Thrilling Cities. by FLEMING, Ian - 1963

London: Jonathan Cape,, 1963. Octavo. Original white cloth backed paper covered boards, titles to spine gilt, black endpapers, top edge stained black. With the dust jacket. Housed in a black quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. 48 pages of illustrations from photos. Boards lightly rubbed and bumped at extremities. A very good copy in the jacket. First edition, first impression. The dedication copy, inscribed by the author on the title page, "To 'a man called "CD" ' from Ian". The printed author's note reads "Nothing remains but to dedicate this biased, cranky but at least zestful hotchpotch to my friends and colleagues on The Sunday Times in London and abroad, and particularly to a man called 'CD', who pulled the trigger.....". Sir Charles Denis Hamilton was a close friend and colleague of Ian Fleming, a director of Kemsley Newspapers and editor of the Sunday Times. Fleming had written seven James Bond novels when he was approached by Hamilton with a plum journalistic assignment: to take a five-week, all-expenses-paid trip to visit the world's most exciting cities. Fleming's trip took in Hong Kong, Macau and Tokyo, then Honolulu, and back home via the major US cities. The material he gathered for this book also furnished much of the backdrop and research for the five Bond novels and seven short stories that would follow.