CommanderBond.net

I just wanted to let everybody at commanderbond know that I've contributed to the Guardian's series of articles about Ian Fleming at:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/05/...ur_goes_in.html
Charlie Higson has also written about his favourite Bond villains.
I hope you enjoy the piece. Have a great weekend
Charles Cumming

Very nice article, Charles. Do you have a link to the Charlie Higson piece? I can't seem to find it on the Guardian's website.

Hi. Try this:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/top10s/top10/0,,2279058,00.html

If that fails, if you go the guardian home page and scroll down, you'll see a pic of Dr No with Higson's piece linked beneath it.

Posting an article/link on my site now. But here it is:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/top10s/top10/0,,2279058,00.html

Fine piece of work, even if it killed off some of my more favourite illusions. So thriller writers don't actually nurse a drink and Olga Kurylenko's phone number any more? Shame...

PS: looking forward to your next book.

This post has been edited by Trident: 9 May 2008 - 16:15

Thank you! Typhoon is out on June 5th (shameless plug...)

You bet I get it June 6th (or however fast amazon can deliver)!

Doing a quick bit of Googling, I note that it partially concerns Beijing's treatment of the Uighur people, which is a subject that interests me*, so I'll certainly be checking out your book just for that. I lived in Beijing for a year just slightly over a decade ago, and I used to go quite regularly to the Uighur quarter of Ganjiakou - a lot of Westerners liked going there for the food and/or the hashish. You also used to see a lot of roadside lamb kebab (yang rouchuan) stalls run by Uighurs all across the city, and I imagine you still do. I'm told that that old Ganjiakou district's all gone now, presumably one of the many casualties of the wrecking ball of the Olympics.

*Sadly under-reported, though. I hope you don't mind my linking to an article of yours I've just found:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20.../05/china.tibet

This may have been mentioned already on here, but commanderbond afficionados will love the Comments at the bottom of another Guardian piece about IF's literary reputation. Informative and occasionally very funny. No doubt some of you contributed

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/05/bond_books.html

I spent a summer in Xinjiang five years ago. Two things stand out in my mind which sort of sum the place up:

Waking up in a hotel room at 10 am in plenty of time to catch a 9 am bus. Beijing insists that everywhere in China uses beijing time - a bizarre rule the local bus companies, used mostly by Uighurs, ignore.

Looking around kashgar for the square in front of the id kah mosque thnking "it must be around here somewhere". Then realising that the huge fenced off building site watched by a group of old uighur men with rueful expressions was where the square should have been...

That plus the fact that I've read and enjoyed Mr Cumming's other books means I'm really looking forward to "Typhoon".