Backlisted - On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming

Episode Date: December 25, 2017

In a special Christmas edition (which of course can be listened to at any time of year) John & Andy welcome Jude and James Cook to discuss Ian Fleming's most festive Bond novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. There's discussion of the films, the music, and the sometimes questionable attitude to women, the French and drinking. Also talked about in the 'What We've Been Reading' slot; Kindred by Octavia Butler and Alys Fowler's Hidden Nature.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)6'40 - Hidden Nature by Alice Fowler14'40 - Kindred by Octavia Butler21'20 - On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. I love Sondheim. What's not? But I'd never seen Follies.

I knew quite a few of the songs from Follies because they're quite well known, such as Broadway Baby's quite well known and I'm Still Here and Losing My Mind. And the actual... This production was... It is genuinely incredible. I mean, brilliant, brilliant production. Imelda Staunton and Janie Dee.

And it's sold out. The run is completely sold out. So normally I would prefer to see it in the theatre but I don't have that opportunity but fortunately they do this National Theatre live thing have any of you been to one of those?

No, but I've spoken to the guys that make it and it's really interesting That's such a producer thing to say They completely because when they put the cameras in they take that's such a producer thing to say they completely they completely uh because when they put the cameras in they take seats out yeah and then they completely re-block the whole performance for the cameras i must say i spent a lot of the thing watching it thinking this must have taken because i went along thinking is it going to be all right is it going

to be like yeah a couple of cameras pointing it was just an absolute masterclass in not just live broadcast, but in how you film dance in such a way that the camera stays, the camera doesn't stay too still, it moves in sympathy with the choreography and the dancing. And it must have taken the in the classic sally doan and gene kelly kind of playbook and i was watching it thinking my goodness this must have taken weeks if not months of preparation just to block this out and work out what the best angle was it was really fantastic it made me want to go and see. I'd been sort of sceptical about those live broadcasts

and I hadn't been to one before. It sort of made me a convert overnight. I just would... I think it's such a brilliant opportunity to go and see these productions. It's such a great idea. It's a really smart idea. But I similarly had suspicions that it would just be...

Oh, it's so good. Yeah. But you can never get a ticket for the like, the Hiddleston Hamlet. It's the only way of seeing it, really. Yeah, and, you know, having said that, Matt, you will have been pleased to learn that there was a gentleman sitting in front of me who happened to be wearing a football shirt,

I'm sure that was just a coincidence, who every time one of the women opened their mouths to sing literally put his head in his hands he was so unhappy he was clearly being tortured someone i'm saying somebody had said please come with me and he'd gone along but when they went when when the when emelda staunton came to belt out brilliantly losing my mind uh he looked as though he was losing his. He just couldn't wait to flee. Was he the critic from The Observer?

Maybe. I don't think he was. That's not good. I can't have done nothing that interesting. But I did go to a really good party last night, which was for a much-adew books in Sussex, who were announcing and knew they were expanding what they're doing, which is a great story.

Independent booksellers getting bigger, doing more, doing interesting stuff with crafts. Where are they? That's a really good question. In Sussex. Where was the party? That way. The party was in a very swanky hotel in, what would you call it,

Haymarket, I suppose. It's called the Haymarket Hotel Hotel I think one would call it that What is that area though? The West End London's glittering West End Yes Whatever Very nice, very good

Lots of booksellers there, lots of waterstones people From the old days it was very jolly Well that's probably enough What lives we lead lots of booksellers there, lots of waterstones people. From the old days, it was very jolly. Well, that's probably enough. What lives we lead, eh? I can always sing some selections from Folly. You want to bring it back round. You should get a little electric piano.

I should get a little Tom Shuttleworth style. Producer says no. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. We're here with the assistance of our sponsors, Unbound, the website which brings authors and readers together to create something special. My name's John Mitchinson and I publish books at Unbound. And I'm Andy Miller and I write books, including The Year of Reading Dangerously, and I'm happy to take this opportunity to announce that I will be penning the next James Bond book.

Yes, you join us in a wood-panelled library in the College of Arms, squeezed between the River Thames and St Paul's Cathedral, where today we'll be discussing On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming. And with us today to talk all things heraldic, allergic and indeed alpineic are two guests. The first is the author and editor James Cook,

whose book Memory Songs is forthcoming from Unbound in May 2018. Hello, James. And the other is the author and editor Jude Cook. His novel Byron Easy was published by William Heineman in 2013 and he contributes to The Guardian, The Literary Review, The Spectator, amongst others. Hello Jude. Hi. Now, eagle-eared listeners will notice the similarity

that Jude and James share a surname and in true Bond style sinister twins. There was some debate about the nature of your twindom earlier

yes well I think we're fraternal rather than identical short of a DNA test it hasn't been proved that's the thing it's a simple blood test it's still in play but one of you carries a white cat that's that

which wasn't in Fleming. No, not in Fleming at all. So little was, as we'll find out. Now, we should say at this point that, although we're going to talk a little bit about the Bond films, because you probably have to, I think, when you talk about books, that we are going to concentrate on Fleming as a writer and on his career as a novelist.

If you enjoy the Bond films, please tune in to our friends at SmirshPod, the podcast SmirshPod, which is extremely entertaining and amusing and is festooned in insane detail when it comes to digging down deep into the minutiae of the Bond films. But we're going to turn our attentions to the novels instead.

So before we do that, as is traditional, John, what have you been reading this week? Well, I've been reading something that I... self-consciously trying to think of something that was as far away from the world of James Bond as I could. And I think I came up with a doozy, which is called Hidden Nature by Alice Fowler. Alice Fowler known to some of you as the gardening writer for The Guardian but this book

is a memoir very much in the kind of what I would call the modern style quite a lot about her her own emotional life quite a lot about nature in a way sort of in that kind of h is for hawk mold or the amy littrock the outrun mold and it's very very good it's it's it's a very uh it tells a story basically of um the end of her marriage she's married um to a man who suffers from cystic fibrosis so she spends quite a lot of time taking him in and out of hospital. And she's really come to a point where I think it's not conceived that the end of the marriage is the issue, but she needs to do something with her life.

She feels driven to do something. And the thing that she chooses to do is to explore the canals of Birmingham where she lives, which you probably know the old canard about. There are more canals in Birmingham than there is in Venice, which I think is true. There are about 100 miles of navigable canals. So it is a nature book, but it's a nature book which has an edge.

I mean, the canals in Birmingham are not, many of them are not in any way scenic. But I kind of was drawn to this a i think she's a very good writer and this is is a beautifully written book but i also spend every day i come into work i wandered down the canal here in islington and i kind of i really just want to keep going i mean not that i don't want to come into work but i just sort of i just find i just find that whole idea of these hidden waterways. We've got an amazing pike that stalks in the summer.

You look out of the window and you see the pike, and there are herons and kingfishers. And indeed, all of this kind of wildlife she writes about in the book. But at the same time, what's actually happening is she's changing, and she comes out during the course of the book, discovers that she's gay, falls in love. It's a sort of life transformation book. It is very intense, but it is, you know, it's one of those things

you can either get away with it or you can't, and I think she does it extremely well. It's incidentally also brilliant about plants, as you would expect. Brilliant little sort of bits about Budlia and the history of Budlia or, you know, the use of coltsfoot as a medicine, sort of all these amazing watching brambles you know blackberries blackberry plants can change sex which kind of and almost every moss is and fungi and lichen and old boots and all the you know uh bits of um bits of crap in the canals that you would expect she writes brilliantly about all of

that and it kind of yeah it kind of has a happy ending and she keeps it going she keeps the whole thing afloat really through being grounded in this sort of this this task that she set herself i'll read you a tiny little bit just to get the flavor of it that gives you a good idea of her but in as i say in the kind of modern in the modern sort of way of things, I think this is probably as good a book as I've read of this kind. Maybe because it's not written by a man, and I'm allowed to say that. I think there's a sort of difference, a different kind of sensitivity.

She's really, really good on making those. What could be crass comparisons between the natural world and her inner state, but actually she does really really good on on making those what could be crass comparisons between the natural world and her inner state but actually she does it really well as we negotiated our route to the water she's here with a couple of friends that she's met um a couple of friends she's met in her exploration of the canals i heard their version a version of birmingham i mean it's incidentally you know if you're liking, I know with your love of all things suburban, there's a sort of portrait of a

place that's... They just raised their eyebrows when you said that, but there was no irony there at all. If you're interested in a celebration of the kind of the ordinary, the ordinary in the English and the unremarked upon, there's no city that takes more of a kicking than Birmingham.

And she really does restore, I mean, there's a lot of the social history in it, and the history of the canals is great in the book. I heard their version of Birmingham. Here was the street where they'd lost a car, there a night in jail. Around this corner there was a minor dispute about how long one had worked there before she dumped the other.

These roads were full of dancing. The best maps are not published, are not accurate or even sensible, but are the maps we make ourselves about our cities, towns, villages and landscapes, our kith and kin. They are made up of private details that allow us to navigate our past as well as our current terrain. We all make these maps, filled with personal detail. Here's the corner I realised I was in love. There I was happy. Here I lost my bike. Over there I caught the scent of an ex-lover, then had to sit down and cry. The sight of that long vista always saves my soul. A private tapestry of my turf.

My maps are mostly made up of plants. I don't navigate by street names here is my favorite city oak outside the dole office an almond always give nuts to those prepared to hunt that is where my favorite urban dandelion once poked its head out i can forage in that corner for garlic or damsons or the seed of opium poppies anyway she goes on but it's just kind of... So that's called Hidden Nature by Alice Fowler. A Voyage of Discovery is the subtitle. Now, you mentioned H.S. for Hawk. I have to say, before I talk about the book I was going to talk about,

that I am fresh off reading The Goshawk by T.H. Wright. Isn't one of the great books of all time? That book is insane. Nuts. I'm not sure what I thought it was going to be. I don't think I've ever read a book that's so intense from page one. You haven't read H is for Hawk yet, have you? No, no.

Well, that's pretty intense. But also, the fact is that it's such a crazy book. It's got three sections, hasn't it, the goshawk? And the second and third sections are sort of, they're not surplus to requirement, but he's sort of burnt himself out by the end of the first section. He's written such a pitch of lunacy. Has anybody read it other than John?

I have read it. No, no, no. Read H is for Hawk. Yeah. Well, I want to. H is for Hawk is a kind of a meditation on her as much as anything her relationship with that book as well as her own yeah um but the other thing if you haven't read is brilliant biography of T.H. White by Sylvia Tansend Warner yes well which is we were talking about this week which is remarkable remarkable in its, because he was quite an odd man.

Matt, my friend. The portfolio of vices carried around by T.H. White. In an Eric Gill kind of way. My goodness, yes. I think Robert McFarlane brings in T.H. White quite a few times in his books. He does, yeah. And people who follow me, I won't repeat the story now, but people who follow me on Twitter,

Rick Gokoskioski former rare book dealer has a brilliant story in Lost, Stolen or Shredded his wonderful book Lost, Stolen or Shredded about a book personally bound for T.H. White

coming into his possession look at my timeline on Twitter spanking anyway not spanking anyway so which is fine because he was a schoolmaster so that's not a problem coming into his possession. Look at my timeline on Twitter. Spanking. Anyway. Not a spanking. Anyway, so I... Which is fine, because he was a schoolmaster,

so that's not a problem at all. There's no problem with any of it. Anyway, a lot of spanking in Bonn. Yeah. A lot of bottoms in Bonn, don't they? Shall we... Shall we... Shall we just...

Andrew. Shall we just... Andy Miller. What have you been reading? what have you been reading? What have you been reading? It's my fault. I brought up the work of the strange man, T.H. White. I've been reading a book by an American writer

called Octavia Butler, a novel called Kindred. Now, I actually read this a few months ago. The reason I haven't talked about it before is because I feel quite strongly that we might do an episode about Octavia Butler I think she's much better known in the US than she is here in the UK she was writing in the 50s 60s and 70s and later to be fair but she died in 2006 she is in theory a science fiction writer she won many awards the hugo and nebula awards she was the

first science fiction writer to receive the macarthur fellowship genius grant wrote several i mean i say several at least half a dozen groundbreaking novels the thing you need to know about her is that she was, in terms of the literary, political and social establishment, she was in theory disadvantaged in three ways. She was a woman, she was black and she worked in the genre of sci-fi and therefore for her work to be taken seriously was a challenge. Kindred is a novel about slavery. It's about a woman who, without explanation,

finds herself transported back in time. She doesn't know where she is, she doesn't know exactly when she is, she doesn't know what's going on. And I don't want to give too much away about the plot but what happens to her is she shuttles backwards and forwards in time I will read you only the opening two paragraphs because again I don't want to give too much away I lost an arm on my last trip home my left arm and I lost about a year of my life and much of the comfort and security I had not valued until it was gone. When the police released Kevin, he came to the hospital and stayed with me so that I would know I hadn't lost him too. Now, I suspect anyone with their head screwed on is going to want to carry on reading.

That is a terrific opening. I suspect anyone with their head screwed on is going to want to carry on reading. That is a terrific opening. And one of the things that I found so interesting about this novel is if you were to plot a line, a sort of literary fiction to genre line, at one end you might find, at the literary end you might find Beloved by Tony Morrison, which is a magnificent novel. That was written about 10 years after Kindred. Kindred was

published in 76 or 77. Beloved was published in 87. And then at the other end of that line you would find Kindred, a genre novel, in theory a genre novel. And in line uh you would find kindred a genre novel in theory a genre novel and in the middle you would find the underground railroad by colson whitehead which has a kind of light dusting of yeah science fiction in in terms of how the the way the underground the the mythical underground railroad is made physical into a real thing into a real thing, yeah. But I realised as I was reading Kindred that it was sort of, I'm making that comparison, but in a sense you want not to make that comparison because I felt that although I love Beloved,

that there was a kind of energy in Octavia Butler's book and a sort of fearlessness and a recklessness which makes it both a less careful read than tony morrison yeah but at the same time crackling with energy and with anger and the brilliance of it, is not in saying in a kind of thrilling way, slavery is bad. Right. That's a given. as a slave, a slave with privileges for reasons that I don't want to give away, that cast light on her life in the present day, in a novel that was published in the year of the American Bicentennial as well.

Seems not a mistake. Seems very deliberate. And it made me think, as we address these questions all the time, don't we? This is a brilliant example of a backlisted book, which is sort of, I hate this phrase, it's been ruined in recent years, but it's hiding in plain sight. It's in print. God bless you, headline. It's in print. You could walk into a decent sized bookshop and find this. It's full of ideas and anger and energy and style and all those things i think i read it in 48 hours as well it's 300 pages it is not as finessed as those other two novels i've mentioned but it is every bit as readable and has strengths that those books don't have have you john have you ever read anything by her no i mean i I had the vague idea of her, because it's an odd thing.

Black female sci-fi. But never read any. If anyone listening to this feels they want to petition me to come on and do an episode about Octavia Butler, I'd love us to do an episode about Octavia Butler. It sounds fascinating. I'll definitely read it. I think it precedes The Colour Purple as well doesn't it yes it does

which is another is treated in that book but I think we were talking about how maybe the magical realist or sort of sci-fi approach

frees up the writer to approach the most difficult of subjects you know next to the Holocaust perhaps

one of the things i liked about this book is i i don't know the extent to which the author followed the rules of creative writing when she wrote it i slightly got the sense that occasionally the plot was getting away from her but so good is she at evoking moments of crisis, both physical and moral, that you were never more than 20 to 30 pages away from something that made you stop and put the book down and think, whoa, to imagine yourself into that situation, into that, to accept the fantasy as a reality and then proceed there as a kind of moral document.

It's a really, really good book. Now, it's commercials. Now, we could carry on all day, but we don't have all the time in the world. So, let us turn to the reason we are gathered here. Do we have spoiler problems with Bond? we're not going to if you have never read

if for some reason you have never read On Her Majesty's Secret Service nor seen the film switch off now, it's fine we can't talk about this book without spoilers can we? well we can't talk about it without talking about the end so On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming, gentlemen where were you when you first

encountered this book or in flambeau yeah it's all about canals yes canals earlier i was actually on a narrowboat on one of those barge holidays that you had in 70s that were advertised by a host season host season with here comes the sun yeah and i was on the top bunk and it was in the days where where your parents they sort of leave you and go to the pub which was you know joyous to us so so i read i think half of the book you know in the time it took for them to go to the pub in closing time it's not it's not a long read is it i mean it's puffed out to 300 pages but it's grips I think I was 10 or 11 at the time

and it just absolutely gripped it was kicks for boys I think I'd read 2 or 3 by that point and I think it was the bits that I didn't understand that grabbed me the sophistication of it Fleming opens up the world he talks about gambling he talks about about women still don't understand

nor women definitely not and uh yeah so so it's inextricably linked anyway with with with ho seasons and an awful broad for me so yes i was on the orient express and i was in my bedroom uh and i was 10 uh significantly it was the first time i'd had my own bedroom we shared a bedroom so i wasn't reading it in the bunk beds in the bottom bunk read into that what you will um and uh yeah dominant twin well you could say that not anymore oh this is working better than we even dreamed on just keep on we just push them yeah um so yeah and it was it was this i'd seen the film the film had been on tv uh the first time. So I'd seen the film and then I read the book. And they're so similar. But all the stuff...

Fleming is the great explainer, you know, as a boy imagining what his life's going to be. And it's clearly nothing like James Bond. But you were both huge Bond enthusiasts. You had a Bond phase, right? We had a massive Bond phase, yeah. It was a very narrow window, actually, when you think about it. It was only two years, between the age of 10 and 12.

Right. And we collected the stuff, the sort of Bond stuff, memorabilia was quite cheap then, so you could get it at the back of Film Review and the vintage magazine shop, which is on... Oh, yeah, on Brewers Street. Not anymore. Street no not anymore which is opposite where FOP is now

but this was an amazing shop that had these toppling shelves full of magazines so we bought this stuff for pennies there and our sort of obsession with it got slightly more and more deranged and out of control

and we ended up keeping our dinner money for a year we starved for our obsession we spent walking around the playing field with a bag of monster munch and half a wagon wheel and then our mum

found out, she tumbled, she came back from work and she found a whole packet of custard creams had been demolished. And that's when she put two and two together that we weren't eating. And she saw the bond post. And the bond post, that was a bit of a giveaway. Made this connection. Many of which are worth thousands now. Yeah, it all ended up in...

We sold them to buy electric guitars. And what year are we talking about? What film is the current film? This is late 70s, so I guess Moonraker. Between Spy Love Me and Moonraker, yeah. In the middle of the Roger Moore period.

My dad only ever took me to see two films. And on one occasion it was to get him out of the house and him and me out of the house and that was to go and see the empire strikes back but the only film he ever took me to see because he wanted to see it was the spy who loved me good choice i was again you know i i consider that quite fortunate i think the The Spy Who Loved Me doesn't seem to attract too many plaudits now, but it's sort of the magical one for me.

But anyway... The best Moore film. Yeah. We can't talk about that. So anyway, to go back, so the Cook brothers have these shared enthusiasms, and that

includes everything Bond, right? And films as well, beyond that. Yeah, the films and the novels. But film in general. And you read all the books? I mean, did you go through, did you work your way through them? Over an 18-month period. I mean, we just read them very quickly, as you do at that age.

We should have been reading, you know, Bronte and Austen, but we didn't. So I hadn't read a... Before we knew we were going to record this backlisted, I hadn't read a James Bond book. I'd only ever read one. I cannot actually remember which it was. I think it was Diamonds of Forever.

I was at school. So I hadn't read one for a very, very long time. And I worked up to on Her Majesty's Secret Service. So I read in the last few weeks Moonraker, Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, and then on Her Majesty's Secret Service. And you've given me one of the most enjoyable stroke unusual backlisted experiences because I started reading Moonraker and thought, well, this is no good. This guy can't write.

What's going on? I couldn't put it down. I don't understand how he does it. It's one of the things we're going to talk about. I do not understand how he does it. There's all these things that are wrong. The prose isn't bad, but there's all these sorts of focus on the wrong stuff.

Six chapters of bridge. And yet totally gripping yeah yeah i hadn't read any either so i did casino royale and on a majesty secret service because i was i had bought a couple of others but i didn't but i really enjoyed both of them i'm still completely baffled i have no idea how to still not even the faintest notion of how to play Baccarat. But I sort of feel like if I could style it out in a casino, if I got that, I'd know more about how to do that than I did previously. But you're exactly right for me.

That was exactly what I felt, because I don't quite know why I'm enjoying this so much. And also, I guess you can't really separate... You can't quite separate you can't quite separate your enjoyment of the books from your I mean the thing that kept striking me is how different the books were from the films I mean the film of Casino

Ryle I haven't seen the remake but the one it's just one of the most ludicrous films I think I've ever seen the one in the quote unquote remake the first Daniel Craig film is relatively no I saw the Woody Allen. Oh, yeah.

Spoof. Spoof, yeah. That's a whole other discussion. Let's leave that. Yeah, we will. We never know. So, I know, Jude, you went back and you re-read, didn't you, quite a few of these books?

I read all of them. For this? For this for this yeah i was grateful of the excuse i i read the 10 as they say major novels it missed out spy love me man with the golden gun just to sort of test them against the that 11 year old who was just absolutely blown away and i agree with you about the prose it starts starts off poor. He's learning on the job, as it were. But it still stands up. As a craftsman, in terms of plot, and as a portraitist in terms of the villains and the blonde women, he's an extremely proficient writer of prose.

And this is coming after, it sounds pretentious, but a lot of reading in the in in between so they do stand up but then by the time you get to honor majesty service which is i think the 12th book or something something happens to the prose it starts to fall apart slightly the story's still amazing but it becomes slightly imprecise and something we all commented on is that it's infested with exclamation marks. Val McDermott in her introduction in the 50s, but there's so many in the Manchester City, so it's extraordinary. It's almost like Bond was this

signature dish of Fleming's and he went mad with the seasoning. He's suddenly putting all this stuff in to undermine the problem bringing the drinking because because the drinking had had got sort of uh fleming desperate at this point yeah fleming and he crept into the into bond yeah he has 43 drinks in the course of the book which i think is a record is it 46 yes do you want to know all the statistics? Of the 317 drinks in the...

What are they, 12 novels? I think 13. 13, if you can. Of the 317 drinks consumed in total, his preferred tipple was whiskey by a long margin. He drinks 101 in all, among them 58 bourbons and 38 scotches. He's pretty fond of champagne, 30 glasses,

and in one book, he only lived twice, which is mostly set in Japan. He tries sake. He likes pretty fond of champagne, 30 glasses. And in one book, you only live twice, which is mostly set in Japan, he tries sake. He likes it. He has 35 of them. They're flasks. Bond only opts for his supposedly favourite vodka martini 19 times. And he drinks almost as many gin martinis, 16. Though most of these are bought for him by other people. We won't go into Shaker Not Sturred, of course.

His movie is not bought. We are actually matching Bond drink for drink during this podcast. Don't try this at home. I mean, he drinks really well in the book. I have to say, one of the things I loved about it was that, you know, I sort of feel that he's always drinking to get himself through stuff. Survival drinking. Well, one of the things um

you were talking about the the similarities or differences between the films and the novels and it occurred to me that when the thing about the films is they are preposterous fantasies but the novels are preposterous realities he manages to do a brilliantly clever thing which is he's a fiend for detail in fact we've got a clip of um fleming talking about why he why he did that but what he tends to do is he itemizes he's he's a fetishist for drink, food, weaponry, cars, gadgets. I think there was a bit of product placement, wasn't there? Yes, by the time of Goldfinger, yeah. It's fascinating. Let's hear the clip.

I can say it's 90% from personal experience, really, and I wouldn't say the espionage detail is, because although I worked in naval intelligence during the war and got mixed up in a lot of shenanigans, of course, if I started sticking too close to the espionage, true espionage work of today, I should be in trouble with the Official Secrets Act in England, even supposing I had access to information.

As for the backgrounds, I try and... I can't really write about anywhere that I haven't seen myself. Being basically a reporter by trade, I have got a good, strong visual sense of background and interesting detail and so on, which I try to bring into my books just in order to make them seem more valid and truthful. And of course, if you're off on some tremendous plot with heaven knows what, James Bond, and a hassle with some terrible villain, if he can use a Ronson lighter, let's say, or drive a Bentley motor car, or stay in the Ritz Hotel,

this all brings the reader back to Earth. Back to Earth, yeah. That quacking voice. James, you've got a bit, haven't you, of Bond eating a meal? I've got Bond's bad meal that he has, which is an extraordinary... Not all good food as well, in the book. Well, yeah, but not in this meal that he has, which is extraordinary. Not good food as well. Well, yeah, but not in this restaurant that he goes to first. So he chooses this mock Breton au beige on the south bank of the Loire,

perhaps Bon's favourite river in the world. Yes! And he probably doesn't go back. So here he is. He had stoically accepted the hammered copper warming pans, brass cooking utensils and other antique bogosities that cluttered the walls of the entrance hall, had left his bag in his room and gone for an agreeable walk

along the softly running, swallow-skimmed river. The dining room, in which he was one of a small handful of tourists, had sounded the alarm. Above a fireplace of electric logs and over-polished fire irons, there had hung a coloured plaster escutcheon bearing the dread device, ici douce force. All the plates of some hideous local ware bore the jingle, irritatingly inscrutable, jamais en vain, toujours en vain. And the surly waiter, stale with fan de saison, had served him with the fly-of-the-walk pâté maison,

sent back for a new slice, and a poulard à la crème that was the only genuine antique in the place. Bond had moodily washed down this sleazy provender with a bottle of instant Pouilly Fouise and was finally insulted the next morning by a bill for the meal in excess of £5. But again, even eating the bad meal,

that's what's so interesting. You know, we were laughing at that while you were reading it, but I'm laughing in an appreciative way. I love the specificity of it and of the way he puts these things together also i i like the fact that he is sort of not massively heroic in the books he's quite often quite knackered in this book and he falls asleep yeah after the avalanche you know that sort of that sort of teflon quality that you associate with bond isn't sort of there in the character he does always win he does always seem to win big at cards but he's also like the author

ian fleming bond is fatigued by the time this book happens you know fleming is near the end of his life that was why that was going to be my question is why this book of all the ones that you could have chosen particularly this book well i think it's because bond gets married so he has he's well he's his emotions get involved in a way that they don't in in previous books and there's a nice sense of circularity in that it begins in this fictional town of Royale-les-Yeux near Dieppe which is where Casino Royale is set. So if you're going to reread Bond, perhaps go to

All-Imaginative Service because it's accomplished in a way that the early books aren't and then work back to the other books. So it's an incredible achievement really after he writes a book every year. He goes to Jamaica in January and February and does each book in eight weeks.

And he's still going by the time of this book. I just want to draw people's attention to that, that he would write them. They tended to be published in the spring every year. Basically, he's not an author with a with a long writing career it's a 10-year sprint which which effectively kills him along with all the smoking and drinking um but he but he does but the first one is published in the first one is published in 53 and then he dies when 64 and. And he writes... So, On Her Majesty's Secret Service is written in something like ten weeks,

just as the previous books had been written in something like eight to ten weeks. Every winter, he would turn out a new Bond book. I just want to read... I have a... It's not a first edition, but it's an early edition. It's the original edition of Honor, Majesty's Secret Service, which was once the property of Redhill Technical College Library.

I'm happy to report a Redhill town of my birth. And here is the... This is the blurb. Perhaps the greatest blurb of all time. Well, also, I'd like to make the point before I read the blurb that Fleming was a successful writer in his lifetime. In his lifetime, he sold 30 million books. And in the two years after his death, he sold twice that amount. He didn't live quite long enough to see himself become the global phenomenon

that the films turned him into although he was already phenomenally successful he anyway so this book is published in 63 it's the 12th did you say no 10th yeah but for your eyes only is a volume of short stories yeah so it's the i know it's the 10th this is the blurb so you so this is already like attention to detail it's all Rise Only is a volume of short stories. Yeah. I know. It's the tent. It's the tent. This is the blurb. So this is already... It's looking like Attention to Detail. It's already... It's already hotly anticipated, this title.

Here is the blurb that the publishers could barely be bothered to write for what they knew would be a best-selling book. I'll tell you the initial print run as well, John can take a guess after we do this on her majesty's secret service it was one of those septembers when it seemed that the summer would never end but it did end and winter came in a lethal welter of mystery bloodshed and multiple death amidst the snow. This, the 11th chapter in the biography of James Bond, is one of the longest. It is also the most enthralling.

Really the most? Really the most. Now that's a blur. That's a blur. Can you guess what the initial print run in the UK was on Her Majesty's Secret Service? 20,000 copies. No, higher. 50,000 copies.

Nearly. 45,000 copies, plus a limited edition. It sold 70 in its first year, I think. Did it? Yeah, they reprinted it. Plus a limited... There's no new ideas under the sun. Plus a limited signed edition of about 250 copies.

Also, who was it? Was it you, James, who was telling me about the... You were questioning whether this was a good idea because of the visual element. But let's call them iconic pan-paperback editions. We have a copy of On Her Majesty's Secret Service here, which shows basically the words James Bond in heavy black type, the title, the author, and bond in heavy black type the title the

author and then a wedding ring and blood on the snow they're just great they're great covers so this guy raymond hawkey his name was i just read his little quote here because he says my use of james bond in bold above the title apparently so transformed the sale of the pan edition and all subsequent editions that the chairman kindly sent me my design fee twice something that has never happened before or since he got paid twice and this is his first one thunderball it has the pan logo in the top right hand corner and ian fleming wrote to raymond hawkey and said thank you very much for the pulls of the really brilliant cover you have designed i think it is quite splendid,

and I don't think the filthy little pan sign spoils it too much. So he was published by Jonathan Cape, when Jonathan Cape was still running Jonathan Cape, and he was edited by William Plumer. Was he? Yeah, so William Plumer, the great literary editor, worked on all the great literary Cape novelists in the back of the i have to say i'm not a massive fan of the vintage rejacketings no um that that not casino royale but is it letter to jonathan cape um saying

the story this is casino royale but it easily be, the story was written in less than two months as a piece of manual labour which would make me forget the horrors of marriage. And then it would never have been seen in the light of day if William, William Prumer, had not extracted it from me by force. So it's quite an interesting, it's a sort of classic, and obviously then, you know, capes sell on the rights to pan, and the paperback lives of the books go ballistic.

I mean, I guess he reinvented the thriller, right? I mean, you can't really imagine Alastair Maclean or Desmond Bagley or even maybe, you know, writers like Wilbur Smith. I think we must give credit where it's due. The way that Fleming creates the thriller genre in the 1950s in a way that hadn't existed sophisticated and his use of narrative I have a an extract here from this was written by Umberto Eco in 1966 this is an essay about narrative structure in Ian Fleming and remember so he's writing when Fleming isn't still alive but the books are still you know at that level of selling huge quantities and have

done for 10 years and I read this I thought well you know this is spot on this is why we might not understand how Fleming does it but what he's doing is incredibly effective this is what Umberto Eco said we might compare a novel by Fleming to a game of football in which we know beforehand the place the numbers and the personalities of the players the rules of the game and the fact that everything will take place within the area of the great pitch except that in a game of football we do not know until the very end who will win it would be more accurate to compare a novel by fleming to a game of basketball played by the harlem globetrotters against a local team we know with absolute

confidence that the globetrotters will win the pleasure lies in watching the trained virtuosity with which they defer the final moment, with what ingenious deviations they reconfirm the foregone conclusion, with what trickeries they make rings round their opponents. The novels of Fleming exploit in exemplary measure that element of foregone play, which is typical of the escape machine geared for the entertainment of the masses perfect in their mechanism such machines represent the narrative structure that works upon a material

which does not aspire to express any ideology we will come on to this it is true that such structures inevitably entail ideological positions but these do not derive so much from the structured contents as from the way of structuring them fleming is in other words cynically building an effective narrative apparatus that's the worst piece of literary criticism i've heard for many years i mean i i mean he's basically saying we know how the end's going to pan out, that Bond's going to survive. But I think in many of the books, you're not quite sure whether Bond is going to survive.

And Fleming is trying to kill off his creation, I think. I mean, Bond, for instance, in Casino Royale, the first book, Bond is thinking about resignation in that book. And he actually does write his resignation letter in On the Majesty of the Service. So there's something that's ushered in in the 50s with thrillers. So we've got the hard-boiled

stuff of Chandler and Hammett and everything. But Fleming gives his hero a sex life. He gives his villains a sex life. So he brings in all this. He ramps up everything. He turns up the volume on the consumerism and everything. And sort of provides these sort of kicks really these innocent kicks and from the ideological point of view james you recommended me simon winder's book the man who saved britain could

you just in a nutshell tell us what that book is about it's probably the most detailed attempt to place bond in in his time in his historical context. So he's very good on empire and colonialism. And he's not a historian. He publishes history. He has a sort of disclaimer at the start. I'm not a historian. But he's very good on the context. He's also very funny.

His idea is that Bond is the natural extension of colonialism because colonial wish fulfillment yeah as the empire collapses who steps out of the wreckage but this fictional representation of british power who makes us all feel better about yeah rationing austerity there's a great bit where he's talking about you know talking about avocados and all these kind of exotic fruits. An avocado pear. Yeah, and the fact that everybody's on rationing. It is fascinating. But the exotic locations,

somewhere, I think in Winder, apart from the thing that he says at one point which I love, is, you know, is Bond just biggles with a cock? I must say, I must say I found this book simon winders the man who saved britain i found it both sort of mildly infuriating at points but i also laughed out

loud several times i just must read this paragraph i mean i don't know how relevant it is but it just made me guffaw with laughter so i'll try and read it straight there is a disastrous moment in jean-jacques rousseau's confessions now already that's funny right that is already funny there is a disastrous moment in jean-jacques rousseau's confessions when having spent many pages convincing his readers that he is a heart on sleeve impetuous head in the clouds kind of guy he almost in passing admits to having had five children all of whom over the mother's protests he placed in an orphanage and none of whom he ever saw again he announces this in a way that implies he has built up enough trust to have his excuses heard out but it is all quite hopeless the guests drift away

with fixed smiles the book drops from the duped reader's hand i feel in a similar position when i confess that in all honesty, and unlike the books, I do not and have never found the Bond films even remotely erotic. Bracing myself to be denounced... Sorry. Bracing myself to be denounced as some spermless milk toast.

I will not only stick by my inner conscience conscience but more aggressively suggest that you would have to be very odd indeed to find them even faintly alluring i totally agree with that yeah now the books what about the sex in the books there's some sort of there are some unsavory aspects to fleming i think we were talking about this earlier how you know the sexism the xenophobia at certain points having read the books again from the start the character of Bond in the films has been distorted yeah you know through this sort of prism of the 60s the so-called permissive society etc Bond you know becomes more reactionary as the books go on. But he's not, to tackle racism, for instance, overtly racist, apart from about Oddjob in Goldfinger.

Yeah. And he... Mr Big in Live and Let Die. Yeah, he's indefensible, really, most of it. The sexism, I had all these revisionist theories about how, you know, the film Bond is completely reprehensible and, you know, the Fleming's Bond is very gallant and gentlemanly, but he isn't. Unfortunately, it's of its time, as we say, which is not to excuse it.

I must say, I found those elements only, how can I put this, distressingly problematic in The Spy Who Loved Me, which is Fleming's attempt to write from a first-person... Surely one of the least successful attempts to write a first-person female point of view. It's awful. I mean, it's an awful book. But I can say that in the knowledge that Fleming himself disowned it within months of publication.

I was surprised by how psychologically I don't know, sort of generous Fleming was. I mean, you know, I think the caricature of Bond is that he's heartless but there's a lovely little bit where he slept with Ruby, one of

the girls in Blofeld's ludicrous frankly ludicrous plan to destroy Britain by introducing botulism, chemical warfare, using the hypnosis of young women. Well, you put it like that, I agree with you, it sounds absurd. But anyway, this is kind of, this could be a whole heap worse. Her hair smelt of new mown summer grass that's a bit crap her mouth of pepsodent and her body of memons baby patty which is a little bit creepy

a small night wind rose up outside and moaned around the building giving an extra sweetness an extra warmth even a certain friendship to what was no more than an act of physical passion there was real pleasure in what they did to each other and in the end when it was over and they lay quietly in each other's arms Bond knew and knew that the girl knew that they had done nothing wrong done no harm to each other

kind of quite sweet yeah yeah you know and we're saying this Tracy in the book is a bit I mean it's weird the first she's obviously not in a good way when he has sex with her the first time, possibly not the most sensitive thing to do, but she does ask him for kind of male wish fulfilment, you know, crazy mad girl.

But then their relationship does develop and is developing kind of really in an interesting way upon the sensitive side, you know, he marries her. So I want to cue up another clip now. We've expressed the sort of reservations that we have about Fleming, but we've also said that as thrillers, they still work. So we have a clip here. Long-time listeners may recall that when we did an episode about Raymond Chander last year,

we had an extract from a superb and very pissed interview between Roman Chander and Ian Fleming. It seemed too good an opportunity not to revisit that same interview. So here's a different clip from later in the interview when clearly further drinks have been taken. This is Fleming and Chander discussing what makes a good thriller. I wonder what the basic ingredients of a good thriller really are. Of course, you've got to have taste.

You should start at the first page and carry right through. And I think you've got to have violence. I think you've got to have a certain amount of sex. You've got to have basic plots. People have got to want to know what's going to happen by the end of it. Yes, I agree. There has to be an element of mystery.

In fact, there has to be a mysterious situation. The detective doesn't know what it's all about. Yes. He knows that there's something strange about it, but he doesn't know just what it's all about. Yes. It seems to me that the real mystery is not who killed Sir John in his study,

but what the situation really was, what the people were after, what sort of people they were. But I think basically we're both of us to a certain extent humorous, too. I mean, we're both of us rather like to bring in... That's true.

Have you got any particularly favorite thriller writers, Ray? ray i mean people who automatically buy them all as blind well we don't have to buy them we send them to me free they do publishers do all right that's so wonderful it makes backlist sound scripted that's really so they work as thrillers and the thriller element is the thing I think I found most interesting reading

the books was the elements the thriller elements that have been transported over to the films and also in the films how much of the work is done not by the actors, there's other elements. And James, you very kindly sent me part of your book, Memory Songs, to read. And I wonder whether you would be kind enough to just read us a little bit from it.

Is this from the first chapter? Yeah, yeah. Which is relevant to what I'm talking about. Okay. the first chapter yeah yeah yeah which is relevant to what i'm i'm talking about okay one day in the new year our english teacher mr wood a sprightly levy sight with a jacobean beard asked the class who or what makes the most important contribution to a film there was a show of hands to our surprise our answers were rejected one by one according to to him, it wasn't the director, the star or the location, nor was it the costumes or the special effects.

We were stumped. My hand was in the air more than most, possibly just to show off my extensive but pointless film knowledge, much of it gleaned from Michael Rodd's screen test. It wasn't the second unit director or even the third unit location scout. We were becoming desperate. What could it be? In the end, no one got the third unit location scout. We were becoming desperate. What could it be? In the end, no one got the answer.

The music. The term Barryesque is now shorthand for a number of distinct musical styles. Sweeping mournful strings, raucous sexy brass, and icy Cold War minimalism played on obscure Russian-sounding instruments often all in the same piece. Everyone knows this music. Bond skiing down a mountain, Bond kissing a woman, Bond walking decisively through an airport,

and there it is, behind his back. Simon Wynder, in his book The Man Who Saved Britain, suggests that John Barry's music may have been the reason for the Bond film's success. This is a contentious, even fanciful notion, but one which is perhaps valid. Terence Young, director of Doctor No from Russia With Love and Thunderball, was once asked what he thought were the principal ingredients

of the first 007 films. He answered, Connery, Connery, Connery. Agreed, but with one caveat. Replace that last Connery with Barry. Reading the books made me realize how one of the things that's so fantastic about the films that works so well about the films is that barry really sells the spirit of the books is what i want to say in a way that i'm not sure sean connery does connery isn't like the bond of the books funnily enough Lazenby is more like the Bond of the books because he's more of a blank

he looks the part and I think with Barry he provides in a strange way Bond's interior his emotions, music is inherently emotional which we don't really get from the script in the Bond films, it's just surface and what happens

something you said John about how what we get in the books is bonds the word interiority has been banned from backlisted i understand so i won't use that along with all the other words you get what he thinks his attitude to his job to killing to women to to his boss m you get all of this in the books which the films can't quite provide but the music seems to square that circle somehow and give us this entire sort of emotional world. Yeah, yeah.

Just another quote from Wynder has just come to mind. He said that Barry was the sort of smirking, sports car-driving ladies' man that Fleming would have absolutely loathed. Which is, again, rather unfair. But Fleming, we haven't really done that i don't think there was quite the need to do the biographical thing about fleming but fleming was very much part of the establishment turned to writing in his mid-40s having worked for the secret service has this 10-year run as we say but nobody tells you turning out a book a year

basically smoking and drinking himself to death while he's doing it, right? Turbulent Marriage to Anne... Rothermere. She was Rothermere. Yeah. And I think you do feel that the books are sort of... They definitely feel to me like 50s books rather than 60s books. I mean, I think that's one of the weird things,

is that the films have sort of moved them into the 60s. Even in the case of. The first one I ever saw, rather like Simon Winder, was Live and Let Die, which is a... Somewhat problematic, seen from this distance. It's a ludicrous movie, whichever. You know, with a great

Powerboat chase sequence and Paul McCartney. Indeed. But still, I've found the books kind of they're darker and a little bleaker so i have to say this this this book is what's he doing at the end do you think fleming why is he doing that is just is it just a sort of feels like a real real act of violence i mean we i think we can say that it ends with a an assassination he said at the time that he did it because he couldn't he had to return which is disingenuous he said he did it he killed bond's bride he kills tracy because he has to reset everything for the next book and yet one of the things that you will

realize by reading them yeah but one of the things that you will have realised by reading them... Yeah, but one of the things that you will have realised by reading them is that they can be read sequentially, and they do tell a developing story about Bond's state of mind. And I suppose, again, we should distance author and character, but also Fleming's state of mind. That fatigue is really setting in by the time we get to On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It shadows his life. But I think with Tracy, when she's killed at the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service,

there's an element of autobiography in there, is that Fleming's longtime girlfriend in, I think it was... Kinsville. Yeah, Muriel, I think. Muriel Wright. Yeah, was killed in an air raid in the Second World War. real right yeah was killed in an air raid in in the second world war and this yeah quite obviously has this echo this resonance in the death of tracy how life just comes in through the window and he identified the body and it was he haunted him yeah and so you can't allow that bond i mean

it's one of the things i thought was was kind of well done and touching was bond considering you know married life i have a quote great for that but he was surprised to find that all this nest building gave him a curious pleasure a feeling that he had last come to rest and that life would now be fuller have more meaning for having someone to share it with togetherness what a curiously valid cliche it was yeah it's so my question before we wrap up then we've been through the stuff that we like about Fleming and with the stuff that is dated about Fleming and stuff that works some of the stuff that doesn't work does it stand up can you read Fleming now and enjoy it and enjoy it for what it is can you read like you can read Sherlock Holmes and enjoy it for what it is? Yes, you can.

I mean, as a prose stylist, he is, I mean, he's got these peerless powers of description. He's a brilliant craftsman when it comes to plot. So read it for those pleasures. And just in terms of the invention of character, these immortal characters that he becomes, like Hugo Drax, Blofeld. You know, he was as inventive as Dickens, I think, when it came to memorable characters. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, with Fleming, there are very unique pleasures that no other writer can deliver,

and that's why you'd go to Fleming, despite, you know, the risable politics and his attitude to women, which has to be mentioned. But, yeah, they're the very distinct things that only Fleming can do. I mean, my experience of reading them is the thing that I would say to listeners is a reason to pick up the books is I found them the sort of reading, funnily enough, that is almost like childhood reading, where you don't understand the rules and you don't understand why something works and i found that i read four of these on the bounce

with no problem at all while simultaneously thinking i don't understand why this is working why do i want to keep reading this and yeah i do want to keep reading it and the prose is good prose it's not trashy it's not it's quite elegant specific and elegant and we don't have time but when he moves into an action sequence the ski chase that he describes in in on our magic success is extraordinarily good as a piece of well-turned dramatic prose yeah yeah i'm just here really quickly just because this is this is this is the bond the pleasure that you get from the books is all in this paragraph bond made his plan for the evening he would first do an extremely careful packing job of his single suitcase the one that had no tricks to it have two double vodkas and tonics with a dash of angus to excura eat a large dish of may speciality scrambled eggs fin herb

have two more vodkas and tonics and then then, slightly drunk, go to bed with half a grain of seconol. Encouraged by the prospect of this cosy self-anesthesia, Brond brusquely kicked his problems under the carpet of his consciousness. Brilliant. It's just for that.

That's the character you love. And that's probably where we should leave, Commander Bond. Knocked out. Knocked out. Knocked out. Sleeping. Thanks to our guests, Jude and James Cook, and to our producer, Matt Hall, our extensive archive.

Extensive archive. How extensive? 54 shows now, I think. 55 shows. Of all shows, it's available on SoundCloud. That's soundcloud forward slash backlisted pod and we're available and active on twitter and facebook so come and join in the conversation i'd like to add as well because this episode is being broadcast pretty

close to christmas it being james bond and that being a christmassy thing to do and also because on imaginative secret service is set uh during festive season. We have a little bit of music to go out on as well for that. But I'd like to thank everyone for listening. We've been doing Backlisted for two years now, unbelievably. As John just said, we've got more than 50 episodes. We've done more than 50 of these. It's been so much fun to do. And just this week, we've just tipped over

a quarter of a million listens for Backlisted, which is amazing. So we would like to thank all our guests. We'd like to thank our guests today, Jude and James. We'd like to thank all the guests who've been on Batlisted over the last couple of years. We'd like to thank you for listening and supporting us and telling people about us. We are really blown away by the success of this. about us we are really blown away by the success of this and we're going to keep doing it until well i've lost my eyesight in the process of uh of recording these over the last couple of years but it's been a privilege thank you so much if you prefer to listen to backlisted without adverts

you can sign up to our patreon it's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.