Thrilling Cities

by Ian Fleming

In 1959, Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was commissioned by the Sunday Times to explore 14 of the world's most exotic cities. Fleming saw it all with a thriller writer's eye. From Hong Kong to Honolulu, New York to Naples, he left the bright main streets for the back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favour of underground haunts, and mingling with celebrities, gangsters and geishas. The result is a series of vivid snapshots of a mysterious, vanished world.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Essays, Biography, British Literature

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.
While working for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units: 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. He drew from his wartime service and his career as a journalist for much of the background, detail, and depth of his James Bond novels.
Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1952, at age 44. It was a success, and three print runs were commissioned to meet the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two collections of short stories followed between 1953 and 1966. The novels centre around James Bond, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond is also known by his code number, 007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The Bond stories rank among the best-selling series of fictional books of all time, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and two works of non-fiction. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming 14th on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Fleming was married to Ann Fleming. She had divorced her husband, the 2nd Viscount Rothermere, because of her affair with the author. Fleming and Ann had a son, Caspar. Fleming was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life and succumbed to heart disease in 1964 at the age of 56. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously; other writers have since produced Bond novels. Fleming's creation has appeared in film twenty-seven times, portrayed by six actors in the official film series.

Reviews

[Jayakrishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ian Fleming travels across the major cities of the world being a pompous ass. Nothing wrong with that. There are some interesting insights in this one. Like when he says he is "desolated by the outward manifestations of the two great Indian religions. Ignorant, narrow minded, bigoted? Of course I am.", during a brief stopover at Delhi airport. Well, he had every right to be desolate. Look at the state of things in the Indian subcontinent now. And look at how Westerners view Indian immigrants.

But it read too much like a tourist guide with names of best hotels and restaurants of a place at the end of each chapter. The chapters on Hong Kong and Macau are in fact pure tourist guides. Sure, there is quite a bit about the Triad gangsters and gold smuggling in Macau, but I did not find those to be that interesting.

Fleming adopts a more sober and measured tone while describing the German cities of Hamburg and Berlin. The chapter on Berlin is quite dark when he describes the ruins of the great war and the sinister side of Germany - "I left Berlin without regret. From this grim capital went forth the orders that in 1917 killed my father and in 1940 my youngest brother." He also laments the decline of British influence over the rest of the world. He urges young Britons to take up jobs as stewards or deckhands in ships. This was written 14 years after the end of World War 2 and 12 years after India gained independence.

Fleming is surprised that such a frivolous and beautiful country as Vienna has an international body that helps less advanced countries in developing atomic energy.

The chapter on Geneva is the best in the whole book. Fleming's reflections on the Swiss character are fantastic - "For the solidity of Switzerland is based on a giant conspiracy to keep chaos at bay and, where it blows in from neighboring countries, or pollinates within the frontiers, to sweep it tidily under the carpet." The whole chapter is quite amusing.

Famous personalities who make an appearance in the book: Charlie Chaplin, Lucky Luciano (Ian Fleming interviews him), Noel Coward and Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those GR Friends who are kind enough to read my reviews might recall that I’ve recently started listening to library audiobooks. One effect of a limited selection has been to push me into choosing books I wouldn’t otherwise have picked. So it was that I listened to “Thrilling Cities”, originally a set of articles that Fleming wrote for The Sunday Times in 1959-60. He made two trips, the first featuring Hong Kong, Macau, Tokyo, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago and New York. The second was a motoring trip through Europe taking in Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, Geneva, Naples and Monte Carlo. (He concedes that including Geneva in a list of “thrilling cities” might be seen as a touch Quixotic).

I should warn modern readers that in these pages Fleming makes comments that by today’s standards are outrageously sexist. The articles were written 60 years ago and would have been uncontentious at the time. Reading them today I found some of them pretty cringey (even as a 57-year old bloke).

That apart, what makes this book entertaining is that Fleming seems to have been a completely louche character who, in the cities he visits, seeks out casinos, bars, nightclubs etc, as well as meeting up with his celebrity friends or, wherever possible, people who can give him an insight into the local crime scene. At the beginning he describes himself as “the world’s worst sightseer” adding that “I have always advocated the provision of roller skates at the main doors of art galleries and museums”.

He is delighted to encounter a hotel in Macau that is “the largest house of ill-fame in the world.” In Chicago he visits the sites of killings that took place during that city’s bloodstained inter-war period. Hamburg gets a stamp of approval as “the last European refuge of ‘anything goes”, whilst in Naples he meets up with former New York crime boss “Lucky Luciano” (Fleming mistakenly thinks “Luciano” was from Chicago). Note though that whilst Fleming approves of decadence, there’s nothing salacious in the book. Also he can be rude about the places he visits, so any readers from the countries featured might find their national pride a bit wounded.

In New York he suggests the US has a crisis of self-confidence, citing amongst other causes, Sputnik, the Little Rock Incident, and revelations about the Teamsters Union. I found this interesting since nowadays the pre-Vietnam War era is often portrayed as the period when the US was at its most confident and assertive. It seems it wasn’t necessarily viewed that way at the time.

In Tokyo Fleming meets up with Somerset Maugham, adding that “our friendship is based on the fact he also wishes to be married to my wife.” In Geneva he has dinner with Noel Coward and Charlie Chaplin, and in Capri with Gracie Fields, who sounds a hoot.

Despite having some dated aspects, I enjoyed this book, mainly because I found a lot of it funny. The narrator of the audio version, Barnaby Edwards, takes a lot of credit for this, delivering the text in a sort of one-eyebrow-raised tone that was perfect for a 1950s upper-class Englishman finding himself on foreign soil. I realise it won’t be for everyone. For me, I think I can file this under “guilty pleasures”.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fleming's quick tours & essays of 13 cities in 1959-60 is really enjoyable. The 7 cities of the around the world trip was done in a month, so was somewhat light in details although he had great connections. He managed to find his way to people & areas that the normal traveler would never think of visiting while still seeing major sights. The 6 cities of Europe had far more depth since he'd visited most of them for decades.

While this is 60 years old, that is great in a lot of ways. His discussion with a high police official in LA, CA about the growing drug problem & US courts is illuminating. He got to meet Lucky Luciano & go to places that no longer exist. He describes how tourism is ruining places. He can be quite acerbic describing some of the sights & trends, but is always interesting. There were some really quirky finds & bits of history, too.

Each city tour winds up with a section entitled "INCIDENTAL INTELLIGENCE" in which he describes the best hotels, nightclubs & restaurants. While some of the names were familiar, the only thing I found of interest were his comments on them & the prices.

You'll find plenty of prejudice, sexism, & other signs of the time in here, especially if you look for them. Fleming was not particularly bad in any way, quite good in most. He freely acknowledges many likes/dislikes & prejudices, but he always drives, never his wife. If you don't like it, you probably don't like the original James Bond books either, so this isn't for you. If you do like them, I highly recommend reading this. I found his description of the Hamburg mud wrestling match between a couple of bathing beauties quite interesting & agreed with many of his observations.

Here are some quotes. I won't say they're the best, just a few I grabbed from the online text to show his style.

...my guide, philosopher and friend in Hong Kong, and later in Japan, was 'Our Man in the Orient', Richard Hughes, Far Eastern correspondent of the Sunday Times. He is a giant Australian with a European mind and a quixotic view of the world exemplified by his founding of the Baritsu branch of the Baker Street Irregulars—Baritsu is Japanese for the national code of self-defence which includes judo, and is the only Japanese word known to have been used by Sherlock Holmes.

He concludes his section on Las Vegas with After paying all overheads, I had hammered the syndicates for one hundred dollars and three stolen ash-trays!

He describes Berlin's efforts to rebuild housing as the 'packet-of-fags' school of architecture - hideous concrete bunkers which pack people into merciless cubes.

It is certainly not what it used to be in Berlin, though there is still the emphasis on transvestism—men dressing up as women, and vice versa—which used to be such a feature of prewar Berlin. Now, at the Eldorado, for instance, and the Eden (where a home-made bomb went off, wounding three guests, ten minutes after we had left) some of the 'women' are most bizarre. The one I particularly took to, a middle-aged flower-seller such as you might see sitting beside her basket of roses in Piccadilly Circus, is known as the 'Blumenfeldwebel'. 'She' had been a corporal in a Panzer division and has an astonishing range of Berlin/Cockney repartee....

I am allergic to almost every form of international agency, conference or committee. Having worked briefly in the League of Nations around 1932, I believe that all international bodies waste a great deal of money, turn out far too much expensively printed paper, and achieve very little indeed. So it was with a jaundiced mind that I made an appointment to visit the Atōm Kōmmission, as the Viennese call it, with the secret intention of making sharp fun of it. Unfortunately I fell into the hands of Dr Seligman, ... is one of those intelligent, humorous, liberal-minded scientists (he reminded me of Sir Solly Zuckerman) who makes science understandable to the layman, and, with a nice mixture of irony and enthusiasm, he completely convinced me that the Agency, which has a modest budget and staff, was doing something really important very well.

This book is out of copyright, so can be found online in various formats. Here is a web version that's easy to skim through:
https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/flemingi-...

[Darwin8u · Rating 3 out of 5]

"But I must not allow impious comment to get mixed up with sacred fact."
- Ian Fleming, "Macao", in Thrilling Cities



Having read all of Fleming's Bond novels, I considered myself finished with Fleming too. But two things happened in 2020. I discovered several of his nonfiction works and Covid-19 seriously limited my ability to scratch my travel itch. So, when I discovered Fleming's 1963 travel book, I was intrigued. In 1959, the Sunday Times hired Ian Fleming to fly around the world in 30-days and write about several cities on his route. He wrote about:

1. Hong Kong
2. Macao
3. Tokyo
4. Honolulu
5. Los Angeles and Las Vegas
6. Chicago
7. New York

His reporting was so popular that they asked him to do it again, but in Europe, so in 1960 he wrote about:

8. Hamburg
9. Berlin
10. Vienna
11. Geneva
12. Naples
13. Monte Carlo

As you would expect from Ian Fleming, the writing is good, a bit off the normal travel tome path, and a bit sexist and a tad racist (the early 60s and late 50s were not a high point in cultural nuance, and Fleming was the high ground of that period anyway). When the collection was published in the early 60s, it ended up being almost a travel guide for the Playboy set (a Baedeker for boobs and booze).

Ian Fleming isn't interested in beaches, museums and the usual tourist haunts. He wants to go to clubs, meet with writers, adventurers, actors, and mobsters. He is curious. He is occasionally insightful, and he is often hilarious. The weakest sections of each essay is the "Incidental Intelligence" Fleming includes about each cities best hotels, restaurants, and clubs. Obviously, these didn't age very well. But, in an age where nobody wants Americans traveling anywhere and we are locked down and socially distancing, you could do worse than examine a couple exotic cities through the eyes of Ian Fleming 60 years ago.

[Zoeb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always stayed away from travel writing. To me, nothing can capture the unique experiences, sights, sounds and smells and other exotic sensations that one absorbs first-hand and even while the most reputed travelogues are well-written, discerning and poetic in turns, they are not my choice if I ever embark on an adventure to any of the places they describe with such admittedly succinct flair. I would rather prefer to read a work of fiction set in the particular destination because, according to me, fiction and breadth of imagination can make those spots in the map come truly alive as real places, teeming with lives, joy, anguish, excitement, despair and many more truths and stories.

But, what about a travelogue written by a master of thrillers? That, as 'Thrilling Cities' proves, is quite something.

Having made my way through a couple of his excellent and headily indulgent James Bond novels, I was tempted to read what Ian Fleming, a compellingly stylish, even subversive master of brainy pulp had to tell about his globe-trotting exploits in some of the world's most exciting and enigmatic cities. I was expecting only love or wide-eyed admiration because that is what marks his nuanced and wonderful portrayals of the zingy hotspots in each of his James Bond adventures. But 'Thrilling Cities' is thrilling travel writing, not just for the candor but also the cutting and razor-sharp observations and reflections that he lends to each place he lands in.

Each vignette on each of the cities is fascinatingly a blend of guileless admiration for its charms and a probing dissection of its realities, disappointing, critical and even dark in turns. Fleming's voice, of a tourist armed with the dazzling wit of a raconteur, the roving eye of a thriller writer and the sixth sense of a journalist, oozes with affection when he marvels at the brilliantly lit streets and billboards of Hong Kong, the rich playground of Las Vegas, Tiberius' grotto on the road to Naples or the utterly unabashed bawdy and bold spirit of the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. At the same time, he chafes at the ruthless working-man pace of New York, the disgruntled pensioners holidaying in Honolulu and Corbusier's cramped-up matchbox buildings in post-war Berlin.

And 'Thrilling Cities' is packed not only with such nuance and insight in its broad strokes but even in the smaller but pivotal asides, as Fleming's English perspective confronts with the more subliminal truths that each city reveals. He laments the younger generation of Tokyo shoving aside their exotic culture and inclining towards American materialism and fads, he ponders seriously about the state of crime on Los Angeles, he pokes at the bubble of self-respect and stifling convention in pig-headed and hypocritical Swiss society and he does not even spare the thieving gangs of pickpockets in Naples or the health problems that Germans face owing to a hectic and breakneck routine of driving to work on the almost hellish autobahns.

His asides are both mesmerizing and wistful, like him wondering why the mouth of the Ganges is not one of the wonders of the world, and incisive in deconstructing the popular myths, of Viennese culture and beauty and even of the apocryphal stories of gambling in Monte Carlo.

Sure, his voice is sometimes snobbish, sometimes a tad hedonist and there is much about the book that is self-indulgent to say the least (he hobnobs with geishas, infamous kingpins and gangsters, distressed American cops and even a celebrity or two) but there is just so much to enjoy even in this indulgence. And through it all, like he always did in his thrillers as well, Fleming makes us know so much more about the world. We revisit with him the old gangster haunts of Chicago, we get a behind-the-scenes trip of how casinos in both Vegas and Monte Carlo work, we get a gist of the contemporary smuggling action and there is more gossip and headline-inspired trivia to make it all very sizzling, sexy and undeniably as enthralling as any James Bond book.

[Les · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that is a collection of newspaper pieces written before I was born, by someone who died before my 3rd birthday about places that probably aren't there anymore or if they are certainly aren't the insanely low prices he quotes in the articles.

So this is a book out of time and must be read as such. Otherwise it is a sexist, misogynist, probably racist mess. Ian Fleming was the author of James Bond, Chitty Chiity Bang Bang and these essays. And these essays aren't for kids. This is like a travel guide for wanna be James Bonds.

There are two sets the first covers Asia and the US; the second cover Europe. You will learn about the night clubs, that in the era these books were written often include striptease or other shows. On occasion if the area offers legalized prostitution you will hear about that as well.

The writing is lovely and the descriptions honest and, in retrospect, a lot of fun.
This is not a long book, since it is written in essay form I was able to return it rather than read it from cover to cover.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a big fan of Ian Fleming's James Bond books (and the movies, of course!), I was intrigued to find this book and get an opportunity to learn more about the man behind 007. Thrilling Cities is a collection of essays written for the Sunday Times in 1959 and 1960, describing Fleming's visits to thirteen cities around the world. Written as travel journalism, the essays benefit from Fleming's keen eye and distinctive literary voice, along with (or despite) his somewhat patrician — and dated — prejudices.

Fleming's hotel, restaurant, and nightclub recommendations are, of course, of little value to the modern traveler. (It's fun to see the prices, though!) But his observations about the cities he visits — not all of which he in fact finds to be “thrilling” — provide a fascinating window into the world as it existed almost 60 years ago, the world that informed those great James Bond novels.

[Nicholas Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a bewitching moment when Fleming invites a declining Raymond Chandler, who is ‘fast running out of the desire to write about anything,’ to Naples to meet the notorious gangster Lucky Luciano, in the hopes of reigniting Chandler’s writerly imagination once again. Unfortunately, the plan is a bust. But I love the notion of these two genre legends coming together nevertheless, with Fleming attempting to lend sympathetic aid to my favorite writer of all time.

On the down side, the same sort of dated, preposterous sexism we often find in Chandler’s novels is evident in this volume of Fleming’s as well. About which—like Chandler at that stage—I have no desire to write about here, save to include the galling howler of how Fleming views his wife in relation to his work, ‘There was I, laboriously forwarding my career towards some unseen destination, while she fussed around in my wake and occasionally got in the way.’

Also dated to some degree are the brief end-of-chapter sections titled ‘Incidental Intelligence’, which outline the best consumer options for such things as hotels, bars, and restaurants in that particular city. At one point Fleming advises the would-be visitor to ‘cable ahead for reservations.’ But amongst the anachronisms there are timelessly appealing lines such as, ‘Best advice about average Naples nightspots is stay away from them.’

Spending readerly time with Fleming in all these different cities is fun. His observations resonate and entertain, and at many moments the immortal thriller novelist within him takes over entirely and births us a noir-inflected gem of portraiture. On his visit to a Geisha boss in Tokyo we get, ‘She was perhaps forty years old, with an oval, heavily made-up face and the tower of black hair one knows from Japanese prints. She had queenly poise, hooded eyes, and features of an almost reptilian impassivity, which occasionally dissolved into expressions of surpassing wit and malice. She was the most formidable feminine personality I think I have ever encountered. One’s eyes were constantly attracted away from one’s more conventional neighbor, for all her pretty ways, to this glittering she-devil across the table.’

There’s a bit much on gambling here. With detailed poker visits to Macau, Las Vegas, and finally Monte Carlo, where Fleming goes momentarily Captain Obvious on us, saying how he loves the drama of the casino and the fever of the game. (Lest we forget, ‘Casino Royale’ was the first entry in his Bond series.)

But in these gambling bits too he ultimately won me over with his verve and drollery, particularly with a hilarious description of his protracted battle against a slot machine… ‘the monster with the damnable iron belly...the disgusting machine...I was going to hammer this hideous robot!’

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another self-isolation read. This arrived in a box of Bond books found in a friend's parents' attic and kindly passed on to me. I enjoyed the Tokyo chapter, full of inspiration for You Only Live Twice, including the real-life Dikko Henderson and Tiger Tanaka, but what I liked best was the descriptions of mid-century air travel on Comets and by Japan Air Lines.

[Dane Cobain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m going to be honest: I mostly picked this book up because I’ve read every other Ian Fleming book and so it seemed like a shame not to complete the collection. This one is basically a collection of a bunch of different travel writing pieces that he wrote on commission for the Sunday Times, and so the fact that it exists at all is pretty unusual. The fact that it’s printed in a beautiful Vintage paperback edition made it even more enjoyable.

I think the most interesting thing about it was probably the fact that the world has changed significantly in the 60 or so years since Fleming went travelling. It reminds me of something Bill Bryson said in Down Under (my previous read) about travel. He basically said that the whole point of modern travel is to see things before they disappear.

Bits of Thrilling Cities were far from thrilling, like when Fleming spent a couple of pages outlining his formula for success in the casino. Other bits were fascinating, although nothing in particular springs to mind as a standout moment. Oh, apart from when he casually mentioned that he was invited to a dinner party with Noel Coward and Charlie Chaplain.

All in all though, this probably isn’t for you unless you’re a fan of travel writing (or of Ian Fleming, come to that). Luckily for me, I guess I’m a fan of both, and reading this never felt like a chore unlike, say, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. But I still think that In Cold Blood is a better book. Make of that what you will, my friends.

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the surface this looks like a typical travel guide by a famous author, but its more of a series of moody essays on various cities around the world. And the title is misleading, in that the James Bond author Ian Fleming doesn't find a lot of these cities thrilling. Some, for instance, New York City, he doesn't like at all.

Hong Kong is his favorite, in fact he seems to be in tuned with Asia in general - except for the sleeping arrangements in Tokyo, he likes the people and food very much in that area. The enjoyment of the reading is knowing who Fleming is, and his take on the world circa early 1960's. He meets up with interesting people through out his travels, such as Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward (who is also his neighbor in Jamaica) and a specific gangster by the name of Lucky Luciano in Naples. Him, he seems to like a lot - and also they both agree that drugs should be legalized.

Each chapter is devoted to one city, but he goes on tangents that might strike some as 'god get back to your subject matter of that city!' But I like this style of writing. In a peculiar way it sort of reminds me of my book "Sparks-Tastic." Nevertheless at the end of each chapter he makes recommendations for restaurants, nightclubs and hotels. Without a doubt, probably the most boring part of the writing for him! But on the other hand, what a weird and cool travel book.

[Sean O · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting but uneven travel writing. In the pre-internet era, writers had to experience what they wrote about, and Fleming’s travels to Japan, Vegas, New York, Geneva, and Monte Carlo all end up in his novels.

He does a very good job with Macao, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. He does a crap job on Chicago, LA, and New York. He spends too much time talking about crime. As if the US invented it. Fleming’s anti-US prejudice is simply jealousy.

Ah well. There’s Charlie Chaplin and Lucky Luciano cameos for the patient. Enjoy.

[Marianna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Accaptivating title, but the inside is a complete whine about how much he was "forced" to write this book and he didn't enjoy quite a lot of cities. (Even if, on the author's note at the end of the book, he declares he actually did.)

These are just some of the author's traits I've read and grasped:
- He liked to mock oriental pronunciation
- *Much* fat shaming
- Things he loathed (spoiler: they're a lot): people who talk to him during travels, communism/communists, many genres of music (jazz and gypsy music above all), "boring" museums, winter, humid weather, hot climate, horses, Hawaiaan, people who don't wear/act their age (?), Hitler (yeah we do agree on this), Le Corbusier, squared buildings
- Things he loved: women, casinos, cars and motors, women

Some observations that resume what he said while talking about other stuff that wasn't the cities which are the main focus of this essay: (italics is for direct quotations)
- India sucks: it's hot, it's humid, it's unclean and everybody looks like a thief or a worse type of criminal
- Chinese women are wonderfully skinny, with a children's body, and the Occidental ones should take a cue from them because they're fat and ugly
- Women are poor beasts
- Horses are monsters
- We should measure the beauty of a city by the presence of beautiful girls
- Paris is too big, Istanbul is too Asiatic (??), and Venice is a cliché

But let me resume the rest of his travelling, too. As usual, italics stand for direct quotations.
[NOTE: wherever he went, he was pursued by catastrophic events such as earthquakes, volcanoes erupting, aerial disasters, rainwater leaks]

HONG KONG: 👎 too many and too expensive prostitutes

MACAO:
👎
• looks like a graveyard
• people are fixated with gold
👍
• excellent prostitutes

TOKYO:
👎
• depressing
• too many people talking
• hotels are extremely unconfortable, too tiny and built of rice paper
👍
• excellent food

HONOLULU:
👎
• after two Hawaiaan words he couldn't stand the city anymore
• too many tourists
• people with Hawaiaan clothing are hideous and ridiculous, especially after a certain age
👍
• beautiful zoo
• great quality and variety of food

LOS ANGELES: 👎 all criminals, even the teens

LAS VEGAS: 👍 world's gambling capital, we liked it because we won so much
+ a guide on how to gamble sensibly 😂

CHICAGO:
👎
• too many ignorants
• too many gangsters (especially italoamericans)
• even the police are corrupted people
👍
• food is the best ever

NEW YORK:
👎👎👎
The most depressing and boring city of all.
• hideous steel-aluminium-copper buildings
• everybody is unpolite, unless you tip well
• depressed inhabitants
• lots of juvenile crime with baby gangs, but also rapes, murders and robbery, drugs trafficking
It has four basic troubles – first, the collapse of the family unit which today hardly exists in American towns; secondly, Momism and the vast economic power (via alimony, inheritance and other factors) about the ‘American way of life’, a concept which needs drastic reexamination by those who invented the slogan; and, fourthly, escapism and flight from reality, whether this takes the shape of the television myth and the enchanted world of the ad. man which seek to show people as better than they know perfectly well they are, or of such escapist drugs as the tranquillizer pill, the fat blue sleeping-pill, and the psycho-analyst’s couch.
(Where's the third point? - one may ask. We'll never know.)

HAMBURG:
👍
He liked it! He declared it's now one of his favourite cities in the world.
• warm and lively city (also thanks to strip-tease shows and prostitutes whose activity is legalised and supervised by medical staff)
• solid, friendly and proud people who despise Hitler, the Prussians and the war
• there is also a cruelty-free zoo

BERLIN:
👎
• Berlin smells of cigars and boiled cabbage
• It's looking meagre and sham because of the consequences of the war, still haunting the city
• Le Corbusier's architectures are horrible

VIENNA:
👎
• German drivers suck
• appalling congestion and noise of the city, intellectualy demised after Hitler
• Viennese girls are ugly because they are a mix of those races: Poles, Czechs, Rumanians, Hungarians and Jewish, which are horrible
• dull night lifestyle with dowdy gypsy music
• a depressing city
Conclusion: blabla atomic energy - better go to the Alps, bye bye.

GENEVA:
👎
• fixated with money
• no parking
• lacks beautiful architecture
• people are too strict and reserved
👍
• clean, tidy and Godfearing
• wonderful landscape
• respectful of authorities
At the end he excuses himself for talking trash about Geneva and says it is a beautiful city.

NAPLES:
👎
• The monstrous autostrada hoardings, demonstrating, even more forcibly than the Italians’ total lack of interest in their artistic and architectural treasures, that Italy is a race of Philistines.
• The whole psychology of the Italian, particularly of the Southern Italian, is based on far figura, to ‘cut a dash’. [...] expressed through flashy clothes, exaggerated tones of voice, expressions and gestures, vastly reinforced by the attachment, apparently to every Italian male, of a chattering two-stroke engine, an electric horn and an exhaust pipe. [...] The amount of noise he can make with his vehicle, particularly via the exhaust pipe, has come in some obscure way to represent a virility symbol. [...] That sheer noise and ugly chaos are literally driving the ordinary tourist to distraction.
• Here you are still cheated, jostled, burgled and generally intimidated by the inhabitants.
• all criminals
• Pompeii, Herculaneum and Paestum are melancholic sites
• Food is indifferent, waiters rude, strip-lighting hideous, and musicians play nonstop, except for a pause to push a plate in your face.
General suggestion: watch your wallet and your handbags.
👍
• very beautiful country (ruined by the fact that Italians don't care about preserving their monumenta)

MONTE CARLO: 👍 Casinos, yay!

The only beautiful thing of this recount is that he met Charlie Chaplin while in Switzerland!
And, trust me - I even made it look less bloated, snobbish and grouchy.

[Matthew Kresal · Rating 4 out of 5]

With Ian Fleming's reputation tied up so much with the character of James Bond, it's easy to forget he was also a noted journalist of his day. In 1959, the UK Sunday Times sent him on an around the world trip, recording his observations on cities that stretched the world. The world has changed a lot in the last six decades, as have those cities, but Fleming's writing remains as vivid as ever. For within his words is a portrait of those cities as they were, long gone but saved in a painting of prose, if not always in the most flattering light as the piece on New York City will attest. The section on Tokyo, meanwhile, feels almost like a series of research notes for his penultimate Bond novel You Only Live Twice, written in 1963 and published in 1964. I suspect Thrilling Cities won't be to all tastes, being when it was written, but as a historical curiosity and guide to these cities back in the proverbial day, it's worth a read.

(Having said that last sentence, I experienced this book via the BBC Radio 4 reading from 2014 that was re-broadcast in 2018. The actor Simon Williams read that three-episode abridgment, wonderfully capturing Fleming's observations. Worth a listen if it gets another re-broadcasting.)

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you've read the Bond books, then you know what to expect, a sexist, and a bit racist look at various cities that Fleming traveled to in the late 50s for the London Times. What a change 60 year+ brings! More of a historical literary interest work than anything useful today.

[Ronald Koltnow · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Times bankrolled a trip around the world for journalist Ian Fleming. Anyone who ever read a Bond novel knows that Fleming knows travel and geography better than anyone.This book is filled with wise and witty observations, history, and travel tips. He is snobbish, Imperialist, and slightly sordid. But this might be Fleming’s best book.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of a mixed bag. Neither literary travel nor travel guide but aspiring to both, a little too eclectic at times and sour at others. Most interesting as a take on the world of ca. 1960, with all that implies. It’s entertaining enough, but has aged poorly.

I can’t imagine that Somerset Maugham really wanted to be married to Ann Fleming.

[Neil Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I was expecting from this book but a Judith Chalmers review of the locations it is not.

Ian Fleming just lives out his dream of being told that he can go on an all expenses paid trip around the world as long as he writes some notes on it.

The blasé approach of saying he pretty much got the Sunday Times to pay for strippers and more whilst on the trip was amusing and a sign of the times.

Some of the travel stories highlighted how long distance travel has changed and a light hearted review of nearly dying in a plane crash was an interesting read.

As I said at the top it doesn't seem he was in the locations long enough to give you a proper city review but would be interesting to see how many of his suggestions are still around today.

I read this as a bond fan but if people want to see how much the world has changed in this round the world tour then I would definitely recommend it.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before he was very famous, he got paid to go round the world and recommend hotels and restaurants. But being Fleming, he threw in lots of cynical and lascivious detail. And the travel-guide parts have passed right through "uselessly dated" and come back round to "interesting as history".

As you expect, his cruelty is blunt and monotone, spanning the nations and races. But he is strangely aware of this.

India has always depressed me. I can't bear the universal dirt and squalor and the impression, false I am sure, that everyone is doing no work except living off his neighbour. And I am desolated by the outward manifestations of the two great Indian religions.

Ignorant, narrow-minded, bigoted? Of course I am.

So that was that. I had gone round the world in thirty days, and all I had to show for the journey was a handful of pretty light-weight impressions and some superficial and occasionally disrespectful comment. Had I then, have I today, no more serious message for Britain from the great world outside?

Well, I have, but it is only a brief and rather dull exhortation to our young to 'Go East, young man!' See the Pacific Ocean and die!

What is so pleasant is that, combined with the delicious, always new sights and smells of 'abroad', there is a sense of achievement, of a task completed, when each target is reached without accident, on time and with the car still running sweetly. There is the illusion that one has done a hard and meritorious day's work (few women understand this—perhaps, poor beasts, because they have been only passengers).

Shallow, witty, diverting. If this is a man.

[itchy · Rating 4 out of 5]

eponymous sentence:
p12: Then, on November 2nd, armed with a sheaf of visas, a round-the-world suit with concealed money pockets, one suitcase in which, as one always does, I packed more than I needed, and my typewriter, I left humdrum London for the thrilling cities of the world--Hong Kong, Macau, Tokyo, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, New York.

ocr:
P53: At the same time, I examined his and saw nothing but happy birdlike eyes and evidence of a rather hasty shave in those difficult comers just below the nose.

p77: There are a few ancient grass huts here and there which old Islanders cling to, along with old legends and traditions--but for modem humans, here are a few elegant substitutes for the old grass shack:
The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Moana, Surfrider, Biltmore, Edgewater, Princess Kaiulani, Reef Breakers, Hawaiiana, Hawaiian Village, Halekulani, The Palms.

cement:
p149: Personally, among the Herrenvolk--the Herren in their Mercedes or Opels, the Volk in their Wagens--I found road-discipline excellent, and I only saw one accident, a Volkswagen crumpled like a paper bag being craned out of a hedgerow by the rescue service; but everywhere on the cement surface there are those terrible graffiti of the skid-marks, where, on a perfectly straight stretch of road, something has gone terribly wrong for someone.

Not exactly the narrative I was expecting, but this was entertaining nonetheless. Luckily, I've visited a couple of the cities discussed. I guess I need to get out more.

[Jc · Rating 1 out of 5]

SSimply, NOT that thrilling. While I love Flemings Bond stories, as silly and dated as they can be, this mess is just not worth reading. I knew of Thrilling Cities back around 1964-65, when I was in the middle my first read through of 007's adventures. At the time, I thought it would be a Bond travel story and was sad when my brother's copy disappeared before I could read it. While you do see where Fleming got some of his ideas about the world, this series of newspaper articles written in 1959-60 are not really worth the reader’s time, except maybe for the Fleming completist (which I guess I may be counted among). He only spent a night or two in each city, and for each he makes general statements about the city based on a restaurant visit, one hotel room, and visits to a bar or two. Fleming appears to have done zero research, before, after, or during each visit, and his strongly colonial [even in the world of the post-WWII collapse of the British Empire] attitudes towards women, races, class-attitudes, and even non-British whites, are often appalling even for the time. No thrills involved, other than some rather juvenile discussions of what Fleming thought of the prostitutes and dance girls in a few 1959 cities.