Casino Royale

There is only one Bond.

Discover the nation's favourite spy in the addictive first novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series. Catch up on this classic adventure before the release of No Time to Die.

Le Chiffre is a businessman with expensive tastes, and SMERSH's chief operative in France. But as his dissolute lifestyle threatens to ruin him, his only hope is to risk his paymasters' money at the card table.

James Bond, the finest gambler in the service, has a deadly new mission: to outplay Le Chiffre and shatter his Soviet cell.

Amidst the opulence of Casino Royale, the two men face each other for a game with the highest stakes of all.

'Bond is a hero for all time' Jeffrey Deaver

Ian Lancaster Fleming was born in London in 1908. His first job was at Reuters news agency after which he worked briefly as a stockbroker before working in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War. His first novel, Casino Royale, was published in 1953 and was an instant success. Fleming went on to write twelve other Bond books as well as two works of non-fiction and the children's classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The Bond books have sold over sixty million copies and earned praise from figures such as Raymond Chandler who called Fleming 'the most forceful and driving writer of thrillers in England' and President Kennedy who named From Russia with Love as one of his favourite books. The books inspired a hugely successful series of film adaptations which began in 1961 with the release of Dr No, starring Sean Connery as 007. Fleming was married to Anne Rothermere with whom he had a son, Caspar. He died in 1964.