A Quantum of Lawyers May Care

It wasn’t long ago that we reported here on a controversial book, The Battle for Bond: The Genesis of Cinema’s Greatest Hero, by Robert Sellers, which spilled the beans on Ian Fleming’s long-ago court battle, instigated by Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham and having to do with the rights to Thunderball (1965). It seems that lawyers have been summoned again, but this time, writes The Sunday Times, they’re doing battle on behalf of the Fleming estate:

It cost the creator of James Bond his health and £50,000. Now, more than 40 years later, a legal battle about the authorship of Thunderball has claimed another victim with the pulping of a book about Ian Fleming.

The book, The Battle for Bond, tells how 007 was refashioned from the ruthless and misogynistic character that was created by Fleming in his debut novel, Casino Royale, to a suave womaniser and international box office hit.

The intervention by Fleming’s family will draw attention to one of the most bruising episodes in the rise of Bond, as celebrations for the centenary of the author’s birth get under way. As well as a new Bond novel, to be written by Sebastian Faulks, the bestselling author, an exhibition about 007’s second world war exploits will open at the Imperial War Museum in the spring.

The collaboration between Fleming and two others on a film script, introducing fans to Spectre and Blofeld, ended in acrimony when Fleming was accused of plagiarising it for a book version.

The bottom line for the descendants of Fleming’s opponents in that old case, is that Bond was a much less appealing figure before the movie version of Thunderball was written.

With Thunderball, Bond’s character changed, setting him on the path to even greater commercial success. Sylvan Mason, the daughter of Whittingham, said: “In the early books that Fleming wrote, James was a much more ruthless, sadistic and misogynistic man.

“The original film script for Thunderball portrayed Bond as a much more suave character who was keen on women and affairs. That script, and then the subsequent Fleming books and all the films, really offered a very different Bond and one who was far more popular with a wider audience.”

But as far as the Fleming estate is concerned, The Battle for Bond has stepped over the legal line, and must be slapped down--no matter the alleged veracity of its contents. Considering that Fleming’s novels were dismissed as pulpish by some early critics, it’s a bit ironic that the consequence of this latest court action should be the pulping of Sellers’ new book. Explains The Times:

In January the publisher, Tomahawk Press, was accused of breaching copyright for including a number of court documents from the plagiarism case.

The Fleming Will Trust, which was set up to look after the interests of the author’s family and headed by Kate Grimond, Fleming’s niece, demanded the book be pulped.

“We’re just a very small publisher with no money to fight a big legal action,” said Bruce Sachs, Tomahawk’s managing director. Olswang, the solicitors acting on behalf of the Fleming Will Trust, claims that under English law the full documents could not be published.

On Thursday Sachs had to order a warehouse in Lancaster to hand over 300 copies of the book for pulping. Bookshops that already have copies are not being forced to remove them although Amazon, the online retailer, has decided to withdraw the book.

Read the whole Times piece here.