Recommendations from our site
“Casino Royale interests me because it’s about the relationship between Britain and the foreign, exotic world. In the book, we actually only get as far as northern France. That’s probably about as much exoticism as any British reader could handle in 1953, before the age of mass tourism. There’s a fair amount of post war drudgery and reconstruction in Britain. It was this fairly dull, grey world and France was this impossibly glamorous Other: a world of gambling and premarital sex and fine dining and champagne.Casino Royale was this irresistible piece of escapism that Fleming wrote.” Read more...
Five Classic European Spy Novels
Patrick Worrall, Thriller and Crime Writer
“If you would like to know what an Ian Fleming James Bond book is like, Casino Royale is the perfect place to start. It’s a really good, punchy novel. It’s the birth of James Bond: the first time he’s out in the world on the page. You can see so much of what is key and familiar from the James Bond stories is in there.” Read more...
Charlie Higson, Thriller and Crime Writer
“I think it’s the best of them, and it’s wonderful because it reveals what I think is the essential Bond. The film Bond is very, very different from the character that Ian Fleming invented. The real character was unknowable. There’s something rather creepy and peculiar about the original James Bond and you get that in buckets in Casino Royale. He’s a tough man and he’s absolutely ruthless.” Read more...
Ben Macintyre, Journalist
