SEBASTIAN FAULKS INTERVIEW
Bestselling author Sebastian Faulks is the brains behind the new Bond novel.

He talks exclusively to The Sunday Times

Rows of empty, shiny black dust jackets line a corridor in Penguin’s smartly renovated offices on the Strand. Each cover is flamingly emblazoned with what, at first, looks like a poppy, but is actually the silhouette of a svelte nude girl with a flamboyant head of scarlet hair. They are waiting to be wrapped around the season’s most excitedly anticipated novel. Devil May Care by “Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming” will be published worldwide on Wednesday, the centenary of the birth of the creator of James Bond. Until then, Penguin is guarding it with a ferocity Rosa Klebb would envy, and under conditions that make Dr No’s security arrangements for his Caribbean lair look slapdash.

So it is with a feeling of having accomplished a mission that would have taxed the resources of 007 himself that I settle down to talk about the book with Faulks. Outside the room where we meet in Penguin’s HQ is the spectacular view down the Thames to Westminster that Monet painted from his suite in the adjacent Savoy hotel. Facing out from the shelves around us are books representing highlights of Penguin’s publishing history, to which Devil May Care is designed to be a handsome addition. Appearing under the company’s new James Bond imprint, Penguin 007, it’s a continuation of the secret agent’s adventures, written by Faulks at the invitation of the Fleming estate.

Read this interesting story in full at The Times Online.