Who did you base the fictional niece Kate on? How did you build up a profile of the Moneypenny character? What was the biggest challenge in developing her World?
I realised fairly early on that I needed some sort of interface between Miss Moneypenny and the readers. In order to make the diaries plausible, someone had to fill in the gaps. I hit upon the idea of Miss Moneypenny bequeathing her secret diaries to her niece. I made Kate a history professor to give her a bit of gravitas – and to explain her rather academic approach to editing the diaries. Apart from that, I suppose her character is a composite of me – and what I would like to be!

As for Miss Moneypenny: before I wrote a word of her diaries, I wrote a long biography, describing in detail her family, childhood, her first home, school and university experience, coming to London after her parents’ deaths, joining SIS, and so on, up to her later years. I talked to quite a few women – and men – who had worked in the Service at that time, and using bits of them, again aspects of me – and some artistic licence - built up a picture of her. I knew I wanted her to be strong, intelligent, with an element of suppressed adventure in her. I hope I succeeded in portraying her as someone we would all like to have as a friend.

As for her World – the biggest challenge was to keep within the spirit of Fleming’s original books. I think the books are fantastic and it was both inspiring and terrifying to be trespassing on his World. I knew there would be a lot of fans out there waiting for me to trip up!

Above: First edition UK cover art

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How did you go about planning and writing this first book? What material did you omit from this edition?
From the Fleming books, I went to biographies of Fleming. I had decided, by this point, that I wanted to try to push this book a little closer to the reality of life within the Secret Intelligence Service in this period. So I read books about that, as well as talking to former employees.

Once I thought I had all my research material together, I wrote a detailed plan, breaking the book up into month-long sections and within those sections, highlighting the different ‘strands’ of the story in different colours, so I could try to make it balanced, without letting any of the storylines wane for too long. As a former non-fiction writer, I tend to research things in great depth. So, yes, there is quite a lot of ‘spare capacity’, just waiting for the next couple of volumes.

Your book offers a wider view into Fleming’s World exploring the history that sits along side those stories, how did you choose to focus on the Cuban missile crisis for this first issue?
I wanted to chose a well-known historical event and the Cuban Missile Crisis was an obvious contender. Then, when I re-read the books, I discovered that there was a ‘gap’ in the narrative between the end of OHMSS and the beginning of YOLT, that conveniently appeared to occur in 1962, just around the time of the missile crisis. It was a wonderful piece of luck.

Data Stream
Hardcover 240 pages
Released: October 10th 2005
Publisher: John Murray
ISBN: 0719567408

How did you approach IFPL with the idea? What did the IFPL contribute to your project?
That was originally done through Gillon. Once they had read my original proposal, I went up to London to meet them. We had a short chat and then I had to leave the room while they decided whether or not to go ahead. It was a very nerve-wracking few minutes, but thankfully they seemed to be thinking along exactly the same lines as I was. And so it has proved a remarkably amiable and productive partnership. They said I could look through anything in their archives and were always on hand for advice and encouragement.

How did you arrive at the title Guardian Angel, were there any rejected titles?
It came out of a line Bond wrote to M in a cable when he and Moneypenny were fleeing from Cuba. I wrote it and it just seemed to fit as a title. We never discussed any other.

What range of material/facilities/people did you utilize?
Whenever I could I researched everything from primary sources. I went to Cuba and found the actual missile site in San Cristobal. I spent time in the National Archives in London and the National Security Archive in Washington DC (where I found much of the Cuban Missile Crisis material). I ate stone crabs at Joe’s in Miami, went walking on North Uist and actually stayed with the real Sir Peter Smithers in Villa Morcote in Switzerland. I had a lesson in gun lore from the armourer at my local police station in Wiltshire, shot on a target range in Miami, and had numerous clandestine meetings with former spies in dark London restaurants. All in the name of research !