Thermal

By the reviews I’ve seen so far, the new James Bond film, Casino Royale, sounds the best for many a year. As a fan of Ian Flemings books, this is excellent news.

Like most people growing up in the 80′s, a James Bond film was always a big event, here in the UK you would always get one shown on the TV around Christmas, and it would be something we’d all look forward to. As a child my favourite Bond was Roger Moore, and I always found the Connery films to be a little dull(now I know better!). Dalton turned me off altogether, and although Pierce Brosnan had a good go, as I got older I found the whole thing too bee just a little childish. But then I discovered the books.

Ian Fleming was a real character, of the type only Britain can produce. Born of solid Scottish stock in 1908 to the wealthy Banking family, Flemings life rarely saw happiness. His father was killed in the First world War, and his somewhat strange will ignored his sons, and ensured his wife could not remarry without losing the entire estate. Deprived of wealth by inheritance, Fleming was driven by a pursuit of money for the rest of his life, a net result of which was the creation of James Bond.

During the Second World War, Fleming worked, with no little effect, in Naval Intelligence and developed a taste for adventure and subterfuge. His work as the right hand man of the Head of Naval Intelligence earned him a measure of respect and authority, and towards the end of the war allowed him to attend a conference in Jamaica. Here he decided to build a house, where once a year around January, he would come to write the James Bond novels.

Casino Royale was the first of these, and one of the best. A simple plot, and somewhat shallow characters were completely hidden by the page-turning style and terrific tension created by Flemings writing. As someone who knows little about card games, I was still captivated by the Baccarat (poker in the film) game against Le Chiffre, and could almost taste the stifling, smoky air and feel the pressure of? the watching crowd. The torture scene with the carpet beater is apparently left intact in the film; if it can match the gut-wrenching intensity and painful clarity of the book, it is sure to be the most memorable.

So it sounds as if the film may have grown up to match the book. This can only be a good thing – the films started well as I now realise Connery to be very close to Flemings vision of Bond, and the description of Daniel Craigs performance in Casino Royale sounds to be returning to these roots. He may not have been blond, but Bond was a hard and sometimes cruel man. I look forward to seeing the film, and if it meets expectations, perhaps a ‘re-imagining’ of the Roger Moore pantomime season needs to be considered.

You may not have heard of David Gemmell, although if you read what are tagged ‘fantasy novels’ you really should have. David died in July of this year, only 57, and his death hit me harder than anything has since my dad died in 2001.

Usually when someones death is reported on the news I think ‘thats sad’ and then forget about it. Sounds cold maybe, but I? feel? that it can be hypocritical to mourn for someone you never knew (Diana anyone?) This was different for me, as I read the news of his death I got that slightly numb feeling in my hands & feet, that hollow feeling inside, and it really affected me for weeks after.

I think it went beyond the fact that David was a stunning author (and he was), it was his humanity & his own values that shone through in his work. The good guys didn’t always get what they deserved. Bad things happened. People died.

But: the characters never gave in, people stepped up,the stories were never less than hugely inspiring. It could so easily have been a series of mawkish redemption tales, but the quality of writing never allowed that. The pages turned in a blur, the tales unfolded at speed, and no lectures were ever given. Nothing was ever black and white, and sometimes the difference between good and evil was simply a matter of perception, yours and the supporting characters.

Druss, Waylander, Jon Shannow, Parmenion, Phillip, Alexander, all characters other authors would have cut off limbs to create, and with the exception of the first, were less than shining heroes, but were still people of luminous humanity that you wish you could meet in the flesh. What heroes have we in real life today?

If you have never read Davids work, you really should, and don’t be put off by the fantasy tag. They were fiction, pure tale-telling as old has language itself. Whats a few pounds or dollars on a second-hand copy which could immerse you in a world of 30 magnificent books?

I’ll miss David the author greatly, and only wish I could have known David the person. Septembers (when his novels were published) will never be the same again.