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Friday, May 31, 2024
Ian Fleming: The Complete Man: My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column On Nicholas Shakespeare, The Author Of The New Biography Of The Creator Of James Bond
The Washington Times ran my On Crime column on
Nicholas Shakespeare and his new biography of the late, great thriller writer Ian
Fleming.
You can read the column via the below link or the below text:
I’ve been an Ian Fleming aficionado since my teens, so I was
pleased to read “Ian Fleming: The Complete Man,” the new biography by Nicholas
Shakespeare (seen in the below photo).
I contacted Mr. Shakespeare and asked
him why he wrote the biography.
“When I was approached to write a new
authorized biography of Ian Fleming, the first since 1966, my initial reaction
was hesitation,” Mr. Shakespeare replied. “Could I face spending so long in the
company of a melancholic cad and creator of the cold killing machine, James
Bond? This incomplete image was my only image of Fleming.
“Before rejecting the proposal, I did
some background research, and I found to my surprise that Fleming, the sardonic
bounder, was kinder than I’d hitherto imagined. Again and again, the many women
he’d had affairs with looked back on him with fondness, describing his
kindliness as his chief characteristic. This was not a quality I’d associated
with James Bond.
“There is much more to Fleming than
Bond, a character he created almost as an afterthought in the last twelve years
of his life, when the most interesting part of it was essentially over.
“To simplify horribly, there would be no
James Bond had Fleming not led the life he did, but if Bond had not existed,
Fleming is someone we should still want to know about.”
Paul Davis is a writer who covers crime. He has written extensively about organized crime, cybercrime, street crime, white collar crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism. His 'On Crime' column appears in the Washington Times and his 'Crime Beat' column appears here. He is also a regular contributor to Counterterrorism magazine and writes their online 'Threatcon' column. Paul Davis' crime fiction appears in American Crime Magazine. His work has also appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Weekly and other publications. As a writer, he has attended police academy training, gone out on patrol with police officers, accompanied detectives as they worked cases, accompanied narcotics officers on drug raids, observed criminal court proceedings, visited jails and prisons, and covered street riots, mob wars and murder investigations. He has interviewed police commissioners and chiefs, FBI, DEA, HSI and other federal special agents, prosecutors, public officials, WWII UDT frogmen, Navy SEALs, Army Delta operators, Israeli commandos, military intelligence officers, Scotland Yard detectives, CIA officers, former KGB officers, film and TV actors, writers and producers, journalists, novelists and true crime authors, gamblers, outlaw bikers, and Cosa Nostra organized crime bosses. Paul Davis has been a student of crime since he was a 12-year-old aspiring writer growing up in South Philadelphia. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he was 17 in 1970. He served aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War and he later served two years aboard the Navy harbor tugboat U.S.S. Saugus at the U.S. floating nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland. He went on to do security work as a Defense Department civilian while working part-time as a freelance writer. From 1991 to 2005 he was a producer and on-air host of "Inside Government," a public affairs interview radio program that aired Sundays on WPEN AM and WMGK FM in the Philadelphia area. You can read Paul Davis' crime columns, crime fiction, book reviews and news and feature articles on this website. You can read his full bio by clicking on the above photo. And you can contact Paul Davis at pauldavisoncrime@aol.com
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