Editions

Thrilling Cities

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099578185

  • Length: 304  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 19mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 213g

  • RRP: £9.99

Thrilling Cities

On November 2nd armed with a sheaf of visas...one suitcase...and my typewriter, I left humdrum London for the thrilling cities of the world...

In 1959, Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was commissioned by the Sunday Times to explore fourteen of the world’s most exotic cities. Fleming saw it all with a thriller writer’s eye. From Hong Kong to Honolulu, New York to Naples, he left the bright main streets for the back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favour of underground haunts, and mingling with celebrities, gangsters and geishas. The result is a series of vivid snapshots of a mysterious, vanished world.

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099578185

  • Length: 304  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 19mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 213g

  • RRP: £9.99

Reviews

  • An accomplished travel writer

    Scotsman

  • He gathered material for his novels like a voracious travelling magpie: the people and places Fleming experienced on his Thrilling Cities tour in 1959 would [furnish] much of the backdrop and research for the five Bond novels and seven short stories that would follow

    The Times

  • Fleming was a fine travel writer, too (check out Thrilling Cities), and we quickly come to know and appreciate the locales in the book as we do the characters

    Daily Telegraph

  • Fleming describes food precisely and enticingly

    Independent

  • [Fleming's] penchant for fast cars, stylish hotels, expensive alcohol and bizarre encounters brings a whiff of excitement to the narrative, which is vivid, shocking and exuberant by turns

    Good Book Guide

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About the Author

Ian Fleming

Ian Lancaster Fleming was born in London in 1908. His first job was at Reuters news agency after which he worked briefly as a stockbroker before working in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War. His first novel, Casino Royale, was published in 1953 and was an instant success. Fleming went on to write twelve other Bond books as well as two works of non-fiction and the children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The Bond books have sold over sixty million copies and earned praise from figures such as Raymond Chandler who called Fleming ‘the most forceful and driving writer of thrillers in England’ and President Kennedy who named From Russia with Love as one of his favourite books. The books inspired a hugely successful series of film adaptations which began in 1961 with the release of Dr No, starring Sean Connery as 007. Fleming was married to Anne Rothermere with whom he had a son, Caspar. He died in 1964.

Ian Fleming

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