It was a strong face, certainly – the eyes pale grey and very cold, the mouth was hard, the dark hair – grey-streaked now – still fell in the authentic comma over the forehead.

This is how John Pearson reacted to his first encounter with the real James Bond, an encounter probably unique in the annals of thriller writing. He went on to write the bestselling authorised biography of Ian Fleming. At the time, like most of the world he assumed that James Bond was nothing more than a character in Fleming’s highly charged imagination. Then he began to have his doubts. Doubts which were reaching such a pitch that the British secret service were trying to warn him off the scent. Despite this, he finally became convinced that James Bond was not only real, but actually alive.

Thanks to a change in policy within the secret service he was invited to embark upon a companion volume to his life of Fleming. This resulting book must be one of the most extraordinary biographies of our times – the authorised life of a myth, the official biography of James Bond.