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“In the early spring of nineteen sixty-three, there was a rumour — unconfirmed and a little scandalous — that George Smiley might almost be ...

You can now download for free the four-page postscript to my biography of David Whitaker , detailing some of the things I've learned sin...

First published in 1945, this is the second of the detective novels starring Oxford don and amateur sleuth Gervase Fen. Following the events...

I really enjoyed this wide-ranging ramble through Bond, the Beatles and the British psyche. It charts the interweaving histories of the Fabs...

I've long been on the look-out for this original novel based on the ITV spy series The Sandbaggers (1978-80) . A chum lent it to me last...

"The frank, uncensored story of what really happens in the making of a super-film," promises the back-cover blurb on Roger Moore a...

The new issue of medical journal Lancet Psychiatry includes my essay, "Was it obvious to everyone else that I'd fallen for a lie?&q...

I've been gadding about this week, braving the petrol crisis to venture to Cambridge and Liverpool, accompanied on the road by Jason Isa...

At the end of this fascinating, moving memoir, the TV and film director Alvin Rakoff recalls a final conversation with his dying wife, the a...

I'm again a guest on the Cinema Limbo podcast, in which Jeremy Phillips looks anew at neglected old films. This time, he inflicted on me...

I've long coveted this huge, exhaustive history of the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), having first heard ab...

I'm immersed in the world of Harry Palmer at the moment for a thing I'm writing. That's included finally getting round to  The I...

Subtitled "My Life and Loves", this gossipy autobiography by costume designer Jocelyn Rickards is great fun. From an early age, c...

The Moon - A Celebration of Our Celestial Neighbour is a new book published by Royal Observatory Greenwich to accompany the Moon exhibiti...

Out in shops now is the Essential Doctor Who: The Time Lords , a comprehensive 116-page feast of everything you ever wanted to know about...

Last night, I was an interviewed guest on Radio 4's Front Row , talking about TV and films influenced by the nuclear bomb - it being ...

Via a tweet from my chum Farah earlier in the year, I learnt of  A Firework for Oliver (1964) by John Sanders. Brother Tom  tracked down...

“[Roald Dahl] had known Ian Fleming well. Both men had worked in espionage for William Stephenson during the war, and both had similar rep...