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A collection of works for which Fleming provided a preface, representing the diversity of his personal interests. The assemblage comprises: i) FLEMING, Ian. "Poker Player". In: Now & Then Magazine (no. 103, Spring 1959, p. 7). The first appearance in print of Fleming's "Poker Player", as well as the James Bond review "Oh No, Dr No!", which is followed by a rebuttal from Fleming (pp. 11-12). It is accompanied by the first book-form appearance of "Poker Player", printed in the first UK edition of Herbert O. Yardley's The Education of a Poker Player and published in London later in the same year. According to Fleming, The Education of a Poker Player contains "some of the finest gambling stories I had ever read. That is why, not as a poker player but as a writer of thrillers, I can recommend this book" (pp. 8-9). ii) FISH, Donald E. W. Airline Detective: The Fight Against International Air Crime. London: Collins, 1962. It is accompanied by the first paperback edition and the first US edition, published in the US under the title The Lawless Skies: The Fight Against International Air Crime; all published the same year. This work was co-written, though uncredited, by John Pearson, who went on to become Fleming's first official biographer. In his introduction Fleming writes "there is nothing wishy-washy in these seventeen chapters, which are some of the best I have ever read in any language on police work" (p. 13 of first edition). iii) FLEMING, Ian (conceived by). The Seven Deadly Sins. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1962. First issue, with the uncensored copyright page; accompanied by the first edition, which was published without Fleming's introduction earlier the same year. The volume contains essays by Angus Wilson, Edith Sitwell, Cyril Connolly, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Sykes, and W. H. Auden. The Seven Deadly Sins was conceived by Fleming when he pondered the many sins that must lie beneath the friendly atmosphere at his editorial board meetings for the Sunday Times: "How drab and empty life would be without these sins, and what dull dogs we all would be without a healthy trace of many of them in our make up!" (p. ix). iv) HYDE, H. Montgomery. Room 3603: The Story of the British Intelligence Center in New York during World War II. New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1963. It is accompanied by the first edition, which was published without Fleming's introduction the previous year, under the title The Quiet Canadian: The Secret Service Story of Sir William Stephenson, and the first UK appearance with Fleming's introduction, published the following year in the UK and entitled Room 3603; this copy inscribed by the author "For Roy Plomley, With love and best Greetings from H. Montgomery Hyde". The broadcaster Roy Plomley (1914-1985) devised and presented the BBC Radio series "Desert Island Discs", on which Fleming was a guest on 5 August 1963. Fleming is mentioned in the text of this work on pages 18, 238, and 241 of the first edition. In the introduction Fleming notes that James Bond is "a highly romanticised version of the true spy. [Yet William Stephenson] allows us to realise to our astonishment that men of super-qualities can exist, and that such men can be super-spies and, by any standard, heroes" (p. x). v) EDWARDS, Hugh. All Night at Mr Stanyhurst's. London: Jonathan Cape, 1963. First published in 1933 to little acclaim, this novel captivated Fleming, and he began requesting the publisher reprint it many years before Cape published his James Bond novels. Following Fleming's runaway success, Cape eventually ceded to his appeals and released the present edition, on condition that Fleming pen an introduction: "I will not discuss here my mixed reactions to this suggestion, but one thing was clear - the rebirth of this book now lay, rightly or wrongly, with me" (Fleming, p. xi). vi) FLEMING, Ian. "Where Shall John Go? Jamaica". In: Horizon Magazine (vol. 16, no. 96, Dec. 1947, pp. 350-59). This was.
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