WILLIAM BOYD
William Boyd has received worldwide acclaim for his twelve prize-winning novels. Among them are A Good Man in Africa (1981), An Ice Cream War (1982), Any Human Heart (2002) and Restless (2006). His latest, Solo (2013), a continuation to the James Bond series, was praised as “superior to . . . Ian Fleming’s originals”. His fiction has been published around the world and translated into over thirty languages.
Equally comfortable in the world of film, Boyd’s screenwriting credits include Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1990, dir. Jon Amiel), Chaplin (1992, dir. Richard Attenborough) A Good Man in Africa (1993, dir. Bruce Beresford), The Trench (1999; Boyd also directed) and Man to Man (2005, dir. Régis Wargnier). He adapted Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop for television (1988) and also Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy (2001).
On mining Fleming’s Bond books in preparation for his own, Boyd says: “it was always the tiny details, rather than the broad brushstrokes, that drew my attention. . . . So, in Solo, Bond makes his own vinaigrette, and I supply the recipe . . . No one can accuse me of breaking ranks – but I have to admit that the vinaigrette recipe is my own.”
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