In preparing to write the book, Boyd avoided the films that have defined Bond for millions, instead preferring to read each of Fleming’s works – filled with violence and a heady undercurrent of sex, along with a strong strain of misogyny – in chronological order. If Boyd is now adopting the Fleming role, it repays a decade-old compliment when he included the one-time naval intelligence officer as a character in one of his own novels.įleming looms large Equally, he has brought some of Fleming's own life into the book, by making Bond a member of the Royal Commando's 30 AU unit – the same one Fleming set up in the second World War to capture German intelligence records and equipment after the D-Day landings.
For me, the prospect appeared incredibly exciting and stimulating,” Boyd says. “When invited I didn’t hesitate, I accepted at once. The author's demise – accelerated by heavy smoking – was in Sandwich in Kent, far from his Goldeneye paradise retreat in Jamaica.īoyd is the latest in a long line of writers to take up the Bond mantle.
In reality, for the launch of the book, the Dorchester fare is less plentiful: juice, coffee and a boiled egg (to be eaten standing up), surrounded by TV cameras and a bevy of young women wearing 1960s-style air- hostess uniforms, waiting for the launch of the latest work.īetween 1952 and his death in 1964, the spy's creator, Ian Fleming, wrote 14 novels, beginning with Casino Royale. The meal in the hotel’s dining room, preceded by a couple of dry martinis in Fieldings’ private casino, is washed down with a Taittinger rosé 1960, followed by a Château Batailley 1959 to accompany his main course. It is set in 1969, and begins with Bond staying in the Park Lane hotel celebrating – alone – his 45th birthday over a dinner of pan-fried scallops with a beurre blanc sauce, followed by fillet of beef, rare, with pommes dauphinoises. There is much about food and drink in Solo, written by William Boyd. In Solo, the new James Bond novel, the spy observes a beautiful woman wearing a catsuit as they both occupy a slowly descending lift in the Dorchester Hotel, before he settles down, alone, to a large breakfast.
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