By Jake Gallagher

Sir Ian Fleming was the sort of man that James Bond would have come across in the smoke-filled rooms of his stories. It’s easy to imagine Fleming sitting at a bar, dressed to the nines, dragging on a wispy cigarette, while sipping from a martini glass and chatting up his nightly arm candy. It only took Fleming, a former British naval intelligence officer, two months to pen Casino Royale, the first Bond book in 1952. Bond was never meant to be autobiographical, but he was certainly created in Fleming’s image. Spinning his tales of covert missions into full-blown spy thrillers, Fleming reinvented the espionage genre by making 007 as dashing as he was death-defying. And looking at how Fleming carried himself, it’s no wonder where the inspiration for Bond’s attitude and appearance came from. Read More »

The moderately and (very) immoderately priced goods that I’d rather spend it on this month.

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