The new novel, titled On His Majesty's Secret Service, was commissioned specifically to celebrate the royal occasion. My criticism isn’t about Higson competing with Fleming but if you take any of the IF short stories, Octopussy, Living Daylights, Quantum, these are spectacular character pieces, brilliantly original, they do not follow a traditional Bond formula and they are all short stories as what was intended by Higson. What he has done by using the perceived typical plot of a Bond novel actually reads more like fan fiction or what someone who hasn’t read Fleming would think a Bond novel should be. It’s On His Majesty’s Secret Service; it’s being published two days before the coronation. Otherwise, Bond just goes on a mission as usual, working for ‘King and Country’. This just felt like such a great story, so rich in possibilities. They didn’t argue, and no one had any problems with it; the charities just couldn’t be associated.”

Happy birthday 007 and May you return soon from the pen of decent writer of the same or better quality than Charlie Higson, which would spoil us literary fans a lot. Indeed, Higson was first approached about the project in February, wrote the book throughout March, and it sent to the printers by April – rapid-fire by even Bond’s standards! Food was always an important part of the original books. Bond was this fantasy figure who did things a bank clerk in Croydon couldn’t. Readers lived vicariously. Perhaps we should not have been surprised to discover that the pace of production did not hinder the book’s quality: let’s not forget that Fleming wrote his first drafts in a matter of weeks, not months. And some of the best Bond films have been produced to punishingly tight schedules.Higson’s Young Bond - first written 18 years ago - was a period piece. Set to be in the same timeline as Fleming’s 60s Bond. So here Higson does two things he’s never done before. Write adult Bond and write him in a contemporary setting. He does both really well. There’s a lot to be said for not overthinking things and getting on with it. In an interview with The Times just days before the book’s publication, Higson himself expressed a preference for a less introspective Bond. Ironically then, Higson provides us with some of the best inward-looking passages in any Bond book. Upon meeting a hired killer to who he takes an instant dislike, Bond reflects: “Was there an element of self-loathing in his distaste…? Were they actually the same?” Charlie Higson, author of the bestselling Young Bond series, has been commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to write a new James Bond adventure to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III, it is announced today, Friday 31 March. I appreciate the author wrote the book in a month and for charity but I don’t think that’s an excuse for the results, especially in this franchise and it’s a shame the Fleming foundation didn’t plan ahead of time rather than approaching the author so late in the day resulting in a largely missed opportunity. Higson was educated at Sevenoaks School and at the University of East Anglia (where his brother has taught since 1986 and is now a professor of film studies) where he met Paul Whitehouse, David Cummings and Terry Edwards. Higson, Cummings and Edwards formed the band The Higsons of which Higson was the lead singer from 1980 to 1986. They released two singles on the Specials' 2-Tone label. Higson then became a plasterer before he turned to writing for Harry Enfield with Paul Whitehouse and performing comedy. He came to public attention as one of the main writers and performers of the BBC Two sketch show The Fast Show (1994-2000). He worked with Whitehouse on the radio comedy Down the Line and is to work with him again on a television project, designed to be a spoof of celebrity travel programmes.[1:]

But this is not a mere Fleming pastiche: while Higson’s innovations are not on the scale of Kim Sherwood’s exhilarating reimagining of Bond’s world, there are a lot of ‘modern’ touches to enjoy, especially in the details. Bond launching into a lecture (to himself) about consuming fermented foods (kimchi, kombucha) to maintain his gut health is both startling and soooo Fleming. The best Bond stories start when Bond goes into M’s office, M gives him a file and says, ‘This is the villain, this is what he’s up to, I want you to infiltrate his organisation and sort him out’. Bond’s given a mission and off he goes with his fists and a gun.

It’s a short read but I had to force myself to keep reading bit by bit, it was a chore, mostly down to the villain and his entourage. The female interest was IMO well written and the most engaging character next to Bond, there was also some surprising character choices towards the end with Bond that I liked, there was also a copy / homage of From Russia With Love towards the end which I didn’t like and made me roll my eyes. Published on Thursday 4th May ahead of the Coronation on Saturday 6th May – and 60 years after the publication of Ian Fleming’s tenth novel, 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', in 1963. All royalties from the sale of the book will go to support the work of the UK charity, the National Literacy Trust. Ian Fleming Publications has commissioned Young Bond series author Charlie Higson to write a new James Bond adventure to celebrate the coronation of King Charles. Higson wrote five novels in the Young Bond series, which are young adult spy novels featuring Bond as a teenage boy attending school at Eton College in the 1930s.

Ian Fleming Publications had commissioned Young Bond series author Charlie Higson to write the new Bond adventure, which has hit shelves today. The original plan was for royalties to support The Prince’s Trust and Camilla’s Reading Room literacy charity, but Higson’s regicidal plot – featuring a wealthy, eccentric and anti-‘woke’ wannabe king called Athelstan of Wessex, allegedly a descendent of Alfred the Great – ruled out an official tie-in. That said, Higson makes a good fist of this. He doesn't try too hard, doesn't get overly bogged down by it. (His Bond is neither quite Fleming's, nor a grown-up version of his own young James Bond, but does work okay). The plot is very Fleming, though -and the villain too probably (although he was also quite Gardner-esque and at times this reminded me of Licence Renewed). There's some good twists and its a much better read than anything by Benson, or the Bond books of Faulks, Boyd and Deaver. The plot of the novel will have some relevance to the royal events taking place in early May, and concerns the efforts of a villain named Athelstan of Wessex to disrupt the King’s coronation. Indeed, his next book was On Her Majesty’s Secret service, considered by fans to be one of his best. But the author, who died aged 56 in August 1964, was trapped by his creation.The plan had been to pad it out with an extract from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service but, in the event, it was unnecessary. On a roll, the Bond superfan wrote 10,000 words, then 20,000 and, finally, delivered 40,000 – about the same length as the shortest Fleming books. Higson, who lives with his family in north London, makes it sound easy, and, in truth, the new book zips along with a lovely lightness of touch, but that’s not to dismiss his writing. His Bond Girl, incidentally, is an Icelandic beauty named Ragnheidour. This book has received its place between the 007 novels in my collection, it is not the best one (which were the Fleming ones) and certainly not the worst (looking at you SOLO). It is the 4th of May, two days before the Coronation of King Charles III and the world’s favourite spy has his work cut out for him. Bond is sent at the last minute to thwart an attempt to disrupt the Coronation by the wealthy, eccentric and self-styled Athelstan of Wessex, who is on a deadly mission of his own to teach the United Kingdom a lesson. Can Bond dismantle his shady plans and defeat his privately hired team of mercenaries?

One fatal mistake IMO is Higson basing his entire story around the idea of a ‘Bond formula’ rather than coming up with something original and putting his own stamp on it. I genuinely believe his own voice and ideas would have made for a far more interesting story. On His Majesty’s Secret Service, a new James Bond adventure by Charlie Higson dashed off to celebrate the Coronation, begins with M giving voice to what we’re all anxiously thinking. “This coronation is a chance to advertise UKplc to the world, Bond. Show the doubters who’ve written us off that we’re open for business… Present this country as a safe pair of hands.” The idea originally was to do a longish short story, perhaps 10,000 words, with a month to write it. I thought it would be such a fun idea,” he says. I didn’t want to write him as a slightly stuffy man out of time with fifties’ attitudes - the Jacob Rees-Mogg 007. I wanted him to be a contemporary young man. Charlie Higson comes with impeccable literary Bond provenance. His superb Young Bond series, set in the Thirties, were revelatory in their ingenuity and fealty to Fleming. His new, contemporary adult Bond book had high standards to live up to. It delivers.So Bond’s first mission on His Majesty’s Secret Service is… to wipe out Ant and Dec if they start misbehaving in Westminster Abbey? No: it’s to bring down a supervillain plotting to do something worse to the King on May 6 than put itching powder in his supertunica, as well as sponsoring a series of outrages across London that “will make the [US] Capitol riots look like Aunt Fanny’s tea party”. Charlie Higson was approached at short notice to create the work in time to meet this specific deadline, and penned the new thriller in just one month. Some say that Fleming’s last novel was unpolished before he died, I find it a far better job than this Higson effort but recognize the time pressure he faced with this novel. And I applaud the content which was created in such a short time. I even enjoy the use of the word bitch used in 1953 and in this novel 70 years onwards, it is nice remembrance towards 007’s first and latest lady in a novel. The villain in question is the self-styled “Æthelstan of Wessex”, who claims direct descent from Alfred the Great and thinks he has more of a right to the English throne than “King Charles the Woke” – that shill for all the foreign elites who have kept the true English downtrodden since the Norman Conquest.