The Guns Of James Bond

However, James Bond has now become accustomed to his new weapons, and in their proper holsters they have been put to good use in subsequent exploits.

I didn't actually meet Geoffrey Boothroyd until March 1961, when I went to Glasgow with Michael Howard to appear on Scottish television, where I had the baffling experience of being interviewed by a young man who had never read any of my books.

At a subsequent party, Geoffrey Boothroyd was one of the guests, and we were enthusiastically photographed shooting at each other with the famous Smith & Wesson with the sawn-off barrel and cutaway trigger guard and, as in the picture, with Boothroyd's Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum—a great hunk of gleaming metal and the most powerful hand gun in the world.

Boothroyd, the expert, escaped unmarked from this duel. The thriller writer, less tough and rustier on the draw, was doomed, a very few days later, to suffer a heart attack which laid him temporarily as low as if he had really stopped a bullet from the Smith & Wesson.

Mark you, I am not actually nominating Boothroyd as mine own executioner, but it certainly was a curious sequel to an already bizarre relationship!