Sir Kingsley Amis became associated with Ian Fleming’s James Bond in the 1960s, writing critical works connected with the fictional spy, either under a pseudonym or uncredited.

Sir Kingsley William Amis (April 16, 1922 – October 22, 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than twenty novels, three collections of poetry, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. Amis was born in Clapham, South London, educated at the City of London School and St John’s College, Oxford.

Kingsley Amis became associated with Ian Fleming’s James Bond in the 1960s, writing critical works connected with the fictional spy, either under a pseudonym or uncredited. In 1965, he wrote the popular The James Bond Dossier under his own name. That same year, he wrote, The Book of Bond, or, Every Man His Own 007, a tongue-in-cheek how-to manual about being a sophisticated spy, under the pseudonym “Lt Col. William (‘Bill’) Tanner”, Tanner being M’s Chief of Staff in many of Fleming’s Bond novels.

It is widely claimed that after Fleming died in 1964 following completion of an early draft of The Man with the Golden Gun, the publisher commissioned Amis and possibly other writers to finish the manuscript. Bond historians and Fleming biographers have in recent years debunked this theory, indicating that no such ghostwriter was ever employed, though Amis did provide suggestions on how to improve the manuscript, later rejected.

In 1968 the owners of the James Bond property, Glidrose Publications, attempted to continue the series by hiring different novelists, all writing under the pseudonym Robert Markham. Kingsley Amis was the first to write a Markham novel, Colonel Sun, but no more books were published under that name. It is widely believed that Amis had planned to write a second Bond novel but was talked out of it. Colonel Sun was adapted as a comic strip in the Daily Express in 1969. In a 2005 Titan Books reprint volume of the comic strip, an introductory chapter indicated that Amis planned to write a short story featuring an elderly Bond coming out of retirement for one last mission, but Glidrose refused him permission to write it.

Amis was unsuccessful at persuading EON Productions to adapt his novel as a film. According to the Titan Books introductory chapter, Amis was told that Harry Saltzman (co-producer of the Bond series up until 1974) had “blackballed” any use of Colonel Sun as a Bond film, apparently in response to Glidrose having rejected the publication of the post-Fleming Bond novel, Per Fine Ounce by Geoffrey Jenkins, which Saltzman had championed. In 2002, however, Colonel Sun was clearly referenced in the James Bond film Die Another Day in which the villain was named Colonel Tan-Sun Moon.

See also:

• Bond novels: Post-Ian Fleming