Richard, who played the popular steel-teethed assassin in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979), both directed by Lewis Gilbert, will be making special appearances at the following venues:

Saturday, 25 May: At the Timeless Collectors Show, Mountbatten Centre, Alexandra Park, Portsmouth (along with Blanche Ravelec, who played his girlfriend ‘Dolly’ in Moonraker).

Sunday, 26 May: At Beaulieu Motor Museum, at the very successful ’Bond in Motion’ 007 cars exhibition (where Blanche will be joining him again).

Monday, 27 May: At a special event entitled ‘An Evening With Richard Kiel’, at the Misty Moon Gallery in London, where he will be interviewed about his career and there will a screening of The Spy Who Loved Me.

It will be a welcome return for Richard and for his British fans. Richard was last on ‘Bond duty’ in Britain in September, 2012, when he was involved in the special Blu-ray Bond Tour of Britain, a Bond films 50th Anniversary campaign which celebrated the release of all 22 Bond films on Blu-ray. This saw him revisit Pinewood Studios and culminated in him joining Britt Ekland at the HMV store in London’s famous Oxford Street.

When he was cast in the role by Albert R. Broccoli in 1976, Richard, who stood at seven foot two and a half inches, proved to be a very popular choice for Moore’s third 007 adventure. In fact, he was so good in the role that the producer decided to have the final scenes rewritten so that they could have Jaws back for Moonraker in 1979. And his popularity with audiences proved this was a canny decision on Cubby’s part.

Bond trivia note: When Sir Roger Moore published his book Bond on Bond in 2012, he recalled his time filming with Richard Kiel, who became a good friend to Roger. The 007 actor reminded readers that Jaws got his name from the ‘ominous, glinting steel teeth he wore’. But Sir Roger also revealed: ‘Poor devil, they were so uncomfortable to wear – Richard could only keep them in for about half a minute at a time’.

Many of the reports are based on a piece by the British showbiz journalist Baz Bamigboye in his celebrity gossip column in the UK’s Daily Mail  newspaper (May 17), entitled ‘Dark Knight to rise for next Bond?’

Bamiboye claimed in the Mail that Nolan has been approached to direct the next Bond movie, and informal talks have been held between Nolan, his representatives, and the EON producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson.

Bamigboye commented that Nolan would be ‘a cool choice’ after Sam Mendes decided not to direct Bond 24. He also wrote in the Mail that it would be fascinating to see a film-maker of Nolan’s standing ‘build on what Mendes and the 007 gang has already done with Bond’.

Bamigboye has a fairly good track record on breaking Bond news stories, although he was confidently predicting for quite a few weeks that Sam Mendes would direct Bond 24. But the possibility of Chris Nolan helming Bond 24 would make much financial and creative sense for EON, would please MGM, and would put a big Bond enthusiast in charge of the next movie, ensuring some creative continuity between Mendes and Nolan concerning the further evolution of James Bond. Moreover, Nolan has considerable experience at handling blockbuster movies.

Chris Nolan has stated in a number of past interviews that the 007 movies have been a particular influence on his own film work. In September, 2010, for example, while he was working on pre-production for the third Batman movie, he told one interviewer: ‘I’ve loved the Bond films since I was a kid. For me, they’re always about the expansiveness of cinema. The first Bond films set up infinite possibilities about the world they create. I’d love to do a Bond movie’.

Similarly, speaking at an ‘Evening with’ event in New York as recently as November, 2012, Nolan again acknowledged that James Bond has influenced his work, and he revealed that one of the first movies he ever saw was The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

New Broccoli Project

Meanwhile, news has emerged that Bond producer Barbara Broccoli has cast the award-winning British star Damian Lewis, who played Nicholas Brody in the TV drama Homeland, opposite Andrea Riseborough in The Silent Storm, a new romantic drama which will be shot in Scotland this summer.

EON is teaming up with WestEnd and Neon Film to produce the new movie, and it has been promoted around the circuit at the May 2013 Cannes Film Festival. A source told the JBIFC that location scouts have been looking at places in Scotland that could double up for a remote Scottish island, which forms an essential backdrop to the story.

Following up this news, the London Evening Standard  spoke to Broccoli at the ‘Women For Women’ International Gala, held on the evening of May 16, and, at one point, mischievously asked her whether she would consider casting Lewis as 007? According to the Standard, the EON producer said: ‘I won’t answer that. Daniel Craig is Bond. There’s a full stop at the end of that sentence’.

Lewis is married to Helen McCrory, who played the British MP Clair Dowar in Skyfall. A third series of Homeland, the gritty drama about the CIA and terrorism, is in the pipeline.

The Studios, which is hoping to be a key host of the new Stars Wars movie to be filmed in Britain in 2014, and also wants to accommodate Bond 24 when it begins production, had its latest application for planning permission to expand rejected by South Buckinghamshire District Council, losing the bid by just two votes (six Councillors voted against and four voted in favour). The vote was held on Wednesday, May 15. The Council stated that it still had ‘concerns’ over the proposed development of the site, including worries about the possible impact on ‘greenbelt’ land.

As the JBIFC reported previously, supporters of the expansion plan, including Skyfall director Sam Mendes, saw the plan as offering a major boost to movie studio facilities in the UK, and the company which owns Pinewood Shepperton have expressed fears that the 007 franchise could possibly move elsewhere, as film-making capacity in the UK has reached its limit, and studios in other countries are keen to woo investment from filmmakers in a highly competitive international market.

Pinewood’s chairman, Lord Grade, responding to the rejection decision, said he was ’very disappointed’ that they could only convince four out of the ten local Councillors that voted, as ‘it is important to create jobs and invest in the creative industries’. He added: ‘It was really very close and it was more about emotion than rational argument’. He also said he had found the debate ‘depressing’ and he could not understand the thinking of some of the Councillors: ‘If you were trying to build the original Pinewood from 70 years ago today these people would try and stop you’.

When asked about the ‘greenbelt’ concerns, Grade challenged this and said the land in question was ‘blighted grazingland’ on the edge of the M25 motorway. Lord Grade also strongly hinted that Pinewood intends to appeal against the decision.

The company which owns Pinewood and Shepperton, together with additional TV studio facilities in Teddington in South-West London, is run by Lord Grade and Ivan Dunleavy. They first submitted ambitious expansion plans for Pinewood in 2009. These included proposals for a mix of housing and ’streetscapes’ that would double up as movie sets, but these were rejected. Another version of the expansion plan was also ruled against by central government in London in January, 2012.

The latest expansion plan put forward by Pinewood had dropped the housing element of the original plan, and claimed that the new blueprint would create 3,000 new jobs and add £150m a year to the UK economy. It also highlighted the considerable ‘knock-on’ effects and benefits from financial investment in the local economy when major Hollywood movies are shot at Pinewood, including the 007 films, which often make use of the local countryside areas for location purposes.

However, despite there being less opposition to the new plan this time round, it was clearly still not enough to persuade local Councillors to pass it. It now looks as if Pinewood will have to try another day.

Bond Trivia Note: For the secret volcano crater base in the fifth 007 movie, You Only Live Twice (1967), Albert R. Broccoli handed Ken Adam $1m (a phenomenal sum at the time). The volcano set designed by Adam and constructed at Pinewood was 130 foot high and had a diameter of 440 foot, and local residents from miles around regularly came to the perimeter fence of the Studios just to catch a view of the massive set.

Speaking to the British newspaper The Guardian, the man who helmed Bond 23 was responding to the latest developments in the campaign for expansion of the studios. The current owners of Pinewood Shepperton have been making the case for a major increase in facilities at the famous Buckinghamshire-based studios, which has been the home to the 007 franchise for 50 years, and consists of 100 acres of land. They have resubmitted plans which were previously rejected by the local council, but now with some key modifications.

Apart from Moonraker, Licence to Kill, and large parts of Goldeneye, all the James Bond movies have made use of Pinewood, starting with Dr. No back in 1962. The head of Pinewood, Ivan Dunleavy, said the case for expansion is vital and has warned the James Bond franchise could be forced to move its base from the UK if the latest plans are not approved. He said: ‘We’re at capacity, the UK is at capacity, something has to give. If we as a sector don’t respond to the growing demand then someone else will’.

Dunleavy said the producers of the 007 movies ‘have to be financially responsible. If they get a better proposal from elsewhere than the UK can mount then they have to look after their business as well’.

Sam Mendes, who directed the latest entry in the 007 series and helped it become a global and critical smash-hit, also added his views on the new plan, a plan which is proposing a £200m development and envisages the creation of 3,000 new jobs at the site.

Mendes warned that the strong bond between the studio and the 007 film franchise can not be taken for granted. He told the Guardian: ‘Pinewood is the spiritual home of James Bond and the two franchises have enjoyed a long-standing relationship. Tradition, however, is not enough on its own. I am convinced of the need for Pinewood to keep on expanding to offer filmmakers the best facilities possible’.

Dunleavy’s plan also predicts that, if approved, the expanded Pinewood site will give a £150m-a-year boost to the British economy.

Golden Bond

Meanwhile, further evidence has emerged of the financial impact of the 007 franchise in relation to the British economy. According to the business section of the UK newspaper The Independent, the latest James Bond movie helped drive up video sales in the first 3 months of 2013, with a surge in online viewing and sales of physical Blu-ray discs of Skyfall.

Total sales across digital and physical formats jumped by 10.1 per cent to £536.3m, with Skyfall selling 2.8m copies in the UK since its February, 2013, release.

Moreover, the popularity of Blu-ray, with more than 5m Blu-ray players now having been sold in the UK, has confounded the doom-mongers, who have claimed in the past that physical media are dying out. The sales of Blu-ray discs have more than offset a general overall decline in DVD sales, and Bond 23 has played a big role in the trend during the first half of this year.

Take a bow, Mr. Bond.

The new TV drama, which saw its first episode screened in the UK on May 7, has the highly versatile Mikkelsen as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the charming but secret serial killer and cannibal, a character originally created by author Thomas Harris and made famous by both Brian Cox in Manhunter in 1986 and Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs in 1991.

As part of the tie-in promotion of NBC’s new drama Hannibal in the UK, the 47-year old former Bond villain recently gave an interview to the London Metro newspaper. During the course of this interview, he explained some of the background behind the creation of the new series and the possible motivations of the character of Dr. Lecter. At one point, Mikkelsen said of his new interpretation of Lecter: ‘He is a man who is in love with the fine arts, who loves fine cooking. Everything banal, he hates; everything refined, he loves’.

Of the previous interpretations of Lecter by Cox and Hopkins, Mikkelsen said: ‘Both of those performances were iconic and I am not trying to emulate them. We are starting in a different situation. My Hannibal is not yet captured, I am still out on the loose, I am a practising psychiatrist, so I behave a little differently’. He also told the Metro: ‘One of the things I found interesting from the books was that when he rips out the tongue of a nurse, his pulse does not get above 60. But in our version, his heart does beat sometimes, when he chooses’.

As the Metro newspaper noted, Mikkelsen is seemingly unafraid of dark roles: as well as playing the memorable Bond villain Le Chiffre (Ian Fleming’s first fictional baddie), who had a blood-weeping eye in the 2006 movie version, Mikkelsen won last year’s Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his role as a teacher falsely accused of abusing a child in the critically-acclaimed movie The Hunt (2012). And he admitted to the Metro that he was already well-read on the subject of serial killers before starting Hannibal: ‘I am ashamed to say I knew quite a lot about that before, because I find it fascinating. I also have a tendency towards biographies of Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Khan, people like that’.

As many Bond fans know, as well as coming up against Daniel Craig’s first turn as 007 in Casino Royale (and ending up dead in the process, seemingly eliminated by the Quantum organisation), Mads was able to return to the role of Le Chiffre in 2008: he did the voice to Le Chiffre in the 2008 video game 007: Quantum of Solace. He remains very greatful for his ‘breakthrough’ role in the 21st Bond movie, as it brought him to international attention, and opened numerous acting doors for his career.

Mikkelsen is currently shooting his next big movie project, The Salvation, which is set in 1870s America and is due to hit cinema screens in 2014. And there has been some interesting casting for the new movie: the cast includes Eva Green (Vesper in Casino Royale) and former Bond villain Jonathan Pryce (who played Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies). That must be creating some interesting on-set chats.

Bond Trivia Note: The casting of Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre was confirmed in February, 2006, before any announcements about some of the other main roles in Daniel Craig’s first Bond movie. Director Martin Campbell quickly made the announcement at a press conference held at the Czech Republic’s Barrandov Studios, as it had been reported that Mikkelsen’s father, a taxi driver, had told some of his customers that his son had won the role of the Bond villain!

The 29-year old Jersey-born actor is about to appear in this Summer’s reboot of the Superman franchise, Man of Steel, and has given a tie-in interview to the British magazine Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ, June, 2013, issue).

As many Bond fans know, EON parted company with Pierce Brosnan in 2004 after four movies, as they envisaged a reboot of the franchise. Cavill was on the official short-list for the role of James Bond when the search was on for a new 007 for Casino Royale, a role which eventually went to Daniel Craig.

According to reports at the time, by July 2005 the short-list had been whittled down to just four men: Daniel Craig, Henry Cavill, Goran Visnjic, and Rory McCann. Martin Campbell, who officially became the director in February 2005, spent the spring and early summer of that year helping review the possible candidates. By July, Campbell reportedly favoured Cavill, but the producers wanted a slightly older Bond, with Barbara Broccoli strongly in favour of Craig. The rest, as they say, is history. Craig was a smash-hit in Casino Royale, and after three films has very much made the part of 007 his own, and has won much critical acclaim. He has also signed up for two more entries in the series.

Speaking to GQ‘s Stuart McGurk, Cavill (pictured recently at the 2013 British Academy Awards), reflected on some of the ups and downs of his own film career, including his brush with Bond. The popular UK film magazine Empire once branded him the ‘Unluckiest Man in Hollywood’ (Empire, December 2005), and Cavill was able to give some thoughts to GQ on his reputation as an ‘unlucky’ actor, during the course of which he demolished a few myths.

Despite rumours, Cavill made it clear to GQ that he was not in the running at one point to play in either the Twilight film series (‘they never called me’) or as Batman in Batman Begins (‘No, I never auditioned’). However, he was at one point cast as Superman in a version to be directed by McG (‘It was a long process. I remember having a final screen test’), but then it was cancelled, and the director was replaced with Bryan Singer. And Singer gave the part to Brandon Routh for the somewhat disappointing Superman Returns movie in 2006.

The GQ interview also quizzed Cavill about his screen-test for Bond, which took place when he was a young 22-year old actor and a relative unknown in the film world. He said: ‘Now that was definitely something I was up for’.

He had auditions in both the USA and UK, and a screen test that consisted of two scenes from the Sean Connery Bond movies and one from Casino Royale, overseen by director Martin Campbell. ‘And I waited to hear, and sadly it was a no. I mean, it was crazy, considering my age’.

When GQ asked Cavill whether it was bad luck not to get it, or good luck to get so far, he responded: ‘That’s the way I look at it. People say, “You must be so depressed that you didn’t get Bond” – well, no, because I got so far as the screen test for Bond. There’s a lot of other people out there who are far less fortunate than me, who don’t even get through the door with their agent’. He added: ‘At the same time, I wouldn’t have done the role as much justice as I could now’.

Asked whether he would still be interested in the role in the future, Cavill said if he was in the running again, and people didn’t just see him just as Superman and could see him as Bond, ‘then yeah, I’d love to do it’. He continued: ‘I never thought of myself as unlucky. When you aim high, it’s tough to get there unless something really unfortunate happens’.

Cavill got his big break when aged 17, in The Count of Monte Cristo. He said he was encouraged to pursue an acting career by the Australian actor Russell Crowe, and Gladiator remains his favourite film. In 2007-2010, he won over a new generation of fans with his success as Charles Brandon, the 1st Duke of Suffolk, in the 38-episode TV series The Tudors, a series which won high praise from critics. In fact, Cavill regards that series as his ‘breakthrough’ role.

Man of Steel is released in UK cinemas on June 14, 2013.

Bond Trivia Note: The first Christopher Reeve Superman movie (1978), directed by Richard Donner, had some major input from people who had worked on the James Bond franchise. Bond stunt veteran Vic Armstrong was stunt co-ordinator on the movie and also doubled for Christopher Reeve. Derek Meddings (1931-1995) was a visual effects supervisor on the film, and much of the principal photography was shot at Pinewood Studios, including on the famous 007 stage. The Bond screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz (1942-2010) also carried out a major re-write on the Superman screen treatment, at the request of Donner.

Interviewed while promoting his new film, which co-stars Kim Bodnia and went on general release in the UK on April 19 (and has received very good reviews from British critics), Brosnan looked back on his film career and, at one point, said of Bond: ‘That was without question one of the most rewarding roles. That character, and the opportunities it gave one. That job is the gift that keeps giving because once you’re a Bond, you’re a Bond for life’.

Brosnan, who played James Bond in four films (1995-2002), also praised Daniel Craig’s work, and said the actor who succeeded him as 007 is ‘doing superbly well’.

In another interview, given to the BBC’s Radio Times magazine, Pierce also made similar comments. He said Craig is a friend and is a ‘brilliant’ Bond. The character of James Bond, added Pierce, and the legacy of his own time in the tuxedo and driving the Aston Martin DB5, is still with him.

He said: ‘Bond is the gift that keeps on giving. It was a monumental part of my career – I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity to play Bond and I loved playing him. Really, who wouldn’t? It’s a small group of men who have played him and I’m very proud to be one of them. But once it’s finished you have to look in other directions and you have to move on. Bond allowed me to go forth as an actor and play the characters that I do now’.

Projects Old and New

In another interview, given to the London Metro newspaper, Brosnan pointed out that Bond had allowed him to start up his own production company as well as take on a variety of film parts. In fact, post-Bond, Brosnan has relished taking on vastly different roles, such as his part in the political thriller The Ghost and his taste of singing in the musical Mamma Mia!, and he remains as busy as ever.

He recently finished filming a comedy, Love Punch, with Emma Thompson, and he will also play a disgraced TV personality contemplating suicide in A Long Way Down, based on the best-selling Nick Hornby novel.

Brosnan also told both the Radio Times and Metro that he also hopes to work with his son, Sean, on The Ghosts of Belfast, an adaptation of Stuart Neville’s thriller, set in the aftermath of Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’. It is about a man released from prison, who has to deal with the venom of the past.

The question of his long-planned sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair, the very successful heist thriller he made while he was still 007, has also been raised again while Brosnan has been publicising Love Is All You Need.

According to the Press Association (April 21), the actor, who is about to turn 60, said he would still consider making the sequel, but he also admitted that it is now ‘highly unlikely’ the sequel will come to fruition.

Brosnan said: ‘Thomas Crown 2 is dormant and has been for some time. It’s highly unlikely. I think we would have done it by now if the timing had been right. It’s just one of those things’. However, he also would not rule it out completely, saying there is ‘constant dreaming’ and he still wanted to make more films.

The follow-up to Thomas Crown has apparently been in development since 2007, when the sequel was reported to be based on a remake of the 1964 movie Topkapi. At one point, the director Paul Verhoeven was even attached to it, but left the project in 2010.

Meanwhile, Brosnan is returning back to some rather familiar territory: he has a new spy movie in the pipeline. He is due to start filming the espionage thriller November Man later this year, which is based on the novel There Are No Spies, by Bill Grainger.  Location shooting on the new movie will include Serbia.

Moreover, his new co-star will be none other than Olga Kurylenko, who starred alongside Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace.

This was just one of the points that emerged in a new profile of the director by Emma Brockes for a major British newspaper. Mendes was interviewed at length in the Guardian Weekend, the Saturday magazine of the UK’s Guardian newspaper, on April 20.

The profile and interview concentrated mainly on his upcoming theatre production of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, a production which Mendes has apparently been planning to make for at least five years but, for logistical reasons, Skyfall took three of those years, and also the famous book by Roald Dahl is clearly a tricky one to adapt.

The new production of Charlie has recently been in reshearsal in south London, before moving to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in central London. The Guardian profile revealed that the Dahl estate spent years rejecting offers for other stage adaptations, but said ‘yes’ to Mendes because of the reputation of his theatre company, Neal Street Productions, which has staged some of the best musicals of the past decade.

Mendes has surrounded himself with a team which consists of the American songwriters Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, plus a largely British core of writers, choreographers and designers. David Greig is adapting the book for the stage, and it is going to be a major West End production: ‘It’s big’, Mendes told the Guardian: ‘Christ, it’s so big’.

Mendes on 007

Given the smash-hit global success of Skyfall (it grossed over $1bn worldwide), it was inevitable that Brockes’ interview with Mendes would also include some of his latest reflections on the 007 movie which, Mendes said, was: ‘The biggest movie I’ve ever done, followed by the biggest show I’ve ever done, almost back to back – not a sensible piece of planning’.

At one point, Mendes confirmed that he was offered another 007 movie almost immediately after Skyfall, but he said he wasn’t tempted: ‘Was I willing to go straight back into a room with a writer and start work on the same set of characters and the same scenarios as I’ve been working on for the last three years? No. The idea made me feel physically ill’. He acknowledged that the movie world had seen his decision to turn down Bond 24 as eccentric, and Hollywood executives do not see the theatre world as a serious entity, but he felt doing something else was ‘psychologically’ necessary.

Reflecting on the possible crossover between Bond and Charlie, Mendes revealed the extent to which some of his own life experience had gone into the Bond movie (he lived in LA and recently moved back to England). He said that you could say it revolves around the topic of Englishness. Skyfall had certain themes: ‘Under the surface of the movie is a meditation on ageing, and loss, and England. And what it is to be English, and does it mean anything now?’ Mendes explained that the film was the story ‘of someone who disappears for a while, and comes back to England to find everything has changed, but everything is basically the same. And that was basically what I was going through’.

Mendes also said that making Charlie was a bit like ‘locating your inner child, trying to remind yourself of what it was like when you first hearsthe challenge of making Bond the story. And you have to unremember the narrative; in that respect, it’s a bit like doing Bond, where everyone in the audience knows that Bond’s not going to die. But you have to make people believe that there’s a danger he will’.

Interestingly, he conceded that killing off ‘M’ (Judi Dench) may have been his response to not being able to kill Bond, and he revealed: ‘I thought I was going to get so much s–t for that. But you know you shock people into rediscovering their first acquaintance with the characters…’.

Charlie And The Choclate Factory previews from May 17 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in London.

Bond trivia note: The famous children’s author Roald Dahl met and worked with Ian Fleming in World War Two, as both men were intelligence officers and, at one point, were involved in British intelligence work in the USA. Dahl was also recruited by Broccoli and Saltzman in 1966 to write the screenplay for the fifth Bond movie, You Only Live Twice (1967).

The London Book Fair (LBF), which saw the announcement of the title of the new 007 novel as Solo, also saw Boyd make a personal appearance at the event. Boyd was interviewed live on stage at the LBF by Erica Wagner, the literary editor of The Times newspaper, and spent an hour in conversation with her, from 11.30-12.30.

Boyd spoke in some detail about the background to his Bond book project. He revealed that he ‘was asked at the end of 2011′. He was approached by the Ian Fleming estate and, he said, replied ‘Yes instantly’. He also described how he had prepared for his immersion into the world of Fleming’s James Bond. He said that he re-read every Fleming Bond novel and short story in chronological order before he started writing his own 007 novel, and he noted that Ian Fleming ‘gives you a massive amount of information about Bond – his inner life, his back story, his education, his likes and dislikes, his phobias, and his passions’. This had led to Fleming’s Bond having, in Boyd’s view, an ‘incredible richness’ as a character. In fact, said Boyd, the literary Bond is ‘a far more complex and nuanced creature’ than the celluloid version.

Boyd also pointed out to Wagner that the James Bond of the Fleming books is not just a superhero, but has ‘flaws, he has weaknesses, he makes mistakes, yet he is incredibly tough’. The new Bond author said he believed that there is something ‘very well rounded’ about Fleming’s Bond, ‘and I think that was Fleming’s genius in a way’.

At one point in the interview, Boyd also said that he had told the Ian Fleming estate, when he was ‘interviewed’ for the job, that he was ‘interested in the man. The human being’, and that is what he has tried to bring out in Solo. In addition, Boyd emphasised to The Times interviewer that his version of a James Bond adventure will be ‘really gritty’, rooted in the real world of spying: ‘I wanted the novel to be very real. I’m not a fantasist or a magical realist. I couldn’t have written a silly novel. It had to be a down-to-earth, gritty novel’. At one stage in Solo, Bond will apparently witness in Africa some events that really took place on the continent in the 1960s.

British Media Enthusiastic

Various media outlets in Britain have given a very positive reaction to the announcement about Solo, and to Boyd’s latest revelations about his new novel. The Times newspaper itself (April 16), perhaps unsurprisingly, led the field with a report entitled ‘Bond unchained as a dog of war with solo mission’.

The newspaper interpreted Boyd’s remarks as meaning that James Bond will cut his ties with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and embark on a private mission in Africa and America.

The newspaper also noted that Boyd had revealed that he had sent Bond to Africa to deal with a specific historical event. In a nice bonus for readers, the newspaper also carried a short, but detailed, contribution from Bond and Fleming expert Ben Macintyre, who explored the various post-Fleming continuation authors and their novels.

The UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph (April 16) published a piece on ’007′s African adventure’, by Victoria Ward, which also noted that the publication of the new novel will mark the 60th anniversary of Ian Fleming’s first Bond escapade, Casino Royale. Similarly, the UK’s Independent newspaper (April 16) reported on the LBF event and Boyd’s explanation of why he chose the title Solo.

The new James Bond novel will be published in the UK by Jonathan Cape, the original Ian Fleming publishers, in September, 2013.

The memorable new title was unveiled today (April 15), on the opening day of the London Book Fair (LBF), held at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre in the UK’s capital city. As Boyd was the LBF’s Author of the Day, the award-winning novelist also made a special personal appearance to make the announcement and, in the process, gave some further tantalizing clues about the nature of his new James Bond plot.

Explaining his choice of title, Boyd told the media: ‘Sometimes less is more. For me as a novelist the simple beauty of Solo as the title of the next James Bond novel is that this short four-letter word is particularly and strikingly apt for the novel I have written’. He added: ‘In my novel, events conspire to make Bond go off on a self-appointed mission of his own, unannounced and without any authorization – and he’s fully prepared to take the consequences of his audacity’.

Boyd continued: ‘The journey Bond goes on takes in three continents – with the main focus being on Africa. It’s what happens in Africa that generates his urge to “go solo” and take matters into his own hands in the USA’.

The new Bond author also reflected on his thinking behind the creation of the title: ‘Titles are very important to me and as soon as I wrote down Solo on a sheet of paper I saw its potential. Not only did it fit the theme of the novel perfectly, it’s also a great punchy word, instantly and internationally comprehensible, graphically alluring and, as an extra bonus, it’s strangely Bondian in the sense that we might be subliminally aware of the “00″ of “007″ lurking just behind those juxtaposed O’s of SOLO…’.

Corinne Turner, managing director of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, who commissioned Boyd to write the new 007 novel, commented: ‘Ian Fleming had a great aptitude for naming his books and his Bond titles have become true classics. Solo is a simple yet striking title which fits perfectly alongside the other books in the Bond canon’.

Interestingly, Boyd has strong connections to Africa. He was born in Ghana in 1952. His Scottish parents had moved there at the end of the Second World War to run a health clinic. He was raised in the western part of Nigeria and, while at boarding school in England, often went home to Africa during his vacations. His first novel was the Booker-nominated A Good Man in Africa, which was set in the fictional African country of Kinjana. His follow-up novel, An Ice-Cream War, was set in East Africa in 1914.

The new 007 novel Solo will be published in the UK on September 26 and in the USA on October 8.