Lee Child rejected a request from the estate of Ian Fleming to write a series of new James Bond novels, the bestselling author has disclosed.
The multi-millionaire creator of the Jack Reacher series said he rebuffed invitations in 2008 to write officially licensed Bond books.
“They wanted me to do it, but I said no,” he said. “Why would I do Bond books for 50 per cent of the royalties, when I can get 100 per cent with the Reacher books? They came back and asked me a second time and I said no again.
“I felt ultimately vindicated because I didn’t love the people. I thought they were a bit uptight and because Bond is so specifically 1950s, it doesn’t work in contemporary times.”
The novelist, 71, whose thrillers about the vigilante Reacher have sold more than 200 million copies, was separately invited to write the foreword to a republished trilogy of Bond novels.
His introduction went unused after Child refused to remove passages at the request of the Fleming estate. He said he had incurred the wrath of Fleming’s literary guardians by insisting that Bond’s Scottish credentials were bogus.
Child, who was born in Coventry and raised in Birmingham, had agreed to write a 1,500-word introduction to the Blofeld Trilogy, featuring Thunderball, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and You Only Live Twice, in 2009.
Lee Child talks to the Queen at a literary festival at Hampton Court Palace CHRIS JACKSON/GETTY IMAGES
“I was unaware that the publishers would have to run it by the Fleming estate and they objected to it for two reasons,” he said. “First I said that Ian Fleming came from a family of merchant bankers who lived in Mayfair and that, as such, the depression of the 1930s kind of passed them by. They said ‘oh no, life was hell for merchant bankers during the depression’. But I wouldn’t change it.
“The second thing I said was that, even though Fleming had a distant relationship with Scotland, there was nothing Scottish about Bond. After Sean Connery started to play him in the movies, the subsequent books became quite Scottish, but that was clearly the author following the actor.
“They said ‘oh no, Ian Fleming was intimately Scottish’. Because I would not back down, they refused to let my intro be published.”
Child claimed he ultimately triumphed because he was still paid by Penguin and then managed to find another publisher for his essay. “I called it Project You Only Get Paid Twice,” he said.
Although he was born and raised in Mayfair, London, Fleming’s forebears hailed from Dundee where his grandfather Robert started a bank and became a millionaire.
Ian Fleming was called a “real snob” by Sean Connery. Lee Child’s view of Fleming’s upbringing and background was disliked by the trustees of the Fleming estateDAILY EXPRESS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
Fleming was initially unhappy with Connery, a working-class Scot who “couldn’t speak the Queen’s English”, being cast to bring his suave spy to the big screen in 1962. Connery, after learning that he had referred to him as an “overdeveloped stuntman”, described Fleming as “interesting, erudite and a real snob”.
However, after warming to Connery’s portrayal, Fleming wrote that Bond had been educated in Edinburgh and had a Scottish father and a Swiss mother.
Child felt it was disingenuous and inaccurate to try to pass Fleming or Bond as authentically Scottish. “Scotland has a high concentration of really good authors, especially in crime fiction,” he said. “It doesn’t need to claim Ian Fleming as well.”
After spending decades living and writing in America, Child — once a trade union official with Granada TV — returned to Britain after President Trump’s re-election in 2024.
He has no plans to return to the US. “I moved back as a political refugee,” he said. “When the results came in on the night, a switch went in my head. I said ‘right, f**k this. I’m going’ and I did.”
The author, who lives in the Lake District, said: “I was living in America as an immigrant and I wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people Trump is abusing. I love history and have read a lot of books and watched documentaries about the 1930s. Some of the rhetoric in the US just now is word for word. It’s utterly chilling. I think it will take a generation to fix. It is just so screwed up.”
Child said that he based Reacher, his ultra-violent protagonist, on himself and his explosive temper.
Lee Child with Tom Cruise at the fan screening in New Orleans of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back ERIKA GOLDRING/GETTY IMAGES FOR PARAMOUNT PICTURES
As a schoolboy, nicknamed “Grievous”, he set up a playground protection scheme for smaller, bullied children. “I was huge, I was nasty,” he told host Lauren Laverne, when he appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. “I had a rule that if you pulled a knife on me, I would break your arm. I had to do it twice before people got the message.”
The Reacher series has inspired two Hollywood films starring Tom Cruise and a hit TV series on Amazon Prime, but Child still refuses to allow bullies to act with impunity. “If some objectionable injustice is happening, I have to intervene,” he said.
He recalled dishing out summary justice when he saw a “drunken frat boy” threatening a “tiny” Sikh taxi driver in New York in 2004. “He swung at me and caught me on the eyebrow, so I had to smack him around a bit,” he said.
Lee Child will headline Bloody Scotland, the international crime writing festival, in Stirling from September 18-20