Probably my favourite thing Ian Fleming wrote was this essay on how he wrote the Bond novels, which is vile, revealing and full of genuinely good advice and observations
lithub.com/ian-fleming-...
There is no literary spy—and perhaps no literary character, full stop—more famous than James Bond, which should already be enough of an argument for any aspiring writer, but particularly any aspiri…
It speaks incredibly well to the Fleming estate that while they have (perfectly reasonably) made a lot of money out of James Bond, they haven’t mutilated the original books or tried to soft soap how vile Fleming clearly is in order to get even more money, I think.
Stephen Bush
Managed to find several of the James Bond audiobooks at a car boot sale and having made it most of the way through Casino Royale I am genuinely fascinated by the combination of Fleming clearly writing Bond as a monster and the bits where Fleming is clearly himself a monster.
