Picking up the Casino Royale book, I knew that this Bond would be very different to the Bond I knew, and I was correct. Later I adopted the modern, rose-tinted lens through which most of us see James Bond but without having any contact with the franchise other than the Goldeneye Nintendo 64 game and Craig's movies. The 2006 Casino Royale film wasn't even about poker to my young eyes: it was about explosions, car chases, machine guns with bottomless magazines, tailored suits and product placement for cars that would only look at home parked ostentatiously on a driveway at a summer house. He had more literary credibility and maturity than a John McClane, but the romantic, suave, gentlemanly James Bond of old wasn't the image I had until much later. In my young mind James Bond was unreasonably handsome and effortlessly cool, but at his core was an action hero. However, instead of dwelling on recent controversies and the depressing thought that those who own the original copies of the Bond novels are now in possession of treasure, let’s delve into some facts you may not know about Ian Fleming’s first 007 book.Daniel Craig's James Bond was the first Bond I properly got to know. To celebrate the 70th anniversary, Ian Fleming Publications – the company that administers all of Fleming’s literary works – has had the Bond books edited as part of a sensitivity review to remove words or phrases to accommodate 21st century sensitivities, a move that smacks of historical revisionism and which Ian Fleming’s biographer Andrew Lycett described as “a form of censorship.” We’re of course talking about Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel 'Casino Royale', which hit shelves on 13 April 1953.įleming wrote it at the age of 44 and the novel went on to launch the 007 literary universe – with a further 13 novels, which have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide – as well as kickstart the longest running cinematic franchise.

Seventy years ago today, a journalist and naval intelligence officer released “the spy story to end all spy stories.”

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