William Boyd

Join novelist, memoirist, screenwriter, trickster William Boyd as he talks fiction, photography and the art of the hoax with Toni Jordan.

Toni Jordan and William Boyd

Boyd has made a career out of blurring fiction and reality. In his vast body of work, including 17 works of fiction, the English writer has darted in and out of real and imagined worlds. In 1998, he wrote a hoax biography of a fictional modern artist that fooled many in the art world. His 2002 novel, Any Human Heart, saw his protagonist feuding with Virginia Woolf, kissing Evelyn Waugh and being recruited into naval intelligence by James Bond author Ian Fleming. In a life-imitating-art twist ten years later, Boyd was commissioned to jump into the shoes of the late Fleming and write a new novel in the Bond series himself.

His latest novel, Sweet Caress, incorporates real and found anonymous photographs. The novel, with a female war photographer protagonist, blends reportage, history and fiction to riveting effect.