant at the Sunday Times when Fleming was writing its "Atticus" column, and in 1966, after Fleming's death, wrote this autobiography. It remains a definitive account of how only Ian Fleming could have dreamed up James Bond, for his own life as colourful as anything in his fiction - indeed, it shows how the Bond books were nothing less than a covert autobiography. Glamorous, ruthlessly womanising, charming and debonair, leading an exotic, globetrotting life from wartime Algiers to his beachside house, Goldeneye, in Jamaica, Fleming was nevertheless as elusive and opaque as his fictional hero - a man whose icy reserve few could breach. For this edition of the autobiography, John Pearson has added a new introduction, in which he looks at the extent to which the character of Fleming survives even immortality beyond its creator's wildest dreams.
About the Author
John Pearson's books include his two bestselling books on the Kray twins, The Profession of Violence and The Cult of Violence, and Bluebird and the Dead Lake, also published by Aurum.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
BACK IN 1965, when I started work on this biography, Ian Fleming had been dead less than a year. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
BACK IN 1965, when I started work on this biography, Ian Fleming had been dead less than a year. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
This is a good book. What I like about it is that Pearson seems to have done his homework. He draws a lot of connections between Fleming, the boy, son and brother and husband, the Secret Service man, the writer, the playboy, the athlete and the alcohol drinking and cigarette smoking socialite, and the subject of his books - James Bond (named after an ornithologist writing of birds of Caribbean - one of Fleming's favourite books). Pearson selects and renders his anecdotes well, and I really got a sense of the development of Bond and Flemming - the character and the man - each bleeding into the other.
There's a great emotional aspect to the book also - Pearson gets beneath the cool facade, delving into Flemming's insecurities and inner motivations - in a very human and humane manner. In many respects, this is quite a moving book. It was six months ago that I read it, and I still think about it, frequently, and refer to it from time to time in conversations with friends; yes, it's full of interesting facts that when shared with others never fail to impress!
I recommend it, for the Bond enthusiast, and those interested in Flemming, and for those interested in the relationship between authors and their characters - authorship - the way in which authors sometimes live their life, by chance and/or intentionally, in a manner that seems to facilitate and feed into their written subject.
Enjoy!
There's a great emotional aspect to the book also - Pearson gets beneath the cool facade, delving into Flemming's insecurities and inner motivations - in a very human and humane manner. In many respects, this is quite a moving book. It was six months ago that I read it, and I still think about it, frequently, and refer to it from time to time in conversations with friends; yes, it's full of interesting facts that when shared with others never fail to impress!
I recommend it, for the Bond enthusiast, and those interested in Flemming, and for those interested in the relationship between authors and their characters - authorship - the way in which authors sometimes live their life, by chance and/or intentionally, in a manner that seems to facilitate and feed into their written subject.
Enjoy!
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