The James Bond series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelisations: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Anthony Horowitz. The latest novel is With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz, published in May 2022. Additionally Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond, and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny.
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.
The Profumo affair was a major scandal in twentieth-century British politics. John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, had an extramarital affair with 19-year-old model Christine Keeler beginning in 1961. Profumo denied the affair in a statement to the House of Commons, but weeks later a police investigation exposed the truth, proving that he had lied in his statement. The scandal severely damaged the credibility of Macmillan's government, and Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister in October 1963, citing ill health. Ultimately, the fallout contributed to the Conservative government's defeat by the Labour Party in the 1964 general election.
David John Moore Cornwell, better known by his pen name John le Carré, was a British and Irish author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. "A sophisticated, morally ambiguous writer", he is considered one of the greatest novelists of the postwar era. During the 1950s and 1960s he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).
You Only Live Twice is the eleventh novel and twelfth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series of stories. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom on 26 March 1964 and sold out quickly. It was the last Fleming novel published in his lifetime. It is the concluding chapter in what is known as the "Blofeld Trilogy" after Thunderball and On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Cormac McCarthy is an American writer who has written twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays and three short stories, spanning the Western and post-apocalyptic genres. He is known for his graphic depictions of violence and his unique writing style, recognizable by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution. McCarthy is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary American writers.
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky, CMG is a former colonel of the KGB who became KGB resident-designate (rezident) and bureau chief in London, and was a double agent, providing information to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1974 to 1985. After being recalled to Moscow under suspicion, he was exfiltrated from the Soviet Union in July 1985 under a plan code-named Operation Pimlico. The Soviet Union subsequently sentenced him to death in absentia.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the tenth novel and eleventh book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 1 April 1963. After the relative disappointment of The Spy Who Loved Me, the author made a concerted effort to produce another novel adhering to the tried and tested formula. The initial and secondary print runs sold out, with over 60,000 books sold in the first month, double that of the previous book. Fleming wrote the book in Jamaica whilst the first film in the Eon Productions series of films, Dr. No, was being filmed nearby.
The Spy Who Loved Me is the ninth novel and tenth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published by Jonathan Cape on 16 April 1962. It is the shortest and most sexually explicit of Fleming's novels, as well as a clear departure from previous Bond novels in that the story is told in the first person by a young Canadian woman, Vivienne Michel. Bond himself does not appear until two-thirds of the way through the book. Fleming wrote a prologue to the novel giving Michel credit as a co-author.
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess was a British diplomat and Soviet agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 to the Soviet Union, with his fellow spy Donald Maclean, led to a serious breach in Anglo-United States intelligence co-operation, and caused long-lasting disruption and demoralisation in Britain's foreign and diplomatic services.
Casino Royale is the first novel by the British author Ian Fleming. Published in 1953, it is the first James Bond book, and it paved the way for a further eleven novels and two short story collections by Fleming, followed by numerous continuation Bond novels by other authors.
Richard Peter Treadwell Davenport-Hines is a British historian and literary biographer, is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
Benedict Richard Pierce Macintyre is a British author, reviewer and columnist for The Times newspaper. His columns range from current affairs to historical controversies.
Clare Margaret Mulley is an English award-winning author and broadcaster.
Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses is a 2005 non-fiction book by British physician and writer Theodore Dalrymple. It is composed of twenty-six separate pieces that cover a wide range of topics from drug legalisation to the influence of Shakespeare. A common theme is criticism of modern society in Great Britain and, in many articles, social attitudes towards literature. The book was published by the Ivan R. Dee group. He generally describes British culture as a "moral swamp" and writes that the people must return to past traditions before it is too late.
James David Robenalt is a Cleveland-based lawyer for the firm Thompson Hine LLP. He is the author of four books: Linking Rings, William W. Durbin, the Magic and Mystery of America (2004), The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage During the Great War (2009), January 1973, Watergate, Roe v. Wade, Vietnam, and the Month that Changed America Forever (2015), and Ballots and Bullets: Black Power Politics and Urban Guerrilla Warfare in 1968 Cleveland (2018).
The Man Who Never Was is a 1953 book by Ewen Montagu about the World War II Operation Mincemeat. Montagu played a leading role in the 1943 scheme to deceive the Germans about the planned Allied invasion of Sicily. The scheme entailed releasing a dead body just off the coast of Spain, where strong currents caused it to drift ashore in an area where a skilled German secret agent was known to operate. The corpse was to appear to be the victim of an airplane crash, the non-existent Royal Marine Captain William Martin, who had letters in a briefcase that hinted at a forthcoming Allied invasion of Greece and Sardinia, rather than the obvious target of Sicily.
Stalin's Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess is a biography of the Soviet spy Guy Burgess by historian Andrew Lownie.
Bryan Denson is an American author and investigative journalist who often writes about spies, terrorists, and other national security issues. His work won the 2006 George Polk Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize during his 20-year career at The Oregonian newspaper and oregonlive.com.
Richard James Aldrich is a British political scientist and a historian of espionage who has written intensively about intelligence and security communities. Since September 2007, he has been a professor of International Security at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick. He was a professor at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham and was co-editor of the journal Intelligence and National Security for eight years. In 1990 Aldrich gained his PhD from Corpus Christie College, University of Cambridge.
