James Bond has fought some devious villains in the past, but his battles with Blofeld and the agents of SPECTRE are nothing compared to the secret agent's own fight for his cinematic existence.  He could have made it to our screens as early as 1959 but as Robert Sellers recounts in The Battle Of Bond, rivalries, recriminations and courtroom dramas nearly proved a licence to kill off our favourite spy. This is a real-life thriller that would make a great script for a film, but then that's the very subject of the book itself.

More specifically, it revolves around one particular Bond story, Thunderball, and one man's 40-year fight to gain proper credit in the creation of a screen legend.  Arguably, one of the most popular and successful films in the series, the story has its origins as an original film script which charismatic Irish producer Kevin McClory had commissioned, bringing together screenwriter Jack Whittingham and 007's creator, Ian Fleming. Also on board was producer John Bryce, an old friend of Fleming. With a succession of delays and funding, the project was slow-moving and Fleming was under pressure from his publishers to come up with another adventure for his hero.  Taking the script as a basis, he converted it into a novel. In doing so, he set in motion a sequence of events that spanned the world and would haunt many of the individuals for decades to come.

In that time, McClory won his court battle for ownership of the story but teamed up with Broccoli and Saltzman to produce the fourth Bond in the series, Thunderball, and Fleming died (a situation possibly aggravated by the court case). Sellers recounts the events with the zeal of an investigative reporter, diligently unravelling the complexities of the story, presenting the facts of the situation and interpreting them into an easily digestible whole.  He also reproduces early copies of the script and plot synopses, along with documents and letters, accompanied by photographic evidence.

All of this background leads to the emergence of McClory's original ambition to make his own Bond tale based on that original source material.  If Tomorrow Never Dies, neither does a good true-life feud. He bided his time and once his ten years had lapsed, he could legally resurrect his long-cherished project.  He co-opted his chosen star, Connery, giving him creative control, and the reworked script became Never Say Never Again (1983). It was a huge media event that dwarfed the official franchise film of Octopussy and its success fuelled McClory's life-long Bond obsession even further, inspiring the prospect of more 007 films and even a TV series.

For anyone interested in the dirty dealings of film making, The Battle For Bond is a fascinating record on the whole filmmaking business, stripping the glamour away to reveal the gladiatorial nature of the industry.  For Bond fans, it's a essential reading, and should leave then shaken if not stirred by the whole affair. And it's left to our imagination how different things could have been if Hitchcock had directed Richard Burton in the original role.