This month Bond will return

Later this month sees the publication of the new James Bond novel, Solo which has been penned by William Boyd. The cover pictured here was designed by Suzanne Dean of Random House.

 "A new Bond cover needs to do a lot of things at once. It needs to appeal to literary and commercial audiences, both fans of the original 14 Fleming books and film fans. It needs to reflect both the content of the novel and capture the reader’s imagination." Suzanne Dean

Set in 1969 the novel is placed very much in the timeline originally created by Ian Fleming. The title Solo references the fact that this time Bond is out on his own and operating as a rogue agent.

“In my novel, events conspire to make Bond go off on a self-appointed mission of his own, unannounced and without any authorisation – and he's fully prepared to take the consequences of his audacity,” William Boyd

Boyd recently told the press that Bond has been incorrectly portrayed as a “cartoon character” by film directors when the spy should be troubled and “a massive boozer”.

Fleming - the master

All of this makes the Archive very excited to get our grubby mitts on this book.

“The few of us with the good fortune to have read Solo can testify that Will has written an absolutely brilliant book and we look forward with mounting excitement to a huge worldwide publishing event on September 26.” Richard  Cable, managing director of Vintage Books.