Ghanaian author William Boyd is pictured during a photocall at the 2006 Costa Book Awards, in London. Photo: AFP/Carl De Souza
Boyd revealed himself to be a stickler for Bond lore, pointing out that the novels portrayed 007 as
a man with dangerously high levels of alcohol consumption and, contra-Skyfall, that the young Bond only went to school in Scotland -- at Edinburgh's Fettes College -- but his childhood home was actually in the southern English county of Wiltshire.
Boyd had previously written Any Human Heart, granting Ian Fleming a cameo role, and spy thriller Restless; he succeeds the two most recent post-Fleming Bond authors in Sebastian Faulks (Birdsong) and Jeffery Deaver (The Bone Collector), and his as-yet-untitled entry to the Bond fiction will coincide with the 60th anniversary year of Casino Royale, the super-spy's very first outing.