Letters of Note has posted an exchange between Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, and a Geoffrey Boothroyd, a gun expert.
Boothroyd had taken offense in Bond’s “rather deplorable taste in firearms,” and written a letter to Fleming expressing his concern over Bond preferring a .25 Beretta, a “lady’s gun.” There is only a small excerpt of Boothroyd’s letter, which evidently was quite long and went into great detail about the best guns for Bond to have. Fleming responded with gratitude, said he would change Bond’s gun in the next novel that he wrote, and asked for more information about guns. “At the present moment Bond is particularly anxious for expertise on the weapons likely to be carried by Russian agents and I wonder if you have any information on this,” Fleming wrote. It’s interesting to note that Fleming more than once refers to Bond as if he were a real person, and Fleming merely the transcriber. He ends the letter by saying, “As Bond’s biographer I am most anxious to see that he lives as long as possible and I shall be most grateful for any further technical advices you might like me to pass on to him.”
