After watching an interview with the author on the ‘Bond Experience’ YouTube channel and having a Bondian way to celebrate the coronation, I was very excited to add this book to my collection, unfortunately it didn’t live up to expectations. I didn’t want to write him as a slightly stuffy man out of time with fifties’ attitudes - the Jacob Rees-Mogg 007. I wanted him to be a contemporary young man.

It’s a short read but I had to force myself to keep reading bit by bit, it was a chore, mostly down to the villain and his entourage. The female interest was IMO well written and the most engaging character next to Bond, there was also some surprising character choices towards the end with Bond that I liked, there was also a copy / homage of From Russia With Love towards the end which I didn’t like and made me roll my eyes.Contemporary Bond - you can write contemporary Bond without shoehorning in words like Nutella and Toblerone, it’s set during the kings coronation, I know it’s modern, I don’t ever want to read the word Nutella in a Bond novel, no matter what year it’s set. Charlie Higson’s phenomenally successful Young Bond series has sold over a million copies in the UK alone and has been translated into more than 24 different languages. He adds: “When IFP came to me with the idea of writing an adult Bond story a little more than a month ago, I was thrilled – until I realised it had to be ready for the Coronation in May. Getting it written and turned around in such a short space of time was going to be as tense and heart-pounding as any Bond mission. Although, of course, nobody would actually be shooting at me. But I’ve been thinking about writing an adult Bond adventure ever since working on the Young Bond books, and he came bursting out of me with both fists flying. It was all I could do to keep up with him and get his story down on paper. Fleming famously wrote fast, and I channelled that energy. And now it’s so exciting for me to finally enter the world of grown-up Bond. Everything you want from a Bond story is in there – sex, violence, cars, a colourful villain with a nasty henchman, and of course, Bond himself. So well-known and yet so unknowable.” Higson’s Young Bond - first written 18 years ago - was a period piece. Set to be in the same timeline as Fleming’s 60s Bond. So here Higson does two things he’s never done before. Write adult Bond and write him in a contemporary setting. He does both really well. Charles is apparently a big fan of the Bond books and there was that great moment at the 2012 Olympics where the Queen and 007 came together – our two greatest cultural icons united – so that was the obvious place to start.”

Food was always an important part of the original books. Bond was this fantasy figure who did things a bank clerk in Croydon couldn’t. Readers lived vicariously. The Telegraph revealed that a number of racial references from Fleming’s ahead of the republication of his espionage thrillers following a review by sensitivity readers. I loved Higson's Young James Bond novels. But I don't think his young James Bond was really the person that would become Fleming's Bond - too caring, good-natured and sympathetic - and with good reason for these books.There was a lot of Fleming’s Bond that was valid and viable: he’s a loner, he’s a hard man and he protects himself by keeping people at arm’s length. Of course 007 is sent to stop this person whose support is mainly right wing extremists and mercenaries, and he has only so many days to solve this lunatic and his plans. My feeling is, as long as James Bond does the things he does and you have enough of the iconography around him, then you can update him and modernise him.”

Jonathan Douglas CBE, Chief Executive of the National Literary Trust, says: “James Bond has been creating avid readers for seventy years and we are delighted that the royalties from On His Majesty’s Secret Service will go towards our own not-so-secret mission: to support the literacy skills of children and adults in the nation’s most disadvantaged areas. We hope that this partnership will create a whole new generation of readers, who will continue to discover the thrills of Bond for years to come.” The idea originally was to do a longish short story, perhaps 10,000 words, with a month to write it. I thought it would be such a fun idea,” he says. All royalties from sales of the book will support the work of the National Literacy Trust, an independent UK charity working with schools and communities to give disadvantaged children the literacy skills to succeed in life. Happy birthday 007 and May you return soon from the pen of decent writer of the same or better quality than Charlie Higson, which would spoil us literary fans a lot.This book has received its place between the 007 novels in my collection, it is not the best one (which were the Fleming ones) and certainly not the worst (looking at you SOLO). The new 007 story brings Bond into the present day, with a narrative that takes place on 4 May 2023. My criticism isn’t about Higson competing with Fleming but if you take any of the IF short stories, Octopussy, Living Daylights, Quantum, these are spectacular character pieces, brilliantly original, they do not follow a traditional Bond formula and they are all short stories as what was intended by Higson. What he has done by using the perceived typical plot of a Bond novel actually reads more like fan fiction or what someone who hasn’t read Fleming would think a Bond novel should be. Instead, royalties from the new novella will go to the National Literacy Trust, which works with disadvantaged children, so everyone’s happy. This brand new James Bond adventure arrives during a momentous year for Ian Fleming Publications. 13 April 2023 marks 70 years since the initial publication of Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, Casino Royale. The company are celebrating 70 years of 007 throughout 2023, with many events planned, including the release of the Bond books under their own imprint on 13 April.

Ian Fleming Publications has commissioned Young Bond series author Charlie Higson to write a new James Bond adventure to celebrate the coronation of King Charles. It would perfectly fit his argument about how, following the Norman invasion, the poncey French have subjugated the English so completely we’re going to have this foreign vegetarian dish,” he says. But I’ve been thinking about writing an adult Bond adventure ever since working on the Young Bond books, and he came bursting out of me with both fists flying. It was all I could do to keep up with him and get his story down on paper. Fleming famously wrote fast, and I channelled that energy. And now it’s so exciting for me to finally enter the world of grown-up Bond.

The villain in question is the self-styled “Æthelstan of Wessex”, who claims direct descent from Alfred the Great and thinks he has more of a right to the English throne than “King Charles the Woke” – that shill for all the foreign elites who have kept the true English downtrodden since the Norman Conquest. Talking to Higson, 64, an author of bestselling adult crime novels as well as children’s books, whose previous foray into 007 territory was his Young Bond series, featuring the spy as a boy in a hit series of children’s books, his excitement is infectious.