Ian Lancaster Fleming was born in London in 1908. He was educated at Eton College and abroad in Germany and Austria. After working as a stockbroker he became the assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence in the Admiralty during the Second World War. In 1952 he wrote Casino Royale (1953; Folio 2023), the first of 14 James Bond titles, of which 30 million copies were sold during his lifetime. He was married to Ann Rothermere and together they had one son, Caspar. Fleming died in 1964.
John Banville is a novelist, screenwriter, playwright and book reviewer. He worked in journalism for many years, and was literary editor at The Irish Times from 1988 to 2000. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, New Statesman and other journals. His latest novel is Venetian Vespers. His works include The Book of Evidence, The Sea and The Infinities. Among the awards he has received are the Man Booker Prize, the Austrian State Prize for Literature, the Kafka Prize, Irish PEN Award and the Prince of Asturias Award. He has written a number of crime novels including Snow and, most recently, The Drowned. He was born in Wexford, and lives in Dublin.