Thunderball - Rare Book Insider
Thunderball

FLEMING, Ian Lancaster (1908-1964)

Thunderball

London: Jonathan Cape, 1977: 1977
  • $127
[Spy thriller] FIRST EDITION, fifth impression, bibliographer's copy. Octavo (19 x 13cm), pp.254; [2], bank. Publisher's cloth-effect paper over boards with embossed skeleton hand design to upper board, gilt titles to spine, dust-wrapper illustrated by Richard Chopping priced at £4.95 via publisher's label. Ex-library copy with expected handling and wear, although quite presentable. Faint (partially erased) institutional stamp to copyright page else clean within, some splashing to foot of page edges, jacket with very little wear. Shows well. The majority of Cape's James Bond hardcover reprints were taken into the lending library system to replace existing well-worn stock. From the comprehensive James Bond collection assembled by Jon Gilbert (pencilled notes and signature within). His comprehensive guide to the works of Ian Fleming (2012) won the 16th Breslauer Prize for bibliography. Gilbert A9a (5).
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Jan Masaryk. A Personal Memoir

Jan Masaryk. A Personal Memoir

[Ian Fleming association] BRUCE LOCKHART, [Sir] R.H. [Military history /politics / espionage] LIMITED EDITION. One of five hundred copies. Quarto (27 x 20cm), pp.viii;80; [4], printed on hand-made cream wove paper, title and colophon printed in two colours. With fine colour illustration of the Masaryk Memorial Medal, 1948. Original full blue buckram, gilt, t.e.g., illustrated dust-wrapper priced £1, 10s, 0d. A stylish and expensive book for the time. Contents clean. A fine copy in near fine wrapper with small scuff to front panel. An elegant production from the publishing house run by Ian Fleming (renamed Queen Anne Press shortly after this release). Later owned by Fleming's bibliographer Jon Gilbert (also published by QAP). A record of their wartime friendship. Bruce Lockhart was a British diplomat, journalist, author, and secret agent. He was posted to Moscow with agent Sidney Reilly ('Ace of Spies'). His 1932 book Memoirs of a British Agent became an international best-seller, chronicling his experiences in Russia in 1918 following the Bolshevik Revolution. Masaryk was the Foreign Minister of the Czechoslovakian Government-in-exile who made regular BBC broadcasts from London to occupied Czechoslovakia. Masaryk's wartime speeches made him a national hero. Following liberation of his country, he remained Foreign Minister during the volatile immediate post-war years, with Czech communism on the rise, and the country's dealing of arms to Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In March 1948 Masaryk was found dead in his pyjamas, having fallen from his balcony. The Ministry of the Interior claimed it was suicide but it was widely assumed he was murdered at the behest of the nascent Communist government. A 1968 investigation could not exclude murder, and an inquest following dissolution of Czechoslovakia concluded that he had been executed. Gilbert, pp.638, 663.
  • $201