William Boyd's latest mission was to the Guardian book club, where he read from his James Bond novel Solo and revealed some of the secrets behind its composition.
He talked about how he started the project by returning to Ian Fleming's novels and short stories, stripping away the familiar sheen of Bond's celluloid incarnations to reveal hints of his experiences during the second world war.
Boyd talked about the boxes which any 007 novel must tick, the importance of luxury and how the melancholy of the literary Bond opened the door to a novel that reaches beyond the cartoonish towards a more dangerous realism.
Reading list
Solo by William Boyd (Jonathan Cape)
