Carroll Tyson, the real James Bond’s uncle, was a noted artist, and his portfolio of 20 fine-arts prints of the birds of Mount Desert Island is still prized and highly collectible. A print of Tyson’s Great Grey Owl, for instance,
The Birds of Mount Desert Island Read Post »
Wonder why the colophon for lan Fleming Publications features a bird, and what kind of bird it is?
For the answers, look no farther than For Your Eyes Only, arguably the best short story in the 1960 compilation of the same name. Fleming begins the tale in a most atypical fashion. He spends the first 105 words waxing poetic about the bird that would become integral to the colophon and lan Fleming Publications’ logo:
The most beautiful bird in Jamaica, and some say the most beautiful bird in the world, is the streamertail or doctor hummingbird. The cock bird is about nine inches long, but seven inches of it are tail – two long black feathers that curve and cross each other and whose inner edges are in a form of scalloped design. The head and crest are black, the wings dark green, the long bill is scarlet, and the eyes, bright and confiding, are black. The body is emerald green, so dazzling that when the sun is on the breast you see the brightest green thing in nature. (lan Fleming, For Your Eyes Only, 1960)
In Honor of James Bond Day Read Post »