Ian Fleming

A first edition, first printing of the James Bond book You Only Live Twice, by Ian Fleming, which has been inscribed by the author.

• Ian Fleming (English).
• London: Jonathan Cape, 1964.
• Signed and inscribed to Aubrey Forshaw.
• With presentation note in blue ink to flyleaf; 'To / Forshaw-san / from / Fleming-san [underline].'
• Publisher’s black cloth-effect paper over boards with silver titles to spine and Japanese characters in gilt to upper, bamboo patterned endpapers, in original pictorial dust-wrapper by Richard Chopping.

This is the first issue with ‘First published 1964’ to the copyright page.

This copy was presented by Ian Fleming to Aubrey Forshaw. The inscription incorporates the traditional Japanese honorary title ‘san’, used to show respect to the person being mentioned. In the novel, Tiger Tanaka, the head of the Japanese Secret Service, refers to 007 throughout as ‘Bondo-san’.

Fleming used this device only when inscribing the book to his closest friends and colleagues. Examples presented in this way include: “Brilliant Chopping-san” [for the jacket artist Richard Chopping], “Dikko-san” [Richard Hughes, journalist and model for the character 'Dikko Henderson' in the novel], “Connolly-san” [author Cyril Connolly], and “From Fleming-san” [to Sunday Times editor Denis Hamilton, the dedicatee of Fleming's Thrilling Cities].

The present 'Forshaw-san' is thus far unrecorded.

Forshaw was Managing Director at Pan Books from 1952, following the death of its founder Alan Bott.

The first Bond novel Casino Royale was published as a Pan edition in 1955 and each subsequent Bond novel would be published by Pan, as well as Fleming’s other three books The Diamond Smugglers, Thrilling Cities and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. In The Man With the Golden Typewriter, letters between Fleming and Forshaw are included on pages 319, 321, 322 and 371. It also appears that Fleming consulter Forshaw about the details of Bond’s Bentley Continental. The car was owned by Fleming and was driven and one by Bond in the film Thunderball.

One of the letters from The Man With The Golden Typewriter from Forshaw to Fleming is an invite to an awards dinner to celebrate the fact that Casino Royale has sold over a million copies.

By the 1960’s Pan was the second-largest paperback publisher (after Penguin), largely thanks to the phenomenal global success of Ian Fleming and his James Bond series.