Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
Lewis and Tolkien are big nyets for me in any case, but I'm not interested in a fictional walk as a walk. It would depend on the nature of the novel itself.
|
I can understand that and it's perfectly valid. A school teacher read Prince Caspian to us when I was 10 near the end of summer term, so that coloured my outlook. I'd read much Irish, Greek, Norse legends and fairy tales by then and read LOTR when I was maybe 12 or 13. Lighter and easier than The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and more depth than Biggles or The Saint (which I preferred to James Bond). I probably had read all the SF in the local library by 13.
Most know Ian Fleming (a desk jockey in Intelligence) and his fantasy spy james Bond. Compare Le Carré's Circus or Len Deighton or Helen McInnes.
His elder brother,
Peter Fleming might really have been a spy and writes better, though I've only read two of his travel stories.
I have all three of these on paper:
Quote:
1934 One's Company: A Journey to China in 1933 – Travels through the USSR, Manchuria and China. Later reissued as half of Travels in Tartary.
1936 News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir – Journey from Peking to Srinagar via Sinkiang. He was accompanied on this journey by Ella Maillart (Kini). Later reissued as half of Travels in Tartary.
|
Of course anything "autobiographical" by anyone can be a bit suspect on what is included, excluded, distorted and made up! See Roald Dahl's autobiography, who I thought of because toward the end of his life Ian Fleming regretted prioritising James Bond more than his son, so wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang stories for him. This was made into a somewhat different movie, with Roald Dahl involved on the the Screenplay and sacked. Dahl almost certainly invented the Child-catcher which is not even hinted at in the original stories.