A monumental edifice of a book that at first glance seems somewhat daunting ... Entire eras materialize in artful sketches while the portrait of Fleming acquires texture and shade with each trial and triumph.
Huge, immensely detailed ... A dazzling, even dizzying achievement, despite that ludicrous-sounding subtitle ... Shakespeare has produced one of those books you can happily live in for weeks. It will deservedly become the standard life of Ian Fleming.
Detailed ... What of his novels? Shakespeare offers few critical judgements on them ... For all the scrupulous diligence of Nicholas Shakespeare’s researches, and the detail he is able to amass and make highly readable, he cannot make Fleming’s life or his writings assume great significance.
Elegant ... Testimony woven from diaries, papers and interviews gives the book a flavour of oral history. Shakespeare goes to great lengths – not least tracking down a 94-year-old veteran, the last surviving member of a covert commando unit that Fleming organised – to dispel the idea that Fleming’s service, occluded by state-sanctioned secrecy, was just 'in-trays, out-trays and ashtrays'.
A monumental record of Fleming’s life ... The completeness of the book is beyond doubt, although its subject was a heroically incomplete human being ... Shakespeare leaves no future biographer much to discover. Fleming’s place in history is assured.
An exceptional novelist and a prodigious researcher, Shakespeare has drawn on two earlier, eminently readable biographies...and with some new material, produced a compelling narrative that justifies his rather bold subtitle 'The Complete Man'.
