On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

by Ian Fleming Book 11 in the James Bond 007 series.

First published 1963

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4.5(2,844)

With Ernst Stavro Blofeld still missing after the events of Thunderball, Bond becomes increasingly frustrated with the search for SPECTRE. His personal life changes when he meets Contessa Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo and begins a relationship that makes retirement seem possible. A separate intelligence lead then places Blofeld at Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps, where he is posing as a claimant to a noble title.

Undercover at the mountain clinic, Bond discovers a biological scheme aimed at British agriculture and escapes to organise an assault on Blofeld’s base. The mission completes one stage of the SPECTRE struggle but ends with a deeply personal act of retaliation. The novel combines Cold War intelligence, biological-warfare anxiety and post-war European mobility with the only marriage in Fleming’s Bond sequence.