Q&A William Boyd


The name is Boyd . . .


William Boyd has written the new James Bond novel and will reveal its title at the London Book Fair today. Felicity Wood asks him what it is like to step into Ian Fleming’s shoes


You’ve written the next James Bond novel (published in September). Have you always been an admirer of Ian Fleming? I have always been intrigued by Fleming as a person, long before I got this opportunity. I have written about him quite a lot and even put him as a character in my novel Any Human Heart (Hamish Hamilton, 2002). I knew a lot about him and was intrigued by him, I had read his Bond novels in my teens but it was more the author himself that intrigued me latterly. So when I was asked to write a new Bond novel it was an easy decision for me as I was already steeped in the world. My interest in Bond comes from my fascination with Fleming. I’ve since re-read all his Bond novels and now written one, so I’m thoroughly immersed in his world. I’ve actually worked with three of the actors who have played Bond because they’ve appeared in films of mine—I’ve gotten to know Sean Connery, Daniel Craig and Pierce Brosnan quite well, so it is a very curious set of circumstances that have led up to this . . . there has been a Bond thing going on in my life without me really knowing it, so it looks like it is destiny that I ended up writing a Bond novel.


Tell us about your Bond. We’re so dominated by the movie version and the various actors who have personified him that we forget


14 THE BOOKSELLER DAILY AT LBF | 15 APRIL 2013


that the literary Bond existed long before, and is inevitably a far more complex and nuanced figure than the film Bond. What I said to the Fleming family is that I’m really interested in the man, the human being that is James Bond, and I wanted to explore that and his inner life, so I’ve done that. My novel is very much about him—and all the evidence is there in the Fleming novels. Te movie versions have thrown this blazing light over the books to a certain extent and obscured what has gone on the page.


This weekend saw the 60th anniversary of Casino Royale and your Bond novel is set in 1969, what was it about that period that attracted you? It is very interesting to look back at the Sixties now—it was 50 years ago now so I suppose it is the past, but I remember 1969 vividly as I was in London for the first time that summer. It is almost two generations ago now so it has suddenly become something that’s not familiar and something people are curious about in the same way they are interested in the court of Henry VIII or pre-First World War England, it’s suddenly become a historical period and that is what frees you up to look at it again; and I think the fact that I happen to overlap with that period is an asset. It’s modern, but it doesn’t have anything that we have now, no GPS, no mobiles, no internet. So it has


want to explore that”


I’m interested in the human being that is James Bond, and I


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