Thrilling Cities: Fourteen Cities Seen Through the Eyes of Ian Fleming, the Creator of James Bond
About this ebook
Ian Fleming’s world travels and interests, as well as his journalism and wartime experiences, lent authority to everything he wrote. In 1959, the Sunday Times commissioned Fleming to write a series of dispatches from the world’s most beguiling locales. The result was Thrilling Cities, a masterpiece of well-observed travelogue that stands ably alongside the author’s Bond canon.
From Hong Kong to Honolulu, New York to Naples, he left the bright main streets for the back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favor of underground haunts, and mingling with celebrities, gangsters and geishas. The result is a series of vivid snapshots of a mysterious, vanished world from a twentieth century Western perspective.
Just like his most famous fictional creation, Ian Fleming was a well-traveled man of the world who knew where to go to find excitement, adventure...and danger. In Thrilling Cities, he takes us along on a journey of international intrigue worthy of James Bond.
Fleming’s legendary thriller-writer’s eye uncovers the hidden side of the world’s most exciting cities:
- A 1950s Travelogue: From the neon-lit streets of Tokyo and Hong Kong to the smoky casinos of Las Vegas and Monte Carlo, experience a world of glamour and grit that has since disappeared.
- Espionage and Smuggling: Uncover the secrets of gold traffickers in Macao, arms dealers in Beirut, and the tense, divided city of Cold War Berlin.
- The Shadier Side of Life: Leave the tourist traps behind as Fleming ventures into the back alleys and underground haunts to mingle with gangsters, geishas, and spies.
- The James Bond Touch: See the world through the eyes of 007’s creator, a man who knew precisely where to find excitement, adventure, and a hint of danger.
Discover more
About the author
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 World War Two. His first novel, Casino Royale, was published in 1953 and was an instant success. Fleming went on to write thirteen other Bond books as well as two works of nonfiction and the children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The Bond books have 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 favorite books. The books inspired a hugely successful series of film adaptations that began in 1962 with the release of Dr. No. He was married to Ann O'Neill, with whom he had a son, Caspar. He died in 1964.
