Who Is James Bond? The question may seem an obvious one-he is by some distance the most famous fictional character ever created-but actually, there's no obvious answer. If you start with the films, you have to sift through seven quite separate personalities from Connery to Craig, taking in Roger Moore with his exuberant puns (more double entendre than double-0-seven) and George Lazenby, who described Bond as "a brute" and walked away from the franchise. Personally, I've always admired the way the films have adapted themselves to whatever decade they've found themselves in: since 1962 and Dr. No, Eon Productions have almost written a social history of the UK and its place in the world. That said, some of the films have only a passing acquaintance with Ian Fleming's books. After Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger, the films went their own way, sending Bond into outer space, equipping him with an invisible car or pitting him against a villain with steel teeth. All very enjoyable but, as the author of two Bond "continuation novels" (generously credited by Mark Simmons in this book), I've always found myself more drawn to Fleming's literary work.

But even here the question of Bond's inspiration is a tricky one. Mark Simmons correctly draws parallels between Bond and his creator: they had the same taste for cigarettes, scrambled eggs, and clothes. They had the same rank of commander and, for that matter, the same sexual drives. But Lionel Crabb, the Royal Navy diver, also appears in these pages, as does Dusko Popov, the Yugoslavian double agent. Fleming knew both of them and both have at one time or another been suggested as the original Bond. The pleasure of Ian Fleming's War-jammed with anecdote and information I had never read before-is that it clearly demonstrates how much. James Bond owes to Naval Intelligence, to the Special Operations Executive (SOE), and the fabled Room 39, and how some of the harebrained schemes thought up in Baker Street and elsewhere ended up in the stories that would still be entertaining millions of people seventy years later. Book jacket.