After twenty years as a journalist, mainly as a foreign correspondent,  Andrew Lycett came to Ian Fleming in a serious way in the early-1990s when he researched and wrote his highly regarded biography: Ian Fleming (published in 1995).  Lycett has gone on to pen several more lives of popular authors, including one on Arthur Conan Doyle whose Sherlock Holmes is one of the very few fictional characters to rival 007 in terms of worldwide popularity. Andrew Lycett is fascinated how Fleming is gradually coming more into focus as a vital, perhaps the vital, ingredient in his character’s success.