If Fleming had not turned his hand to thrillers, he could have been a superlative travel writer. Jamaica , where he had a house, is rendered with haunting delicacy. Just as evocative are the descriptions of 1950s America in Live and Let Die and Diamonds Are Forever. From the smoky nightclubs of Harlem to the sun-bleached Nevada desert, every vig­nette rings true. Worlds that must have seemed impossibly exotic to readers in the austerity of postwar Britain are recaptured with painterly skill.

Like Conan Doyle, another writer unfairly regarded as lightweight, Ian Fleming was one of those master craftsmen whose oeuvre reveals a fault line in English literary criticism. A great storyteller — that is grudgingly conceded — but not a great novelist. But a great storyteller, ipso facto, is a great novelist.

And in the essentials of storytelling — pace, clarity, suspense, the selective use of detail — the creator of 007 was one of the aristocrats of English fiction.