Ian Fleming's 'Thrilling Cities' On BBC Radio 4

The James Bond website MI6, not to be confused with the British intelligence agency, reports that BBC Radio 4 is offering a reading of Ian Fleming's travel book, Thrilling cities.

In 1959, Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was commissioned by the Sunday Times to explore some of the world's most exotic cities. Travelling to the Far East and then to America, he left the bright main streets for the back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favour of underground haunts, and mingling with celebrities, gangsters and geishas. The result is a series of vivid snapshots of a mysterious, vanished world.

Fleming wrote, 'On November 2nd, armed with a sheaf of visas...one suitcase...and my typewriter, I left humdrum London for the thrilling cities of the world. All my life I have been interested in adventure and abroad. I have enjoyed the frisson of leaving the wide, well-lit streets and venturing up back alleys in search of the hidden, authentic pulse of towns. It was perhaps this habit that turned me into a writer of thrillers.'

In today's episode, Fleming flies to Hong Kong - the most vivid and exciting city he had ever experienced. He enjoys a massage at the hands of an expert, and his senses are enchanted by the smells of the streets at night - from the 'exciting dash of sandalwood' in a joss-stick factory to the scent of frying onions and 'sweet perspiration'.

Read by Simon Williams
Abridged by Mark Burgess

You can read the rest of the piece and link to BBC 4 via the below link:

https://www.mi6-hq.com/news/ian-fleming-s-thrilling-cities-on-bbc-radio-4-this-weekend-
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You can also read my Crime Beat column on Thrilling Cities via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/10/through-thriller-writers-eyes-life-work.html 

James Bond On The Radio: BBC Radio 4's Program of Ian Fleming's 'Thunderball'

BBC Radio 4 is offering a dramazation of Ian Fleming's Thunderball.

You can listen to the radio program via the below link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b084t5fw  

The Interplay Between Truth and Fiction: Ian Fleming and Goldfinger

Ben Macintyre wrote an interesting piece for the London Times about the origins of Ian Fleming's fictional characters James Bond and Auric Goldfinger, and the plot of his great thriller, Goldfinger.

Fleming, seen in above photo, published Goldfinger in 1959. The original book jacket for Goldfinger is seen below:

In light of the upcoming BBC 4 radio adaptation of Goldfinger, with Ian McKellen as the gold-obsessed megalomaniac arch-criminal, Macintyre explains how Fleming came up with the name Goldfinger and the plot of the novel, which was made into a classic 1964 film with Sean Connery as James Bond and Gert Frobe as Goldfinger.

Macintyre, who is the author of the true World War II espionage story, Operation Mincement, and For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond, a book that celebrated the Fleming centenary celebration, notes that Fleming was fascinated by the interplay between truth and fiction.

"Everything I write has a precedent in truth," Fleming said.

Macintyre notes that in World War II a Nazi agent planned to rob the Bank of England, and perhaps this gave Fleming the idea of Goldfinger palns to rob Fort Knox.

You can read Macintyre's piece via the below link:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article7076349.ece


Sean Connery is seen in the above photo as James Bond in Goldfinger. Below is a photo of Gert Frobe as Goldfinger.

Below is the link to the opening credits to the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPiUMNrO2LI

And below is the cover of the Signet paperback of Goldfinger in the 1960s and a great passage from Ian Fleming's thriller:

 

 

"Goldfinger's eyes were now blank, focused inwards. His voice became low, almost reverential at what he saw," Fleming wrote in Goldfinger.

 

Goldfinger went on to explain "Operation Grand Slam," his grand criminal enterprise, to his prisoner, James Bond.

 

"Man has climbed Everest and he has scraped the depths of the ocean. He has fired rockets into outer space and split the atom. He has invented, devised, created in every realm of human endeavour, and everywhere he has triumphed, broken records, achieved miracles. I said in every realm, but there is one that has been neglected, Mr. Bond. That one is the human activity loosely known as crime. The so-called criminal exploits committed by individual humans - I do not of course refer to their idiotic wars, their clumsy destruction of each other -are of miserable dimensions: little bank robberies, tiny swindles, picayune forgeries. And yet, ready to hand, a few hundred miles from here, opportunity for the greatest crime in history stands waiting. The stage is set, the gigantic prize is offered. Only the actors are missing. But the producer is at last here, Mr. Bond" - Goldfinger raised a finger and tapped his chest - "and he has chosen his cast. This very afternoon the script will be read to the leading actors. Then rehearsals will begin and, in one week, the curtain will go up for the single, the unique performance. And then will come applause, the applause for the greatest extra-legal coup of all time. And, Mr. Bond, the world will rock with that applause for centuries."

 

Bond asked Goldfinger if he planned to rob the end of the rainbow.

"Yes," Goldfinger nodded. "That is exactly what we are going to do. We are going to burgle fifteen billion dollars' worth of gold bullion, approximately half the supply of mined gold in the world. We are going, Mr. Bond, to take Fort Knox."