For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond

by Ben Macintyre

Overview

The official history of Ian Fleming and James Bond by the bestselling author of Operation Mincemeat

'Marvellously entertaining and informative' Spectator

'Thrilling' Sunday Times

'An entertaining mix of history, espionage, biography, and post-war sociology' Literary Review
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'I am going to write the spy story to end all spy stories.'

One morning in February 1952, a journalist called Ian Fleming sat down at his desk and set about creating a fictional secret agent. James Bond was born and would go on to become one of the most successful, enduring and lucrative creations in literature. But Bond's world of glamour and romance, gadgets and cocktails, espionage and villainy wasn't entirely drawn from imagination: Fleming's background and his experiences as an intelligence officer during the Second World War were all formative parts in the creation of the world's most famous spy.

Packed with astonishing detail and written in Macintyre's inimitable style, For Your Eyes Only is the most enlightening, enlivening book on the creator of the spy who not only lived twice, but proved to be immortal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408830642
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	02/02/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	436,684
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Ben Macintyre is a columnist and Associate Editor on The Times. He has worked as the newspaper's correspondent in New York, Paris and Washington. His books include Sunday Times bestseller Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat, Double Cross and A Spy Among Friends.
Ben Macintyre is a columnist and Associate Editor on The Times. He has worked as the newspaper's correspondent in New York, Paris and Washington. He is the author of nine books including Agent Zigzag, shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Galaxy British Book Award for Biography of the Year 2008, the number 1 bestseller Operation Mincemeat and, most recently, the Richard&Judy Book Club selection, Double Cross. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

Adult/High School- This thoroughly researched, intelligently written, and beautifully presented book explores in detail the connections between a super-successful writer and his marvelously engaging creation. Fictional characters, even one as exotic, sexy, and talented as Bond, seldom emerge from the pure, unaltered imagination of the author. Bond has deep roots in Fleming's life, in the places where the author lived and visited, the people he knew and worked with, and in the family, social, and love life he experienced. Macintyre also investigates the real-life roots of other major characters, such as Miss Moneypenney, M, and supervillain Ernst Stavro Biofeld. He examines the plot origins of several of the stories, as well as the real-world gadgets and gizmos that show up so famously in the books and movies. Where does the "Bond girl" come from? And what should we make of Bond's life of luxury? These and other questions are answered here, revealing Macintyre's convincing reverence for and fascination with the intertwining worlds of these figures. The volume is lavishly illustrated with black-and-white and color photographs.-Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA

School Library Journal

[A] marvelous tribute…He examines, among other things, the probable genesis of Bond's name (an ornithologist) and his spycraft (a number of exotic and intrepid agents, entertainingly described). He looks at the sources for Bond's taste in women (Fleming) and attitude toward them (Fleming) and at the effect of the Bond-of-the-movies on the Bond-of-the-books (significant).” —Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe

From the Publisher