James Bond has a new American publisher: Amazon.com.

'Vices: drink, but not to excess, and women ...'

William Boyd, the celebrated author and James Bond enthusiast, is to step into Ian Fleming’s shoes and send Britain’s most famous fictional spy out on a new mission.

Pinewood's dream to bring the mean streets of New York and the Paris boulevards to the Buckinghamshire countryside has collapsed after the Government blocked the studio's development plans. Filmmakers were yesterday left bewildered as the decision came just a week after the Prime Minister announced his backing for the industry.

Six years on, it turns out that British secret agents in Moscow really did use a plastic rock in a park to spy on Russia in 2006, despite attempts by the government to dismiss the story at the time. We should not be surprised. Preposterous as it seems, the more improbable the charge, the more likely it is to be true in the sometimes schoolboy world of spying.

David Cameron revealed his interest in movie star gossip on a visit to Britain's most famous film studios today.

David Cameron urged the British film industry to concentrate on making more mainstream movies today.

Allowed unrestricted access to MI6 files up to 1949, Jeffery has constructed a detailed and compulsive narrative. He achieves this by making the story "essentially one of people".

Bond or Bourne? It used to be such a stark choice. James Bond was wry, charming, relaxed. Jason Bourne was intense, efficient and didn't know who he was. Where Bond curled his lip, Bourne would break your hip. They were both lethal spies, but the difference between them was as obvious as the difference between a sip of vodka martini and a slug of methylated spirits.

The skill of a great film composer is to marry moving images with sound in such a way that they seem organically linked. Yesterday the superlative John Barry united film and music one last time, as figures from both circles offered tributes to his career on the news of his death at 77.

John Barry was the composer whose scores were as famous as the films for which he wrote them.

The buzz coming off this show has been as loud as the sound of a devilish gadget fashioned by Q. The name that counts here, though, is Bishop, Mike Bishop, not James Bond. Mike Bishop, father of Des, is a former actor and model who was in line for the James Bond role but was beaten to it by George Lazenby. Though this could be seen as a lucky escape, Bishop tells us that his father can't watch the spy films because they remind him of a career that might have been. That regret paled into insignificance when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year.

Today’s announcement that Daniel Craig is to star in a Hollywood film of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is great news for fans of Stieg Larsson.

Today’s announcement that Daniel Craig is to star in a Hollywood film of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is great news for fans of Stieg Larsson. But it represents a rather less exciting development for those who prefer Craig’s other alter ego, James Bond.