by Mark Simmons | May 10, 2023 | Uncategorized
Out of the trip came my book: The Serpent & the Cross. The great Mille Miglia (Thousand Miles) road race was held twenty four times 1927-1957 with a gap during World War II. The race continues today as an historic classic car event. https://1000miglia.it...
by Mark Simmons | May 7, 2023 | Uncategorized
by Mark Simmons | May 7, 2023 | Uncategorized
Is the character of James Bond 007 based on anybody? Many people have been put forward as models. We can be fairly certain what Ian Fleming felt he looked like because he tells us. In Casino Royale his doomed girlfriend, Vesper Lynd, says to Rene Mathis of the French...
by Mark Simmons | Apr 25, 2023 | Uncategorized
‘Thoughts in a DB III.’ In the novel Goldfinger we are told Bond is given the choice of cars ‘from the pool.’ An Aston Martin or a Jaguar 3.4, we are told either of the cars were suitable. Bond opts for the DB III; because it has more gadgets and is ‘battleship grey’...
by Mark Simmons | Apr 21, 2023 | Uncategorized
The Spy stories of Desmond Bagley Lee Child kindly wrote the foreword to my book Alistair MacLean’s War in which he said how he had ‘…loved the patient way MacLean set up a story and sucked me in, slowly with great self confidence.’ So much so he was one of main...
by Mark Simmons | Apr 14, 2023 | Uncategorized
The 007 continuation novels It was on the 12 August 1964 that Ian Fleming died of a massive haemorrhage at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital. Three days later he was buried in the cemetery of the Parish Church of St. James, Sevenhampton, near Highworth in Wiltshire....
