Ian Fleming’s Legacy: John Gardner’s James Bond

From Simon Ward, September 2021 CRA Newsletter

By 1979 John Gardner was the successful author behind fourteen books, including an autobiography, two Professor Moriarty novels and eight instalments of his beloved parodic thriller series starring the character of Boysie Oakes. It was at this point that, rather like a summons from M, John was approached to write a new novel in the James Bond series.

Gardner’s Licence Renewed was the first Bond continuation novel since Kinsley Amis’s Colonel Sun in 1968. The world had changed since then, politically, culturally and technologically, and both Gardner and Glidrose Publications (now Ian Fleming Publications Ltd) agreed that Bond should be brought into the 1980s – as John put it, “picking up where Ian Fleming left off”.

Crucially, John took an objective approach to writing the world’s most famous spy. He ignored the movie adaptations and any pre-conceived notions about Bond, instead focusing on telling breakneck-paced stories rooted in reality. He prided himself on his research, especially the tech that is so much a part of James Bond’s DNA. In the acknowledgements to Licence Renewed John states, “I would like to point out to any unbelievers that all the ‘hardware’ used by Mr Bond in this story is genuine. Everything provided by Q Branch and carried by Bond – even the modification to Mr Bond’s Saab – is obtainable on either the open, or clandestine, markets.”

It was this dedicated fact checking and a wonderful ability to work even unlikely real-world gadgets into his prose that made his Bond writing so assured: “Unused weapons of all makes, types and sizes, were contained in the Armorer’s amazing treasure trove of a store, and he produced one of the old Brownings, still in its original box, thick with grease and wrapped in yellow waxed paper. No mean feat, as this particular gun has long since ceased to be manufactured… Bond completed the reassembly, ran the mechanism back and forth a couple of times, then picked up one of the magazines containing seven Browning Long 9mm rounds that would shatter a piece of five-inch pine board at twenty feet.”

Following the success of Licence Renewed in 1981, John Gardner would go on to write a further thirteen 007 novels, plus two novelisations. Len Deighton called him a “master storyteller” and his work in keeping James Bond’s legacy alive cannot be underestimated. It is this legacy that Ian Fleming Publications Ltd is proud to celebrate with a brand new edition of Licence Renewed released in time for its fortieth anniversary.