You Only Live Twice by FLEMING, Ian Lancaster (1908-1964)

London: Jonathan Cape, 1964. [Spy novel] FIRST EDITION, First State, Binding A. Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean's copy, with his visiting card and Cape book label loosely inserted. Octavo (20 x 14cm), pp.256. Publisher's black cloth-effect paper over boards with silver titles to spine and Japanese characters in gilt to upper, bamboo patterned endpapers, dust-jacket by Richard Chopping priced 16s. Housed in an elegant custom-made clamshell box. Contents clean with a few light marks to edges, jacket is generally fresh, lightly frayed at crown. Very good indeed. A significant association. Provenance: Sir Fitzroy Maclean (1911-96), former Etonian diplomat, S.A.S. Commando, adventurer and travel writer encouraged by Peter Fleming; liaised with Ian Fleming during the Moscow spy trials in the 1930s, served in Soviet Central Asia, the Western Desert Campaign, and at Churchill's personal request, behind enemy lines with Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia. Maclean was often labelled a model for James Bond, with Ian Fleming noting that 007 was "a compound of all the secret agents and commando types that I met during the war" (Bond Bound, p.26). Maclean, Peter and Ian Fleming were reunited at literary events, each being published by Jonathan Cape. Originally sold with all Maclean's copies of the Bond novels [Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh, 2008], purchased by bibliographer Jon Gilbert for his Fleming Archive, where this copy has remained since. Gilbert, Jon: Ian Fleming The Bibliography, A12a (1.1).