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Sixty

Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of Ian Fleming's death. Having gone to the Royal St George's golf club (Moonraker) on the 11th, Ian had a heart attack (his second) just after lunch. He died at the Kent and Canterbury hospital the following morning.

Fleming's books had received a substantial sales boost in the early sixties, thanks in part to JFK declaring From Russia with Love to be one of his ten favourite books. However, just as, if not more, important was the start of the wildly successful film franchise, with the first film, Dr No, coming out in 1962. You Only Live Twice, Fleming's 12th Bond book, and the last published in his lifetime, was the first one that he wrote after the film series began and scholars, of course, enjoy reviewing it (and, no doubt, the posthumous Man with the Golden Gun) for evidence of Connery in Bond.

However, Fleming couldn't resist slipping a little reference to the first film in book 11, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, no doubt during the edit. When describing the success of Blofeld's mountaintop ski resort, and how it was attracting the 'it crowd' away from the likes of Gstaad and St Moritz, shoehorned in we have "And that beautiful girl with the long fair hair at the big table, that is Ursula Andress, the film star". Given that Andress's CV wasn't exactly overflowing with starring roles prior to Dr No, this can only have been a nod by the author to the success of his own film. How very self-congratulatory and paradoxical.

I've just finished reading OHMSS, sometimes referred to as the middle book in the Blofeld Trilogy (between Thunderball and You Only Live Twice). They are not consecutive in the series, as The Spy Who Loved Me is just before OHMSS, but there Bond has a walk-on part in his own book.

And what do we get. Lots of elements that are familiar, either from literary Bond, or certainly from the films that followed:

  • A disenfranchised Bond contemplating his resignation from the service.
  • A damsel in distress, with complications.
  • Some casino action, big wins and gallant losses.
  • An evil genius, with henchman and mountaintop lair.
  • A dastardly plan the bring the country to its knees.
  • Bond to save the day, of course.
Along the way, an entertaining little side plot about heraldry, thanks to Sable Basilisk and 'The World is not Enough' or, perhaps far more appropriate to Bond, 'Let the deed shaw'.

And to end the book, the ultimate of disasters. How can Bond possibly move on from here? No doubt the reading public were desperate to get their hands on You Only Live Twice in March 1964.


Note on photo - some copies of OHMSS from the collection. Most go with the ski/snow theme for the front cover, although the first edition shows a hand (believed to be that of the artist Richard Chopping) drawing the Bond coat of arms.

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