Showing posts with label Ian Fleming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ian Fleming. Show all posts

Thursday, April 9, 2015

The name is Bond…Sexton Bond

From the Peter Haining papers, this typed manuscript  by the great researcher and expert on British comics and periodicals W.O.G. ('Bill') Lofts (1923-1997). It is interesting that Fleming got even close to writing a Sexton Blake, a bit like J.K. Rowling deciding to do a new Secret Seven adventure (actually not a bad idea..)



Sexton Blake and James Bond

I must confess that I greatly enjoyed the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming. Alas, there were only about sixteen of them as he died a premature death in 1964. Since then a number of other writers have penned them, but never read as well as the creator.

The first in 1955 was entitled 'Casino Royal' when the author an ex-M.I.5 man, certainly was authentic in every detail. The films that commenced in 1963 with 'Dr. No'*. I also greatly enjoyed, especially those featuring Sean Connery. Roger Moore his successor was just as good, though even more suitable to the Saint character, with his type of humour.

Likewise I enjoyed all the Sexton Blake stories in my younger days, as this world famous character must have entertained millions in his day, now alas seemingly put on the sideboards for quite some years. I must also admit that probably now doing so much detective work one can see the limitations in this field, by sloppy plots, as well as faulty backgrounds by some writers.

As well known, despite the myth of Leslie Charteris, Sax Rohmer, and Edgar Wallace supposed to have cut their eye-teeth early days of penning Blake yarns (records show they did not) there was once a time, when none other than Ian Fleming was contemplating writing a Sexton Blake story,