Description: COLONEL SUN James Bond ROBERT MARKHAM 1st edition HC Kingsley Amis Tom Adams art Size 5x7.5.5 inches. Out of all of the post-Ian Fleming BOND novels, this is my favorite - the torture scene is excruciating, Amis has taken it to another level. The book is a great read. The legacy of the ‘Bond continuation novel’ began in 1968 with Kingsley Amis‘ ‘Colonel Sun’, published by Jonathan Cape on March 28th.Kingsley had been a Bond fan “ever since he discovered the first paperback, ‘Casino Royale’, on a railway bookstall” (The Times Educational Supplement) and had already written the seminal The James Bond Dossier, and The Book of Bond (under the name of Lt Col William ‘Bill’ Tanner) and naturally was in the running as Ian Fleming’s successor.Some expressed reservations about the leftie author of Lucky Jim taking on the project, including Ian’s widow Ann Fleming: “Amis will slip Lucky Jim into Bond’s clothing, we shall have a petit bourgeois red-brick Bond, he will resent the authority of M., then the discipline of the Secret Service, and end as Philby Bond selling his country to SPECTRE.’” (The Letters of Ann Fleming) “fears were expressed in some quarters that I might produce a sort of Lucky Jim Bond, rampaging through the back streets of Wigan with a packet of fish and chips in one hand and broken beer bottle in the other. Not a chance. […] Some sort of valid continuation, neither parody nor radical new departure nor mere rechauffage of fleming ingredients, had to be worked for.” Despite Ann’s reservations, Glidrose chose Amis, but took the decision to use Robert Markham as pseudonym, so that other authors could write Bond novels under the same pseudonym. Amis agreed with Glidrose’s decision and in an interview with Raymond Benson in August 1982, said that it was “less confusing to the public and more convenient to market the books”.Ann attacked the use of a pseudonym, remarking with acidity:‘I think Amis should publish under his own name and show the world his left-wing intellectual pretensions were easily turned to money-grubbing – like everyone else.’ Ann failed to recognize that Amis was a true admirer of her late husband and of his creation. He had met Ian a couple of times in fact and been to lunch with him to vet the typescript of his The James Bond Dossier before sending it to the publishers. According to Amis, Fleming had nothing to say about any of his critical comments, only pointing out factual inaccuracies in areas such as golf and noting, “Oddjob was sucked out of the cabin and not blown out”. In 1970 Amis fondly looked back on the job of continuing Bond’s adventures, with deference to Fleming Like any other writing it was great fun and a great grind. […] But a little more often, came the realization that he would have been so much neater, quicker, more inventive. I am in a unique position to appreciate that.The novel begins with the kidnapping of M from his house, ‘Quarterdeck’ and the murder of his servants, ex-Chief Petty Officer Hammond and his wife. Bond travels Greece and teams up with a Greek Communist agent, Ariadne Alexandrou. Arriving at the Aegean island of Vrakonisi (meaning Dragon Island), they discover that the villainous Colonel Sun plans to sabotage a Middle-Eastern détente conference being held on the island, and frame Britain for it. Bond attempts not only to thwart the Colonel’s plans, but also to rescue M.The novel begins with the kidnapping of M from his house, ‘Quarterdeck’ and the murder of his servants, ex- Colonel Sun was lower-tech and lower-scale than most of Fleming’s novels. This was no accident; Amis admitted in his 1970 essay A New James Bond, that he was not the man to take Bond inside Casinos or advance him down a ski run, but he could still offer something to the consumer to “justify resuscitating Bond in more than just name.” His first-hand knowledge of WWII weaponrywas “easily supplemented by research […] No gadgets, rockets, hovercrafts, no helicopters and no lumps of caviar.”Amis’ Bond went back to basics and eschewed the ever increasing absurdity of the Bond movies, which were moving further away from the books, to the point of using the title and nothing much else (as was the case in You Only Live Twice). Fleming’s Bond was still a gun and fists man, which grounded him as a believable hero – someone that the reader (with a little training) could stretch their imagination to believe they could emulate.Amis retained some classic Bond tropes: he sets the opening of the novel within the familiar context of a round of golf at Sunningdale and Bond drives a Bentley. The geographical locations were well chosen, providing some similarities to Moonraker, with the Home Counties as the backdrop, along with Windsor Park. Greece was chosen as a primary location, providing the requisite amount of exoticism without re-treading Fleming’s old haunts. Amis had a good friend who lived there, and Greece provided geo-political subtext, being “one of Russia’s areas of interest.”
Price: 60 AUD
Location: Darwin, NT
End Time: 2025-02-04T20:38:13.000Z
Shipping Cost: 23.58 AUD
Product Images
Item Specifics
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
Returns Accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
