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2 November 2021
During the last 38 years I’ve often been asked which issue of 007
MAGAZINE I consider to be my favourite; the oft-used cliché answer to
this kind of question is usually, ‘it’s like asking me which of my
children is my favourite’ - and impossible to answer.
However, while I don’t have a favourite issue of my publication as
such, there is one issue of which I am most proud, because it gave me
the opportunity to showcase the work of a man I much admire and whose
work inspired me as a graphic designer, and which still carries me
back to those “bucket and spade days” when I was first introduced to
James Bond 007.
One sunny lunch hour
in 1964 I turned left out of the black cast-iron school gates of
Heston Secondary Modern to escape the anarchy and bullies of the
playground, and walked the quarter mile or so to the parade of shops
that ran parallel to the Great West Road. The corner shop on the
parade was a family run confectioners, newsagents and tobacconists, as
so many corner shops were in those days. Inside the shop near the door
were two white wire book display stands that were fully loaded with
various paperback titles, and which would inevitably squeak alarmingly
when turned to investigate their content. |
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Looking through the
paperbacks on offer my excited young eyes finally fell on a PAN Books film
tie-in cover for Goldfinger, but then, on more detailed inspection
I realised this book was surrounded with other James Bond titles, all
emblazoned with the name JAMES BOND in large capitals at the top of the
cover, and one of them even featured bullet holes physically punched out
through the front cover – how cool was this! Excited by what I saw I
realised I had discovered a gold mine in design, and later, in literature,
two aspects that would prove to have a profound effect on me from that day
forward, and which would eventually lead me into a career in design and
photography. However, for the time being those books had to remain in
their display stand, as priced at 3/6 each (15˝p in 2021 money) they were
not easily available to a 13-year-old schoolboy whose weekly pocket money
was capped at 2/6 by his Dad. But an after-school and Saturday job at E.T.
Edwards butcher’s shop in Norwood Green soon solved that financial
problem. Eventually, all of Ian Fleming’s books available in paperback at
that time sat on the window-sill of my box-bedroom in Southall, jammed
into a small rickety varnished bookcase I had made in Mr. Rowland’s
woodwork class - carpentry was never my strong point! These Ian Fleming
paperbacks would be read and re-read many times during the next 57 years,
and each time with new insights into Fleming’s wonderful writing; and
while still a schoolboy, every time I looked at the back cover of that
bullet-holed THUNDERBALL Pan edition and read the design credit, it would
always make me wonder, who was Raymond Hawkey? |
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It is with some
considerable regret that during my near four decades Bond-related career I
never made the opportunity to meet Raymond Hawkey, but thanks to Edward
Milward-Oliver, the author of the tribute article in issue #54, I was at
least able to send Raymond an example of 007 MAGAZINE. Although virtually
home-bound and suffering with acute emphysema at the time, Raymond Hawkey
kindly sent me the following email on December 21st 2009 – for me, more
gold and excitement!
“Dear Mr Rye,
It was most kind of you to send me the latest copy of your excellent 007
MAGAZINE.
Although you may already know this, my use of JAMES BOND above the title
THUNDERBALL apparently so transformed the sale of the Pan edition (and all
subsequent editions) that the then Chairman kindly sent me my design fee
twice – something that has never happened before nor since!
With my best wishes for Christmas,
Raymond Hawkey” |
