He’s been impersonated by Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver. Continuing the series begun in 2008 with Devil May Care, the new James Bond novel written in the voice of Ian Fleming is to come from the pen of William Boyd.

Boyd is no stranger to spy fiction. His novel Restless tells of a female spy in the Second World War. Nor is he unfamiliar with the business of ventriloquism and pulling the wool over readers’ eyes, having created in Nat Tate a non-existent artist who fooled the critics. A drawing of Tate's - in fact by Boyd – was acutioned at Sotheby’s last year.

The Bond novel will be published by Jonathan Cape in the autumn of 2013, two years after Deaver’s Carte Blanche and 60 years on from the publication of Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale. There is no title as yet. All Boyd will say is that he will return the franchise to the era of “classic Bond” in the 1960s.

“When the Ian Fleming estate invited me to write the new James Bond novel,” says Boyd, “I accepted at once. For me the prospect appeared incredibly exciting and stimulating – a once-in-a-lifetime challenge. In fact my father introduced me to the James Bond novels in the 1960s and I read them all then – From Russia with Love being my favourite.”