 Good evening. Welcome to the British Library this evening. I'm John. I'm the head of events at the British Library. It's where my great honor to work This evening you're literally sitting on top of the complete works of Ian Fleming the basements extending deep deep underground here Every single edition is there and they own pristine condition But they're available to for you to research alongside everything else that we might have so it gives us a particular honor Like any great author to house that and also for tonight to be honoring the publication of the Honorable successor to those great works double or nothing by Kim Sherwood So we're absolutely lies. You're just a couple of housekeeping notes We'll be in conversation shortly with Kim and Charlie Hickson Another great post-bond and post Fleming Bond author After that there'll be a chance to ask some questions If you're here in person, you'll be able to put your hand up and wait for the mic and ask the question in the normal way If you're watching online and greetings to you from wherever you are around the world You will be able to fill in the question form below the screen and ask put your question and we'll read some of those out later Again after that we're having a book signing Kim and Charlie be signing their books downstairs by the bookshop the bar will be also open for a bit longer a few more martinis there if you can still stand and We'll be open for another half an hour on the bar and then the bookshop until every last copy has been sold so it only leaves me to a handover to Introduce guests tonight to Diggory laycock representing in Fleming Publications Limited. Thank you very much Good evening everyone How lovely to see you all here at the British Library on the launch day of Dublin on nothing The first novel in the new 00 section series by Kim Sherwood and hello to all those online as well My name is Diggory laycock. I'm on the board of Ian Fleming Publications and a member of the Fleming family You're not here to see me. So I'll be brief and introduce our pair of excellent speakers Participants into locutors. I'm not quite sure what the right word was For this evening's discussion. We're very lucky to have with us two superb writers who've both written the world of Bond But from different approaches. They're both huge Bond fans and it's always fascinating to hear what they have to say about 007 and about writing I Spent most this afternoon trying to work out how to fight the old trope of saying so-and-so needs no introduction and then giving an introduction But I failed so Charlie Hickson needs no introduction He's in the pantheon of British comedy having completely changed the shape and direction of sketch comedy with the massively popular Fast show together with Paul White house. He won't wrote for Harry Enfields TV show and on radio. He brought us down the line again with Paul As should be obvious from his presence here. He's also a very successful writer His latest novel whatever gets you through the night was published early this year to rave reviews preceding that was his successful seven strong the enemy post-apocalyptic young adult series and in the late 2000s we at Ian Fleming publications were delighted to lure him into writing the five young Bond novels Which pose a challenge? How do you tell the story to children of a young man on the cusp of adulthood who most of us think of as someone rather? grown-up tastes and hobbies But he did superbly We're equally lucky to have with us Kim Sherwood Kim's debut novel Testament is an excellent book and I can't recommend it to you highly enough If you haven't already got a copy go and get one right now or rather soon after the event not right now Soon as you can it's quite a different tone to what's going to be discussed tonight But that just highlights how versatile a writer is she is So it comes as no surprise. She's a lecturing creative writing at the University of Edinburgh Kim's debut novel For us is set in the world of Bond and double O's is double or nothing It's released today and I have to say that this is a very exciting moment for us to implement publications Because finally everyone is able to get hold of it we've been planning the double O series for a while and it's so good to see something that for us has been purely Theoretical and secret for such a long time spring into a truly great start to the series in a superb thriller from a great author It was when we found Kim that we knew we had something special and that our new double agents would be safe in her hands Even if they weren't necessarily going to be safe themselves It's not easy to do what Kim's done blending both the familiar world of universal exports and Brand new characters who've all made the grade from double O to double O's but aren't just clones of that guy in the dinner jacket I'm fortunate enough to be able to read the book when it was delivered by Kim to us last year So I'm rather unfairly highly impatient to read the next installment Even as double or nothing hits the shelves and I bet you all will be too as soon as you've read it It's a superb book full of excitement beautifully drawn international locations an excellent set of new to us double O agents That's far too much for me. Anyway, so I'll hand over to you've all come to see welcome to stage Charlie and Kim. Thank you. Thank you very much and and hello there I was very tempted to come on and do a third introduction To Kim and we could have an evening where everybody just introduces each other but It's fantastic to be here and it's fantastic to see you all there and it's fantastic to be here to celebrate A new addition a new look at the world of Of double O seven with this fantastic new book Double or nothing from the marvelous Kim And actually before We did the event. She sent me an email saying Should we coordinate our outfits? She was going to wear something appropriate and said she would wear a black velvet dress I was tempted to wear my pale blue terry cloth Short-legged onesie That that james bond infamously wore in goldfinger, but it's at the menders the The bullet holes are being sewn up But so I mean kim the obvious place to start talking to you is When did you first become aware of james bond? Um Well, first of all, hello everybody. It's so nice that you're all here and I'm just going to pour charlie some water. Thank you I hope there's uh Well, my first introduction to bond was was really when pierce brosnan's films made on the tv I was too young to see golden eye in the cinema. My first cinematic bond experience was actually die another day Um for for better or worse Um So how old would you have been I would have been um under See this is why we should coordinate, you know, maybe the terry cloth to remember I would have been under 10 and I remember seeing brosnan dive off the dam That being so spectacular and roll off the millennium dome, which was such a big deal at the time You know the construction took forever and we did a school trip there And it was like a weird science museum at the time We went inside and a gigantic nostril and that seemed to be sort of the way to celebrate the millennium And then bond was on it. So that was better And I and I loved his image of bond and I used to like dress up as him and play spies and Spide on all my neighbors, which luckily they were very tolerant of and wrote stories about them I um, sorry, I'm gonna show off now I was actually in the recording studio where they recorded the music cue of him going down the Thames No, and up onto the to the dome. It is one of the most exciting days of my life Oh, wow, because I I happened to get to know David Arnold who was the composer of the films then So, sorry that I didn't come here to talk about myself The famous people I've met But when I met Roger Moore Do tell me about that So so you became a super a super fan and And so How soon after that would you have gone to see bond in the cinema? So I went to see bond in the cinema for my I think it was my 13th birthday and my friend Billy who's here somewhere Took me And it was a really special night actually One because it was my first cinematic bond and I was so excited and all my presence that you have a bond themed And I was like it's finally old enough to go see bond But also because Billy's son had been born that night But a little bit prematurely and we weren't sure if he was going to be okay And the hospital said you have to wait a few hours to find out So Billy said let's still go to the cinema. So sort of take take his mind off it Um, so we watched the film and then we came out and I feel like maybe mobile phones Are just been invented in my in my memory. Anyway, Billy turned his phone on and we heard that Ethan was okay And Ethan's actually here tonight So that was that was a very special way to to first see bond on screen And I loved dying another day and luckily none of the adults around me corrected me on that And I I feel like a half of that film at least stands up. No, no, no, I mean they all have They all have a lot going for them. Yes, but No, that one was a good one, but no, I mean to show my age the first The first bond film I saw in the cinema was Thunderbolt Oh brilliant, which in it's the first film I actively remember going to see at the cinema I must have seen some Disney or whatever before and but I remember everything about the evening going to the cinema and we got you got a sort of brochure As if it was a premiere with all photos from the film and it was just the most exciting thing for me Perfect for for kids. There's a woman being tortured with a cigar and an ice cube Someone pinned to a tree with a harpoon gun. I loved it Were you amazed by the underwater sequences because that was really new it was new Sadly it was a little dull And you couldn't tell who anyone was Particularly as a child they gave them sort of different colored Frogman outfits, but you couldn't see what's going on. You cannot have a fight underwater It's very slow. It's just That really hurt so there's a lot of cutting of windpipes and bubbles going on But no, I I just loved everything about it and I think to this day. I think Thunderbolt still is the most Successful bond film in terms of ticket sales something like one in three people in America But it cemented for me a lifelong love of bond So how soon after watching the films did you get around to the books pretty quickly? I think I first read Fleming and I was about 12 and I I wanted to I'd always written stories spying on my neighbors Writing about their lives and I wanted to try writing a spy book And I was talking to my mom about it one day when we were in Camden And I said, you know, I want to try writing a spy story, but I don't know how to go about it And mom said well try reading one which is great advice for any writer And I bought a second hand copy of from russia with love in the pan paperback edition and just fell in love with Ian Fleming's style and his characterization and his dialogue and and that sense that you were being invited into a secret world And I read all of the books and then read them all again and again And I did you go back to start and read them in chronological order or just whatever you could get the holder at the time The first the way I read them first was in the order I was buying them in and then I had my full set and went back through which then made a lot more sense Well, I mean from from russia with love was the first book I I read I came to the books later in life I mean, I was aware of them. They were always around You go into smiths and there'd be a whole shelf of the paperbacks and they'd always be in the Second hand book shops in the library and there were copies knocking around the house And I'd read bits of it, but it was only late when I was in my 20s, which I finally came around and It is a great place to start if any of you have not read any of the Fleming books you really should and If you're only going to read one read from russia with love, I think it's in terms of And they're all great books. They all have something fantastic in them. But I think from russia with love is kind of He put the he put everything into that he's heart into it. He and it's the best written of the books Because it was at a time was his fifth book and bond was pretty successful in the uk Not with the critics but people were buying it but he really wanted to it to Get to the next level and to hit in the state. So he really worked hard at that book and and He said to himself if this doesn't work I'm gonna stop And he he basically kills bond at the end of the book But the book did well and they found an antidote to the poison Yeah, and that book has Fleming is really interesting with his structures and from russia with love has one of my favorite structures we spend most of Sort of the first third of the novel really with the russians as they're plotting the sort of downfall of britain And their idea is that they'll demoralize britain and they're thinking about attacking myths of britain and they have this Discussion at the sort of high levels of smush What myths could they deconstruct and they talk about the the myth of scottland yard and and sherlock holmes and church hill And then they say the you know the secret service is one of those great myths of britain And is there no no man of great heroic deeds who who represents the secret service They could bring down and somebody says there is a man called james bond And they developed this plot to sort of slander him and kind of tear his life apart And I really love it because up until that point I feel like fleming is creating a myth out of james bond I think it's sort of baked into the dna of bond that he will stand as a symbol for britain And he's and he's remained that but information with love fleming almost points to that and says look I've created this myth of britain and now i'm going to see if I can destroy it over over 180 pages But luckily there was an antidote so it was okay on the head Yeah, no, I mean it is amazing How huge a cultural icon bond has been and You know, you're you're just starting out in in the world of Of being part of that bond thing and you know it's incredible that You know when there's a new bond film out the media here goes nuts and even you know news night news at 10 They'll all get a bit giddy And dress up as bond and do something about bond Uh, and and you know you can dress it up. It's it's fantastic for cultural studies There is not any area of cultural studies you could you could get into where you couldn't actually write a paper on james bond in relation to that Yeah, absolutely, and I think Really unusual in that and it would be silly to say or Fleming's an underrated writer But I think he deserves all the credit in the world for creating such an iconic character I know it's the films have kind of evolved the character but I think the character's capacity for evolution is baked into the books because There are the sort of essential ingredients of his character sort of laid out in casino royale that are fixed and are sort of useful in that An icon can be fixed, but he's also human and he changes book to book and he's affected by what happens to him And he's vulnerable So he's an icon that can change and I feel like that's right there on the page in Fleming And then that's a huge gift to the filmmakers because they can keep adapting the character through the decades And each yeah, I mean each incarnation of bond represents views of manliness In that decade, right? So the and the books very much are the other kind of 1950s view of how to be a gentleman And I it's interesting looking at them in that sort of post-war context And we often think about that in terms of the the gender politics of the books But I also think it's interesting to think about the shadow of world war two in the books Yes, they're cold war spy stories But of course Ian Fleming had been in naval intelligence in the war And I think you can really see the shadow of the war in the books Whether it's something like the description of the bodies around or what they think of the bodies around Fort Knox Which is to me that description is kind of reminiscent of Images that had come out of the liberation of concentration camps in World War two things that soldiers had seen really the the sort of Shadow of mass mechanized death for the first time. So there's there's that fear But then there's also Fleming giving his readers a taste of air travel and exotic food and going to beautiful sunny places That most people in that time couldn't go to so he is also offering an escape Which I I don't know if anyone returned to Fleming in lockdown But I was obviously reading a lot for writing this and I felt really grateful to him for that escape in in during the pandemic I mean, you're obviously such a massive fan and no bond inside out But how because there are many massive fans who no bond inside out. There's probably quite a lot here Who would love to be in your position now on stage? having written an official book so how how did you transition from fangirl to James Bond also I say such a surreal sentence Well, it really was like a dream and it's still kind of this feels like a dream This is my favorite building in the world and I'm here talking about James Bond I might wake up in a minute But so the first thing I I heard was from my agent Sue who'd heard that the Fleming estate were looking for a new author because Anthony Horowitz's Tenno is coming to an end and they were looking for somebody to Kind of widen out the James Bond universe and bring in these new double O characters And they wanted somebody who's a real fan, you know, this is the Fleming's family legacy So they want somebody who really cares And my agent heard this and remembered that the when I just first signed with her and we went for lunch She asked me what are your career dreams and ambitions And I said oh well one day I'd like to write James Bond and I was sort of half joking But not really joking So it's kind of a lesson in in saying far-fetched things out loud and She Sue remembered that and she remembered that I'd actually I tweeted a picture The day testament my first novel came out I tweeted a picture of it in bookshops next to Anthony Horowitz's Bond novel and I said oh, you know One step closer to my dream of writing Bond And Sue found that tweet and screenshot it and as I understand it sent it to the family and said, you know Maybe this is the writer for you and they invited me to send along some ideas And I also wanted to send them something just to kind of express how much I love this character and luckily My mum had kept a school report that I wrote when I was 13 It was like homework and the homework task was to write about an author you admire and I'd written about Ian Fleming And I made this whole booklet and there were flaps and things that popped out and illustrations So I scanned that and I sent it along and I just said, you know, this really would be the dream of a lifetime Um, and they they like testaments and they like the ideas and and it all grew from that amazing and and Because I know this I don't know we couldn't actually hear any of what was said in the introduction because the acoustics was over I don't know how much Diggory said about the book, but just in case you don't know Uh, it is it is looking at the other double o agents around James Bond. So how much of that the sort of structure of the books was Was in place and how much were you able to to bring to that? Well, the only criteria I was given Was to bring it into the 21st century bring it into the present day and to widen out the cast of characters So that we could have other double o heroes alongside bond And that was it So within that I was free to imagine who those new characters might be and The challenge then was if you're going to write a James Bond novel that doesn't have James Bond on every page Why should the readers care about the new characters? So I thought well, I'll I'll have him be missing from the beginning Sort of if that's the challenge of the book for the reader make it the challenge for the characters James Bond is missing Mi6 don't know if he's been captured or if he's even killed and these new heroes are trying to find him So I thought I'll I'll kind of put that challenge into the plot itself And you've got you've got a lot of the of the double o world in there. You've got m You've got miss money penny You've got q and q division. You've got felix lighter So tell us a little bit about how you've kind of Tweaked to them Sure, that might be the first time that we've said felix lighters in the book. So scoop everyone Felix lighters in the book Wait, I must just tell him the ending But I'm glad actually that you mentioned felix lighter because he was one of my favorite characters to write He's my husband nix favorite character in bond So I felt like he had to be there and I looked at lighter in the novel So for those who are fans of the film, there's that strange thing where where felix lighters always played by or up until daniel craig's era Had been played by different actors and he's been eaten by sharks and then he hasn't been eaten by sharks and he's eaten by sharks again So in the novels he is eaten by sharks and it's one of my he's half eaten He's half eaten like loses an arm and a arm and a leg and a hand It's one of my favorite scenes his his body is delivered to bond's hotel room wrapped in in bandages And it's just these blood-soaked bandages With a with a note that says he disagreed with something that ate him It's one of my favorite flaming lights and uh, then He's he's okay And bond goes off and saves the day and gets the pirate treasure and gets the girl But you don't really find out what happens to felix and I was really curious How did he feel at the end of that novel several limbs down? And the trauma of being eaten by sharks So this this is my chance to kind of tackle that for his character and to kind of to make him one of the Main characters in a way instead of one of the side characters And then yeah, there's a few other favorites with sort of different twists. So Money penny is now head of the double a section. I felt like she was very long overdue a promotion She's now in charge And then there's a new m my own version of m is head of mi6 And a q is now a quantum computer And that was that I thought was such a great idea. I love the idea Thank you of a computer called q Knows everything and yeah, and even has a way into the heads of one of the Agents and and q sort of goes up against the villain's computer doesn't it yeah it she yeah, I don't I don't know q's prefer pronouns I'll leave that to q Yeah, well, I was looking into technology used by intelligence organizations And and a lot of them are using quantum computing and artificial intelligence to fight terror So to crunch these massive data sets around terrorist financial transactions So I was really sort of curious about that But then there was the question of how do you bring that into the novel? So there's one of the characters double a four joseph dried in he was in special forces in the army And I think this is too much of a spoiler. This all happens in the first few chapters You learn that he sustained a head injury in afghanistan and The q department have sort of presented him with a solution to this a computer brain interface Which is technology that's being developed at the moment It's already in use in some cases Which means that he has a kind of direct link to q so it was a way to kind of bring the computer in almost as a character Yeah, and I mean, you know, it's very clear from what you're saying that this is a very contemporary Take on on on bond So, I mean That side of it obviously feels more like the films than the books which are which are written 70 years ago some of them so You know, how did you find that balance between The sort of literary side of bond and the cinematic side of bond and getting getting the feel for that in the book So that the bond fans who love the books get that feel of Fleming I think it's it's a challenge because it's impossible to ignore the films. They're in all of our collective unconscious so You you can't kind of set them to one side But what I was thinking about was Ways to write to what Fleming did While allowing for the the reader's imaginations Including the film world. So almost trying to to balance the two So there are moments in the book which are perhaps more resonant of the films Money penny and bond's relationship in particular, which is sort of perhaps more present in the films than some of the books But then there are also Moments where I'm actually directly taking Fleming's lines and taking dialogue that he puts in the mouths of characters to try and Bring him in as much as possible. I can't write like he in Fleming obviously, but I was thinking about Ways our writing might have a shared DNA particularly because he implements me so young So trying to bring in how how brilliantly he evokes a sense of place How he has he has this really sort of uncanny unsettling imagery his imagery usually If you look at casino right now, for example, it starts off really beautiful. There's an amazing description of clouds like Paper herrings across the sky So starts off really lulling and beautiful And then as things begin to go wrong and bond begins to lose The imagery turns uncanny and unsettling So we have hands traveling across a card table like pink crabs eyeballs that look like black currents poached in blood So it becomes really unsettling. So I thought about ways to kind of Echo that imagery and then also his great gift of the point of view So being able to enter all these different characters minds being able to look at bond from the outside that was really helpful in in sort of this This iteration where I'm trying to occupy the perspective of multiple heroes And I mean we're talking of the multiple heroes This is planned trilogy at the moment And it focuses on three of the double O's Are there other double O's Introduced in later books or are you going to concentrate on The ones you've established so far looking around to see if anyone's saying you can't answer that I'm getting a maybe There'll be a red dot appearing between my eyes or something So I have other characters in my mind And they are introduced sort of as and when the plot needs them So what was fun for me was when I first began to imagine the characters I came up with sort of 10 people who might work in the double O section And then it was thinking well who's most useful for the plot In book one and then in book two other characters are kind of coming to the fore and some receding Which is the the sort of gift of being able to go beyond just the one hero And I mean while we're on that do you want to just very quickly say who the three double O's are? Yeah, sure. So we have kind of three main characters leading the novel There's double o three johanna harwood which will be a familiar name to bond fans the real life johanna harwood co-wrote dr. No and from russia with love um, and I kind of the films I should say yeah And uh, I wanted to sort of sort of honor the first woman to write bond And I I wrote to the real after and harwood and asked her permission. She was very kind and said yes So she's named after her but in the in the book double o three She she starts off actually training as a trauma surgeon That's kind of her initial plan in life and then something happens in her life She's she's brought to the attention of money penny and she's recruited into the double a section And she's somebody I think of her as like her main skill almost is adaptability. She is whatever the person across from her needs her to be As she's she has a romantic relationship with bond, which which doesn't last. I don't think that's a shock 21 And uh, she then gets together with double o nine said for sheer who has a very um philosophical Mind is pretty sort of strategic thinker quite different from from bond in lots of ways But bond is his mentor. So that's a super uncomfortable workplace with their love triangle And then there's double o four joseph dryden who I mentioned he was in special forces before an injury Kind of means he can't serve on the front line anymore, which is a really common route for for spies. I'm told To go from sort of soldier to spy because those skills are so useful And he's kind of on a there's sort of two strands to the novel We have double o three and double o nine and one and double o four and the other and the two kind of weave together How how worried are you? The the daily mail and the daily express Yes I probably don't need to say anymore Where the double o agents we've got a woman. Oh god, so woke A black gay man and a muslim. Yeah, I'm gonna do a strategic sip But and it was interesting because you you were talking at um The sort of launch party thing yesterday and you were saying but actually and I think it's a it's a really fantastic point is that MI6 wants to recruit as many diverse people as possible because of where they've got to go in the world and And you said, you know, if they all look like james bond, it would be a bit of a giveaway Yeah, there's a limit to how many places a white man who went to eat and can go undercover really Um Well, yeah, so when I was coming up with these new double o heroes The first thing I did was look on the MI6 website and they have these really funny job adverts that say, you know Do you love to travel? Do you speak five languages? So you can kind of build up a picture of who it is thereafter And um, you know, of course that they're looking for people from a whole range of backgrounds To to go undercover all over the world. So that was my first cue. Um, but also I was thinking about The opportunity That I was given to kind of widen out the cast of characters because I don't I don't want to change who james bond is I love bond as he is I want that character But to be able to bring in new heroes When I was little and I would play imaginary games I would play as james bond because you know, it's fantastic as those female characters are I didn't want to be rescued. I wanted to do the rescuing So I imagined I was bond and I thought this is an opportunity to Create a more kind of inclusive world where more readers can see themselves as the hero Yeah, and I think I think it's really clever not to sort of create one of them as This is the one who's who's like a sort of ersatz james bond You've made them all as different from him as as possible. Yeah, absolutely Because anything else is going to seem like a watered down martini. You can't do a version of bond He's he's himself. He's so essential and and there's no there's no Reason to to either, you know, I think we don't need to pay a limitation I I was really excited by the opportunity to bring in heroes who hopefully hopefully people will grow attached to in their own right I mean that you you have got in a couple of flashback scenes to To bond himself and how old is bond in the book? So he is kind of around the age So Fleming says that at 45 most double-os retire or are dead by that point So forced to retire But I kind of have him hovering around that age So he's at the age where really money penny ought to say to him stop. This isn't wise anymore But he's he's missing so she can't tell him that yet. Yeah, I mean You know for someone like me who's kind of seeped in the world of the of the books and the whole mythos I kept having to stop myself and thinking well, how does that turn him with what he did there? He'd be 100 years old I have a I have a whole head cannon of all of the Fleming's books Updated so they in my mind they take place in the 80s 90s and 2000s So I have a sort of weird 90s version of moon raker Where there's a neo nazi plot instead of a nazi plot, which actually isn't that farfetched these days So I brought it all kind of up in my mind so I could just continue on from Fleming And well the question that I would always get asked writing about bond is you know A which is your favorite bond I presume for you is it Pierce Brosnan because that was your first Yeah, well, so for me it's Sean Connery But then it was kind of In your books, which which of which of the bonds is it which actor did you do you have that image in your mind? Or was he a conglomerate of them all? Yeah more of a conglomerate. I had Fleming's description In my mind as the sort of almost like the bible version And then depending on the scene I was writing like if it was a very Action heavy scene it'd be Daniel Craig running through my mind if it was James Bond walking Powerfully it'd be Sean Connery If it was him smiling it'd be Pierce Brosnan raising an eyebrow Roger Moore Just just the eyebrow from Roger brooding Timothy Dalton and Whatever it is that George Lasingby was doing Just the eyebrow of Roger Moore, there's a very funny story about when Roger Moore was filming Liv and Let Die His first foray and in fact he wrote a really entertaining Journal of when he was filming that it's a really great read But when they came to the first big action scene the director was it Martin Campbell? No, it was we'll call him John I should know there's people out there going no it wasn't him Anyway, so it says to says to Roger And Okay, so the that's the entrance to the to the cave over there, so I want you to run over there So can I can I just stop you the job? I won't be running over there Said yeah, no, no, it's a chase. So, you know, you got to get to the cave mouth quickly says yes But I I won't be running It's if you got to you're you're being chased he said Shall I demonstrate? And he demonstrated his run to the director And the director said, okay, you'll walk briskly He does do a lot of brisk walking. He does he never run. He's no Daniel Craig with the the free run He can run up a crane He was very embarrassed by his walk Was it I'm gonna look at David. Was it Guy Hamilton the director guy Hamilton across it was yes I should have asked you why I was asking them So yeah guy, no, I won't be doing that guy. Um Where were we? What were we talking about? Roger Moore Roger Moore. Yes. Well, which which bond is it? Yes, and there's bits of all of them Yeah, I'm it's funny the Roger Moore films because you know having grown up With Sean Connery and gone through all that, you know, that was my idea of this very kind of muscular bond and then When the Roger Moore films started to come out, I was sort of reaching that age where I was thinking I'm a bit A bit too grown up for bond now as I was getting into being older teenage and I think you know, this isn't James Bond But actually going back. I I think Some of those Roger Moore films are fantastically entertaining. Absolutely just just pure entertainment and and and light comedy as well Which he was a master of yeah, complete master I used to rush home from school to watch the saint because I'm a child out of time And I love the same And I I always loved him in that because it suits his lightness. I think in his debonair touch But I think he's a brilliant bond. He's not necessarily my my just my personal favorite But um, I think he's he's fantastic for You know every actor brings out a different facet of bond and I think what he brings out is that Bond uses a light touch as a survival mechanism and then beneath that There's a sort of sometimes a simmering anger that he lets kind of rise to the surface and then and then clamps back down where there's raised eyebrow Excellently put And obviously in your book you've got all the elements are in there um Including the villains and there are sort of as you said, there's sort of two strands to the story and there are sort of two strands To the villainy, but you have one character who I guess is is your Is your cube on villains? Tell us a little bit about him Well, so I was thinking um about you know the the villain is hard because Fleming has such iconic villains and and the Films have carried that on brilliantly And this was something that we chatted about when we we met for the first time last year at the They do a premiere for the films for the Fleming family and we met then We went off into a corner with Anthony Horowitz and all talked about how the villain is the hardest thing And I felt like god if my 12 year old self could see me now Talking to these two writers that I love it's very surreal But I kind of I looked to Fleming for help. I thought well He's he writes about the kind of main threats of his time Whether it's the sort of fear of communism or the fear of the bomb And so I thought what are our Sort of greatest threats right now and I felt like our greatest global threat is the climate crisis So I looked at, you know, how might a a bond villain kind of Represent in that in a way. How can you take that crisis and put it in a human? So the the villains called suburtran paradise He's a tech billionaire and he has a promise that he can halt the climate crisis using geoengineering And uh, it's up to the double a section to work out whether his intentions are as are as pure as he says Yeah, I mean the the the villains is tricky. I mean the the whole thing is tricky because People want it to be the same But different because I always say oh, that's just another bond villain or it's you know, so it and and trying to get away with the in the Trying to create that villain character that isn't isn't kind of deformed in some way or scarred or yeah disfigured and and Yeah, I mean Was that one of the reasons why you added in the extra layer of the villainy around him? So I I wanted to have these two strands and I thought I'll I'll have the W3 and 009 facing one threat and 004 facing another and then as as the book goes on you wonder if if they're sort of Intertwined and it certainly in one way takes the pressure off one villain to hold it. Yeah, but I also love That sort of Russian doll structure of you don't quite know who the bad guy is and I think Some of that goes back to Cold War spy thrillers That sense of paranoia and insecurity and not knowing quite where the source of evil is So I I think I was inspired by that And I also was looking at kind of who are our villains today So the villain in the other strand is a kind of shadowy private military organization Which felt to me just sort of not taken from the headlines But certainly something that we're seeing more and more in conflict. So that seemed kind of useful to explore a high class mercenary Yeah, exactly and And I I sense you don't you you can't say or don't want to say too much about the other books But are they going to be a sort of specter ongoing thing or are they dealt with in this one? So I think I can say that the because it's been conceived as a trilogy Which is a kind of gift for me as a writer because I could think about the long arc of these characters And also for me, I was always really curious. Well, what happens next? So you bring down the one guy What about the whole organization? So it's a chance for me to kind of Hopefully you'll finish the book with some questions and then books two and three can kind of answer those questions I was also thinking about the kind of ways to make the villain human you don't want them to seem cartoonish and I was talking to Really fantastic editor at the Fleming estate Phoebe About the problem of cartoonish villains that so so many of our villains in our real modern world are very cartoonish And are very flat and their and their motifs are very shallow. Well, they've all modeled themselves on bond It would seem Donald trump is is just every you know, he's got a mad hairstyle. Yeah. He's a strange color Yeah, he's got his huge bond villain there that he plays golf. Yeah, he's always playing golf Yeah, I mean he's goldfinger in a wig, isn't it? Yeah, completely. He's stealing nuclear codes. He's all over it So, so how do you how do you kind of make it interesting? How do you get into that person's mind? When our when our models today are quite cartoonish and I was actually able to speak to somebody Who works for the government? People who might be showing tendencies towards violent extremism And it was a really useful conversation to just to kind of get beyond That flat idea and into the human, you know, what what makes somebody that angry? What makes somebody that scared and to to be able to get into the psychology really helped me with writing the villains in the book Yeah, well, are you done a terrific job? um now you mentioned last night and it's something I wanted to talk about and going back to How excited it was for me to be when they were recording the the diana the day piece fantastic the full orchestra blasting away Is that you listen to music you listen to the bond music when you're right Which is exactly what I did when I started writing the young bond books was to get myself into the right mindset at the start of the day I created a James Bond playlist with all the big themes and I I I Did already have a big collection of bond soundtrack music as I love John Barry. Yeah, so It was really interesting that you did exactly the same thing Yeah, I think like I was saying earlier you can't ignore the films because They're so sort of deep within the subconscious and so I felt like there's no point trying to ignore them Just to literally bring it into the room through the music because just listening to the theme immediately Well for me like this is the most I've giggled while writing You know the theme starts playing and I write James Bond or I just start laughing to myself And certain songs are kind of good for different moments Because there are some beautiful love songs. I nobody does it better. It's just such a beautiful love song And then and then you know, Tom Jones blasting it out and Shirley Bassie And so there you also get your good swelling epic moments So anytime I'm finding it a bit tricky as well. I feel like the music always comes to my rescue very much so, you know Because I mean did you When I started I I I did you know, first of all say brilliant. What a fantastic job to be offered And then you sit down and you think well, can I pull it off? Can I write? As you said, I didn't want to write like Ian Fleming and try and copy his style, but it needed to feel Like James Bond. So I sort of picked a bit in the story that I knew was going to happen That was kind of the most James Bondy bit And put the music on and and it did it. So did you have that moment of thinking How did you prove to yourself that you could Do that that it might work? Well The first sentence was really daunting. It was Fleming so good at first sentences in the opening line of casino royale The sentence smoking sweat of the casino and nauseating at three in the morning. That's my favorite opening line ever So that was daunting and I actually I wrote what is the opening line in the book And then I Deleted it and then I wrote ten other opening lines and then I went back to the first one decided okay. Maybe that's good enough But when did it feel like it was working? There's a flashback moment a few chapters in where It's in money pennies memory and she remembers Bond coming into the office And it's kind of halfway between a memory and her Imagining if he was to suddenly turn up again because he's been missing for quite a while What would it be like if he were to suddenly turn up again? And that was when almost Fantasy shuddered into reality and I realized I am writing James Bond and I've got a few thousand words on the page and Maybe it'll be okay But you couldn't write the iconic line The names bond we attempted to do the names harwood Just a troll No, nobody. Yeah, nobody says I realized that yesterday Somebody asked me and I realized no nobody says it and so maybe I'll I'll save it if if he turns up again Maybe I'll save it for them I managed to get it in into my young bond book because it it starts with his first day eaten And one of the master says who are you the names bond sir james bond But I mean Fleming I think one of the reasons his books are so As so great is that he put his own passions into it The things that he loved doing or that he was interested in then he wanted to find out about and he loved skiing and he loved cars and smoking and drinking and women Would were there any of your passions that you brought specifically to the book of that's what I want to write about because that's what I love Yeah, absolutely A lot of the places in the book Places that I really love so the Barbican features significantly in the novel and Is the British library going to be in the next one? Well, that would be telling But yes So the Barbican is like one of my favorite buildings and I thought it'd be fun to bring it in despite you and Fleming hating modernism I thought it'd be fun to bring in as a kind of icon of post war london because bond himself is an icon of post war London and also just because I really love the Barbican And I was lucky that the Fleming's know somebody who lives there and was able to give me a sort of behind-the-scenes tour You know, this is what the car park is like. This is what the laundry is like the things that you don't always get to see Um, which helped me kind of bring it to life So a lot of it was places, but you know, particularly growing up in london getting to write about the places that I love um And then also looking at so I was writing it in lockdowns and it's it's hard to write a jet setting escapist novel It just in one room But in a way it kind of set me free So I looked at um, Ian Fleming's travel book thrilling cities where had he written about that? I have also been and love so berlin It sort of came to the fore as a city. I really love Um, so really also to bring in in those those things that I've always fantasized, you know Every time I go to berlin in the past I've thought oh if bond was here what would happen and I've and I've plotted it all out So there was a chance to kind of put that on the page And obviously one of the other things that Fleming loved was was cars Yes, he loved driving big powerful cars. Um, and there's a lot of Car stuff in the book Including I thought it was pronounced alpine, but it's an alpine. Is it I believe so. Yes Facts checkers in the corner Yes, al the alpine is the new kind of bond Car, I shouldn't say bond car. It's harwoods car. It's the new 003 car in the book And it was it was really exciting to um Kind of get to write about it. I've never driven in a sports car in my life So I said, you know in order for this to be like a really authentic. Why have you never driven a sports car? well Where have people been in my life with a sports car? Because I can't try Which is my terrible confession. Well, I'm very similar. I didn't learn to drive till I was in my late 30s and again, I had to I mean, I I did quite get into cars writing the books because I had to kind of look into it But you know, it's one of those things Uh, you have to fake it But you did get driven in the in the car. Well, if you can't drive a race car driver will take you out Which is even better I think so we went out in the alpine in edinburgh and uh for those who don't know edinburgh You know the old town is like all these streets doing this and cobbles and it's a really low down car So like bumping over the cobbles and I was thinking well, this is you know, it's really beautiful But it's kind of a bit painful, you know, and then we got out of the city center And the driver just flawed it without telling me and I left my spine several city blocks back But it was amazing for so much fun. It's like, can we do that again, please? So I was writing notes while he was driving me around, but I couldn't tell him What it was. I was it was still a secret at that point. I wasn't able to tell anyone so But he'd been told I was a vip And he asked what I did and I said oh, well, I'm I'm writing a a book about cars I thought that's a good cover for why I'm making all these notes And then he turned to me and said but you just told me you can't drive Yes is the world's worst cover, but it's what I'm sticking to you would make a useless secret agent I really would I was saying to him if you were in a mountain at night being chased in this car What would you do? And you came off the road and came down the side of the mountain and there was an avalanche behind you And you had to get out and ski backwards. Yeah, how would that work? I only had a canoe But again, you were saying yesterday that there was in terms of gadgetizing the car. There was a writer's gift to you Yeah, so I spoke to the Sev emerging director Alpine was so helpful and kind of talked me through the design of the car And he said if I'm right that there were five buttons These silver buttons and they realized as they were designing it that the fifth button was kind of obsolete Like the purpose they didn't really need anymore But but five was more aesthetically pleasing So they they kept it but that meant there was just one button in the car that didn't do anything Which to me was like such a gift, you know, what would Q branch do with with a button that didn't do anything So I had a lot of fun Kind of did you go through lots of options? I went through lots of options. I had a lot of help from my brother-in-law who um, I think is a spy He might not be But I think he is But uh, he works for government and was able to kind of talk me through some very cool things that the mo d have Excellent, um There I mean there is a huge amount. I would love to talk to you about but um, we are Running short on time. So it would be great to throw it open to the audience To anything that you would like to ask about There's a guy at the back right back there. There's a microphone on its way to you Um Hello, Kim. Uh, could you name one thing you enjoyed about writing double or nothing? Just one thing Oh, that's a challenge. Um Writing the dialogue. I really love writing dialogue and um in my other Novels my novels that aren't james bond sometimes my editor will will write in the margins Uh next to the dialogue. Is this a bit too james bond? Because I really love one-liners And this was an opportunity for me to have No holds barred all the one line as I want in the world So I really enjoyed writing the dialogue and also dialogue is where you get Two characters in relationship with each other working through conflict and that's the kind of crunchy scene. I love to write Yeah, I mean what's really interesting when you read the um The Fleming books is that bond doesn't really do one-liners, does he very few But but they but that sort of voice of bond and that that sort of thing comes through in Fleming's narration and that's where the sort of Dark humor. Yeah, and that kind of rye laconic voice. Yeah, which is which is really interesting that when they did the films They kind of picked up on On the Fleming side of things and put that into into and there's that story with the with the Filmmaking of dr. No that it was only sort of once they put a score to it that they realized it was funny And either the bit where he beats the tarantula with the shoe and they did that And then everybody laughed in the cutting room and they thought oh, maybe we have a comedy on our And it must be some more questions. It's one over here If I don't know whether you've talked about having it filmed or not But if it was who would you see playing your double o7? You know, I've never thought about that Which seems absurd now um It's almost impossible to say because The one I have in my mind as we were talking about earlier is so um Sort of inflected with Fleming's bond that there isn't an actor who I could see would fit my imagination I think also, I mean, obviously it's like a national hobby speculating about who will play bond next but for me I'm I'm still kind of in mourning for daniel craig So I I think my imagination hasn't hasn't gone that far yet. I'm sorry. That's that's a not a very complete answer Did you have for your young bond? Were there any sort of child actors in mind? No, no, I mean that that's that's the really tricky thing is You'll never really be able to find a child actor who can who's good enough And experienced enough to embody Someone like james bond and it works so much better as as a book and the interesting thing is that you know I think kids a lot of the time Would rather go and see an adult james bond anyway. Yeah Um, because he can do all those things Yeah, kids can't do. Yeah gets the girls Who's next? Well, we have we have a an online question from all the way from portland, oregon. Jim turner asks Oh well says first kim. Congratulations one down two to go And then asks if in Fleming were in your chair and you were in the audience Um, what question would you put to him? Oh, well, oh first of all, hello american jim. That's my family friend. Hi american jim Um, what would I ask ian fleming if I could ask him anything? That's a very good question I think I'd ask him if James bond is capable of happiness What would you ask him I'd ask him if he could ever forgive me for for writing the young bond books Because he would have hated the idea. I mean I tried to keep it to the spirit of bond and Fleming but The very idea for him of james bond as a child being this sort of On the fringes of being a secret agent. Um It just you know, he would have hated it You know and he said often that he never even intended james bond to be a heroic character He found him a fascinating character, but he was you know a very conflicted character He's a hard assassin after all and he was appalled that people were sort of Glamourizing eight-year-old girls were pretending to be james bond And he and he rather disastrously tried to sort of redress the balance in as by who loved me Of trying to show bond making mistakes and cocking up and going wrong to try and say oh, he's not this great guy Um, and he also was trying to never try and please the critics and Address things for them. So he told the book through the eyes of this female character and You know Fleming was an amazing writer. He wrote fantastically well about places as we've discussed about action He was a brilliant action writer and it's very very difficult writing action And he wrote very well about about things cars guns gadgets And when he wrote about relationships and women it was a slightly He you know he he was He was such a strange man himself that I think a lot of that came through In some of his if he's writing and the idea that he thought that he could write Sympathetically and properly through the eyes of a woman was I think he bit off more than he could chew there Well, they're reading that one. I remember the first time I read this by you love me the first So it's got this really interesting structure Um, it's all narrated by the the leading lady in the first section is about her sort of teenage years Early relationships with boys and going we're trying to go into a sort of career in journalism and smashing up against the glass ceiling in 60s London And those descriptions of the early relationships with boys and and boys saying to her Why can't you just be a sport about it? And then you know leaving her alone to have an abortion It's it's pretty radical for a writer at that time to be empathizing into that and yeah You know, I remember reading that as a teenager and thinking he's a lot of this still resonates with me in the 2000s which is Sad, but uh, you know, he was he's kind of on the money with with a quite a bit of it. I think But that's not what you really want from a james bond. Yes. Maybe not what you're going to bond for and and um Yeah, he stopped it from being Repeated publishing didn't he? Yeah. Yeah, I would love to see that as an adaptation. I did a really fun podcast You should watch out for um, I think they're releasing the episode soon called build a bond where you get to like fantasy cast your own Bond film and my idea was that the spy who loved me was adapted and it was adapted as the first ever bond film So it's a bit of an older bond because it's a later book And I thought Carrie Grant would have made a lovely older slightly weary bond and then Audrey Hepburn I won't tell you more that there's a spoiler listen to the podcast, but it was great fun doing that Any more questions? There's one down here. Was there another one there? Yeah No, that's fine if you're ready to go Me? Oh, sorry. Sorry. Um, so you both sort of mentioned music and the creative process Is there like a particular song that you would associate with your bond book? Hmm. That's a good question. It's I mean it's hard to to to think beyond the bond themes because that's the ones that I Listen to while writing it But of those I think Nobody does it better as one that comes to mind because double or nothing kind of centers on In some ways the relationship between Bond and and Howard and Bashir and I've always thought nobody does it better as a beautiful love song But also a very sad love song because you get the sense that the speaker would really like someone else to do it Better so they could move on So that that one kind of comes to mind in that in that love triangle and then Diamonds are forever also because I think it kind of speaks to Again that sort of like the tragic appeal of bond and and also how he's often mirrored in the villains as well, which is something I played around with in this Uh, there's guy down the front here So I just wait for the mic just so that our online You um, we're talking about the cars and having to figure yourself into the mindset where you could drive a sports car So brilliantly and know all about that. I just want to obviously in bond. There's a lot of violence How did you cope with writing that with also modern sensibility of violence is something she's very good at I've seen kim in a fight Well, yeah, it's a good question I've always really loved writing fight scenes and um One of the early readers of the book was kind of worried that I might have sort of sadistic tendencies Which would be very flaming I've always I think probably because of growing up reading flaming and watching the bond films and You know growing up loving Also things like die hard and you know indiana jones and like all the action classics. I've always loved writing that But it's when you're trying to get it into the page obviously you don't have the sort of cinematic aspect so It was also about mapping it onto the characters emotional experiences and Where they are, you know, they're motifs for you know, when you think about a double o Why did they put themselves in this position? Why are they prepared to kind of give their body over for this abuse in lots of ways james bond's Body sort of represents britain and why is he prepared to give it over in that way? And and Fleming there's a moment in from Russia with love where bond thinks of himself as being pimped out for britain And he's a little bit uncomfortable about it So I also kind of looked to his writing and how he how he thought about the body and its uses to write I mean the the the the violence in the books is is very different to the films. It is It's painful. It hurts him. It hurts other people. He doesn't enjoy doing it. He has to do it And and it's written very well, it's not like Hey, let's have a great fun punch up It's not roger more violence And and you know and the other thing is of course Fleming himself is the same as us in the end as a writer it boils down to You're sitting alone in a room with a keyboard and you make it all up You don't have to go out and kill people But you can project yourself Into that mindset. I mean Fleming was lucky enough to have One of the nicest writing rooms in the world He would go out to his house. He built in jamaica golden eye and would sit at his tight writer and Work through his what he had to write every day and Go for a swim when his private reef have a big cocktail and have dinner Sounds good. It's an amazing lifestyle. I'm waiting for someone to deliver the villa at some point I think it's coming, but we'll see book two maybe There's one here. Yeah, it's come straight to you Was it easy to write vices for the new characters because we all know that bond has several What either one are they or was it easy enough to write write them into the book? Oh, that's a really good question I think it ties into What makes them a double o so Bond enjoys the luxuries of life as a way to face the memory of pain and death Fleming writes and I I thought about that with these characters. What do they do to kind of survive and to get through What they're experiencing and so for for harward. She does enjoy the sort of luxuries of life like bond does Bashir I think takes comfort in his mind in in being analytical And and Dryden it was really interesting to write Dryden's character because as a as a special forces soldier He'd always been able to rely on his body, you know to sort of live as a warrior and then The injury that he sustains In afghanistan really changes that and he's and he needs the help of q branch to Sort of keep operating and to keep being in the field And so he has a changing relationship with his body through the book And the his sort of coping mechanisms for that were We're really fun to write and particularly How he relied on people and what happened when those people let him down When he had to become self-reliant. So that was that was sort of really kind of crunchy to explore in the writing Yes, I mean it's tricky because Fleming famously had a lot of vices and he wasn't He wasn't shy about talking about them. You know and as you say he said It's same as bond. It's what made life worth living for him and That's what adds a real rich vein into the into the Fleming books is is that side of of Of Fleming and it becomes that side of bond and you know much as I have loved all the Continuation books that have been written by Sebastian folks onwards If anything, I would say that they're all slightly too nice people To be able to come up with that real Because you know, there are there are strange very dark twisted things that happen in the books And I I missed that in some of the Some of those are I mean great great as those books are Yes um, talked about the cars and devices and but we all know That the style like bonds clothes his watch Those things are really important Did you choose any particular items for your double O's to be wearing or like Do they have a piece of jewelry or watch or something that is like their version of bonds sort of iconic pieces of style Yeah, absolutely. I I wanted the um the female characters in the in the book. So Howard and money penny in particular I wanted them to I had this idea that they would have watches designed by women I thought it was a nice way to kind of use their characters to put Women-led design right sort of up front and center And then I spent sort of a day looking for female watch designers And it's a very kind of male dominated industry, but I did find some really amazing designers So um, Howard's watch is um her maids watch designed by Nina Ditzel's beautiful ceramic Watch face and and if they would like to sponsor me at all or You know, I could wear that watch I could wear the hell out of that watch So I enjoyed writing about that and and again my love of modernism I gave Howard all the Charlotte Perignon jewelry that I would love to wear But for Dryden, um his watch is part of what kind of allows him to to sort of speak to cue in a sense So I was looking for technological watches. I went for a Garmin mark commander, which I was told was kind of favored by special forces So it was it was really fun researching that and I had a I had a great day I was taken to Sotheby's to look at their watch collection And they showed me their Rolexes and they like let me hold them And then while I was looking I said to them how much is this worth? And they told me the number on my hands was suddenly so sweaty So I'll just put this here That that was really great fun They're coming thick and fast now Yeah, hi Double owner things a wonderful Fleming esque title. Thank you How difficult and at what stage did you arrive at it? Well, I feel lucky because it sort of wasn't difficult It was the first title I wanted it kind of came to me through the villain the I don't think this is a spoiler to say because you've learned quite early on the the villain really enjoys gambling and And so sort of double on nothing came to me as a phrase and I wanted some way to get double o into the title So it kind of came to me through that and it's it's something that drives the villain and drives the story And and then I was just really fortunate that everyone else liked it so I could keep it No, I mean Fleming did come up with such Amazing archetypal titles. Yeah, and you know You always think well, it must have come easily to him, but he had notebooks full of Alternative titles and I was very pleased because I on all my young Bond books I went through about 10 different titles on each book So I was pleased to see that that Fleming didn't always get it right First time the the original title that he really fought To keep for um live and let die He really wanted to call it the undertaker's wind And for someone who it was kind of tuned to To the language you think did you not spot how that could be misinterpreted it? You just picture a big fat undertaker leaning over With a boil on his ass letting off a real stinker Where are we going? Wave your hand and speak whoever has the mic I think we have a mic next to this gentleman. Oh and at the back Thank you. Hi Kim. Hi Charlie. I think Bond isn't very safe hands You mentioned drafting and redrafting your opening line and I wondered doing the process Whether you asked for or wanted any feedback on the chapters as you were going along Or did you just write the whole thing from beginning to end and then get the feedback? Um, I I have a sort of very restricted pool of readers for early on I feel like When you're writing a novel the more you write the novel the more the novel tells you what it wants to be So in those early stages, it's quite a delicate thing and you're trying to listen out for it speaking in your mind So for me anyway, it's important not to get too many voices involved But with the early chapters going back to what we were saying earlier about that sort of initial Can I do this fear the early chapters? I read aloud to family members Which I found helpful and it's very nice for them to be patient and listen So I'm sure that there were lots of kind of rambling sentences But pace seemed really important and this was my first time writing a thriller and really there's no bigger stage to learn on So Reading it out to people and getting a sense of that pace was really helpful And then, you know, eventually sharing it with the Fleming family. That was a really daunting Moment but really special to be able to talk to them about it and kind of talk about ideas and the direction of the story You know, I really valued that Sort of collaborative nature of the work Yeah, I mean the you know my experiences and I'm sure it's the same for you, Ken It would lovely to work with the family and the estate and and literary estates can be a nightmare to have dealings with but if p is a marvelous organization I'm not only saying that because they're all here And you know, it was understood from the start and it sounds exactly the well It would have been exactly the same with you Kim that once I'd presented my case and we talked through the ideas and how it would work Then left us to it to get on with it and write it It was understood that if when I finished the book and I presented it they hated it then would never see the light of day Or I could republish it Under a different different come up with a different secret agent. Yeah, Jimmy pond was going down to school one day Yeah, so Yeah, no, it wasn't a case of having to submit every chapter Because you know as a writer you as kim was saying you've got to get it right for yourself first To be happy with it and really until you've done your first draft. You don't know what it is you've got Yes, I wanted to ask You said you first read the books in the sort of early 2000s. Is that about You're making me do maths now. Yes, that would be about right. Yeah I mean, I read them in the 70s and I took them as just the great ventures. They were But reading them later on in life There are moments in there the morals and the manners that make you make me wins You know that I didn't really notice the time because life has moved on and things have changed How did you feel about the aspect of Fleming reading them in the 2000s? Did It's a good question. I think You know As you say you read them the context you're reading in them in matters So I was aware that I was reading them decades after they'd been written and in some ways I loved them for their style and I loved them for what they taught me about history because they're incredible Not only reflections of their times or reflection sounds like a passive word They also shaped their time because they were so culturally important So yes, of course Some of our ideas have changed since then but for me I was always fascinated with with history growing up and it felt like this this window into the past that The Fleming was kind of inviting me into then the whole thing has that flavor I think you know the there's that author's note at the beginning of from Russia with love where He says oh not that it matters But smash the real organization and this is their address And I just found that so kind of exciting this idea that had I been there then I I'm sure he was sort of out of date and it wasn't the right address But I loved that idea that I could have walked down that street in Russia and knocked on the door and and there would be Colonel Klev No, I mean he was he was very proud of How factual he had made that opening section and it was largely based on information that had come from a They weren't called. I can never remember what initials. They're ever called at any one time a kgb defector were calling that And and it was all based on that and as you say he said this is all true And somebody then did go and to the address and it wasn't the headquarters The the the defector had made it all up. Yeah It was all lies, but it doesn't matter because it feels yeah, it feels right But yeah, I mean, you know the interesting, you know, it is that those books were written in the 50s and Attitudes have changed times have changed, but even at the time Fleming was He was trying to Make some points and and push people's buttons and In some ways he felt that what he was doing was being quite progressive in the attitudes Towards women. I was trying to find the specific quote earlier and I couldn't find it But it was that idea that that everything was so dull and and formalized in the 1950s particularly how you would go about Uh wooing courting a woman and there's huge long process of taking them out to dinner and meeting the parents and And going through all this stuff till eventually Five years later you can marry them and finally be able to go to bed with them and He was saying If you've got a young man and a young woman and they both want to go to bed with each other They should just be able to do that get on with it cut to the chase Be open and honest about it and it's interesting because the books were written in the 50s at the same time as Playboy magazine was launching and again that was sort of like James Bond It was how to be a gentleman in the modern world and how to be able to talk about sex And and all the other stuff that you have in playboy about you know How to order meals and talk to waiters and what wine to buy and all that you know how to be a playboy And it was also the time of the angry young men and if you look at those plays a lot of that was about men shouting at women Because you weren't allowed to do that before and this was seen as being terribly modern Obviously it's not But you know at the time I think I think he was feeling that he was being progressed and was saying these truths that needed to be said particularly in his female characters I think for people who haven't read the novels or maybe know the the films more than the novels It's easy to forget that That was something that he that I think he kind of brought to the spy genre and that he revolutionized in the genre that the female characters aren't um A prize to be won at the end of a quest They are rounded characters with their own agency and their own missions. If you look at somebody like gala brand who's who's Policewoman she's she's undercover. It's her mission She's been on this mission for a year and then bomb derives and she thinks oh great Here comes this double o. You know with his with this smile and knowing a few languages and fancy pistol tricks But what use is that going to be to me? so He's often kind of joining women actually on on their mission and we talked earlier about Vivian michelle and the spy love me as a journalist He has a lot of these very professional women Trying to make it in that world and and to him. I think they're just as important characters as bond is Yeah, and Fleming himself was was was attractive to strong independent Athletic women and you know, he didn't He wanted to get away from the sort of simpering Image of the 1950s woman and and sort of thousands of layers of petticoats Polishing the stove He had no interest in that and and and and so, you know, it's an endless debate, you know Was he in Fleming a mysogenist? He's james bonder my sodas. I think it's a lot more complex and complicated And you know, you could write books about it and in fact people have Hundreds Thank you I know you've started before the bond project came into your life With a plan for a series of novels And you had more than one in your mind Suddenly this opportunity Appears like a bomb shell that's thrown all your plans out of the window How have you responded to this Change in your artistic career and it must have been quite an effort Thank you Yeah, I in some ways I feel like I've had to learn a whole new way of writing or a whole new creative process My my first novel testament took me Seven years to write from start to finish my my next literary novel Which is out in february a wild and true relation from start to finish that will have taken 14 years Obviously with other things in between And so the next one in the trilogy is what? 20 years Yeah, exactly. I think the suspense is good, you know build the tension So I was trying to learn a new way to write. I was thinking about how Fleming wrote them in three months in a villa Trying to sort of emulate that that pace and that piff And also thinking about what's the difference between A literary novel and a thriller in some ways, I think Genre categories are kind of a a marketing construction. Um, they don't sort of matter all that much, but I was trying to sort of get to the root of what is there a difference kind of structurally and It came to me that that for me anyway, I think often with a novel that's called literary The goal in mind for the character is quite abstract It might be a sense of belonging or finding a sense of identity or working out what home means to them and It perhaps isn't a kind of tangible object Whereas often in a thriller you have a kind of tangible object a sort of MacGuffin that the the characters are after and then you hang on that object the characters Motifs and emotions and inner life. So all of that is still there, but it sort of hooked on to something perhaps a bit more physical so I think that the change really was kind of thinking differently about how I write and sort of learning a new process Did you want to go to an online question? Yeah, we have one one little online question from julie and digby. Um came it looks like you're wearing a bullet necklace That is an eagle eye Well, they can see uh Um any significance? Yes, um, this is a bullet with my name on it because if you have it it can't hit you That's my theory Uh, so this was an 18th birthday present and I felt like if there was ever an occasion to wear it It was this one. So thank you for noticing julie How much longer have we got how many more questions can we take any last one question and then one last question Who's the most keen? Oh, it's him. He's just grabbed it So it sounds like your book is going a new direction from the rest of the continuation novels Is that to attract a younger audience of readers? Or is it to expand the universe like we see with the marvel novels and how has that influenced your writing? Uh, good question. I I'd say more the second one. Um, we we did I kind of thought about it in terms of the mcu, you know a wider universe I think in in lots of ways what marvel has done on screen is and what they already do in the comic books Is a sort of modern version of greek mythology, perhaps the closest thing We have to that with these vast sprawling characters and they've they all have these intimate relationships with each other And you can bring any forward at one time And in many ways, that's the antithesis of a traditional james bond story Where we have this this quest with with one figure at the front of it And you always wonder, you know, couldn't he call backup when he's like in real trouble? But but there's seemingly there's no backup because all the other double o's are I don't know working like postal fraud or something that day They can't come to his rescue But but in this there was the opportunity to have a a wider cast of characters and For me that was really interesting because what i'm particularly Interested in writing about is is relationships. So relationships between characters and Also the relationship that that writing creates with a with a reader You know the relationship that we're forming in the room now So if you have this wide cast of characters and they can all have histories with each other Then that's gives you such a sort of rich tapestry for storytelling So I hope that it kind of expands the universe In the way that the mcu does and gives Maybe endless possibilities for storytelling well, um We do have to finish as I say I love talking about james bond and and I love talking to you Kim and and could stay here all night, but you've probably got lives to get on with Um, but please give a huge round of applause to kim