Nicholas Shakespeare on Ian Fleming
in conversation with Kai Bird
Tuesday, May 28, 6:30 pm
The Kelly Skylight Room, the Graduate Center
365 5th Ave. New York, NY 10016
Ian Fleming's greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous and ongoing impact on our culture. What Bond represents about ideas of masculinity, the British national psyche and global politics has shifted over time, as has the interpretation of the life of his author. But Fleming himself was more mysterious and subtle than anything he wrote.
Ian's childhood with his gifted brother Peter and his extraordinary mother set the pattern for his ambition to be “the complete man,” and he would strive for the means to achieve this “completeness” all his life. Only a thriller writer for his last twelve years, his dramatic personal life and impressive career in Naval Intelligence put him at the heart of critical moments in world history, while also providing rich inspiration for his fiction. Exceptionally well connected, and widely travelled, from the United States and Soviet Russia to his beloved Jamaica, Ian had access to the most powerful political figures at a time of profound change.
Nicholas Shakespeare is one of the most gifted biographers working today. His talent for uncovering material that casts new light on his subjects is fully evident in this masterful, definitive biography. His unprecedented access to the Fleming archive and his nose for a story make this a fresh and eye-opening picture of the man and his famous creation.
Nicholas Shakespeare was born in Worcester in 1957 and brought up in the Far East and South America. One of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 1993, his books have been translated into twenty-two languages. They include The Vision of Elena Silves, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and The Dancer Upstairs, which was made into a film of the same name by John Malkovich and chosen by the American Libraries Association as the Best Novel of 1995. His nonfiction includes the critically acclaimed authorized biography of Bruce Chatwin, In Tasmania, and Priscilla: the hidden life of an Englishwoman in Occupied France. He has been longlisted for the Booker Prize twice, was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Kai Bird co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005), which was made into a major motion picture by Christopher Nolan and won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He has also written biographies of John J. McCloy and McGeorge Bundy-and a memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis (Scribner, 2010). His book The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames appeared in 2014. His biography of Jimmy Carter, Outlier: the Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, was published in 2021 by Crown Books.