Preview: 'For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming And James Bond'

Following up a virtual examination of the forthcoming ‘For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond’ exhibition from The Times last week, The Independent has now posted their own preview of the event.

As one of the many events planned as part of the Ian Fleming centenary celebrations, the ‘For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond’ exhibition is set to run from 25 April 2008 through 1 March 2009 at the Imperial War Museum in London.

This 007 exhibition will bring together both personal effects of the author and an ‘unparalleled range of Bond memorabilia’ in order to discover where the identity of the debonair spymaster and journalist ended and the fictional secret agent began.

The Independent elaborates, saying that Daniel Craig’s bloodstained shirt from Casino Royale and Q’s personal travelling case from A View To A Kill will be two movie props to keep an eye out for.

Other Bond materials to be featured will include a yellow helmet worn by Drax’s men in Moonraker; Kara Milovy’s bullet-pierced cello from The Living Daylights; a spear-gun from Thunderball; a transparent bomb from The World Is Not Enough; a prototype of Rosa Klebb’s flick-knife shoes in From Russia With Love; the golf shoes worn by Auric Goldfinger in–you guessed it–Goldfinger; the wing-mirror dart-gun from Live and Let Die; the heart transplant unit used for smuggling diamonds in The Living Daylights; the overcoat worn by Sean Connery in Dr. No; and a picture of Halle Berry her orange bikini from Die Another Day.

This is all in addition to the numerous Fleming and literary 007-related material, including a desk and chair transported from his Goldeneye villa in Jamaica.

Refering the historical contexts of James Bond in books, co-curator James Taylor said: ‘We don’t get much back-story until the last book, You Only Live Twice. There are snippets in other books, but it’s clear that Fleming and Bond are not the same person. Bond is Fleming’s fantasy. There are parallels between them–both are orphans [Fleming lost his father just short of his ninth birthday], Old Etonians, fluent in German and French and have Scottish blood–but the comparisons stop there.’

Stay tuned to CommanderBond.net for all the latest details and coverage on all the Ian Fleming centenary events and James Bond-related releases.