FLEMING, Ian (1908-1964). You Only Live Twice. London: Jonathan Cape, 1964.

First edition, first impression: one of two dedication copies, inscribed by the author to Richard Hughes: “To / Dikko-san / from / Fleming-san. / With all affection”.

In 1959, Fleming made a five-week round-the-world tour for Thrilling Cities, a travelogue he wrote for the Sunday Times (later printed in book form by Jonathan Cape). During his travels, Fleming “struck up an immediate friendship with Richard Hughes, the mountainous Australian ex-heavyweight who had represented the Sunday Times in the Far East since the Korean war. Tough, sentimental, immensely knowledgeable, Hughes was exactly the man Fleming needed for the success of this brief introduction to the Far East. Hughes is like the best sort of Hemingway hero, living life to the full, a repository of the inside stories of all the biggest rackets and finest restaurants of the East. He was the genuine man of action Fleming had always admired and always longed to be himself, and he could feel at home with Hughes... The Orient he described in his pieces on Hong Kong and Tokyo was very much Richard Hughes Orient" (The Life of Ian Fleming London, 1966 page 377). You Only Live Twice is dedicated both to Hughes and to the Japanese journalist Torao Saito, who joined Hughes and Fleming in Japan. As well as dedicating the book to both men, Fleming also immortalised them as the models for characters in the novel: with Hughes inspiring Richard Lovelace "Dikko" Henderson, the Australian spy stationed in Japan, and Saito becoming the fictional Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese secret service. Gilbert A12a (1.1).

Octavo (189 x 125mm). Original black cloth, upper cover gilt stamped with seven Japanese characters, spine lettered in silver, bamboo-patterned endpapers, original dust jacket after Richard Chopping (spine very slightly cocked, slight offsetting to endpapers); housed in a custom black quarter morocco box. Provenance: some pencil underlining in first chapters.