For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming + James Bond by Ben Macintyre

It proves a rich seam. He persuasively demonstrates that though Bond may be fighting the Cold War, he remains strictly a creation of the Second World War, which shaped Fleming himself.

The improbable characteristics of the Bond girl, meanwhile, issue directly from Fleming's own schoolboyish attitude to women: "Sex was a sort of sport, and he favoured the scattergun approach." Bond's prodigious drinking reflected Fleming's own habits, too, Macintyre notes: "Less various than Bond's, but just as voluminous and far more damaging." The illustrations include Fleming's 1939 Soviet press pass, the nuclear bomb from Octopussy and a picture of Fleming gazing at Ursula Andress, next to a pensive Sean Connery, on the set of Dr No: his own excited imaginings having come to unstoppable life right there in front of him.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk
Published to coincide with the 2008 Imperial War Museum exhibition of the same name, this is a thrilling stand-alone book that looks into the entwined worlds of James Bond and Ian Fleming. The book and exhibition will explore how Fleming's 007 emerged against the background of the Second World War and the Cold War, and how Bond's world was based on the realities (and fantasies) of Fleming's life as a wartime spy-master and peacetime bon viveur. They will show how the film version of Bond evolved for a later age, and answer a question that has obsessed generations of Bond fans over the years: where does the world of Ian Fleming end, and that of James Bond begin?Stylishly illustrated, "For Your Eyes Only" will incorporate a treasure-trove of gadgets, costumes, props, and storyboards from the films - Daniel Craig's blood-stained shirt from Casino Royale, the Aston Martin DB5, complete with weaponry - as well as memorabilia from Fleming's personal archive: his smoking jacket, the manuscript for Casino Royale, his golden typewriter, his guns, and much more. Alongside this array of extraordinary visuals, Ben Macintyre tells the story of how Fleming created the most popular legend of all time. On the centenary of Fleming's birth, he looks at the real people on whom the writer based his fictional creations - friends, colleagues, lovers, and of course, the notorious villains. Exploring the tradition of spy fiction past and present - with specific attention to the Cold War - Macintyre explains the astonishing legacy of the Bond books and the enduring appeal of a fictional secret agent who not only lived twice, but proved to be immortal.