From Russia with Love (film) Love" is the first Bond film in the series with John Barry as the primary soundtrack composer. The theme song was composed by Lionel Bart of "Oliver!" fame and sung by Matt Monro, although the title credit music is a lively instrumental version of the tune beginning with Barry's brief "James Bond is Back" then segueing into Monty Norman's "James Bond Theme". Monro's vocal version is later played during the film (as source music on a radio) and properly over the film's end titles. Barry travelled with the crew to Turkey to try getting influences of the local music, but
From Russia, with Love (novel) a fictional character who would be the mid-twentieth century subconscious male ambition, the result would inevitably be James Bond." Writing in "The New York Times", Anthony Boucher—described by a Fleming biographer, John Pearson, as "throughout an avid anti-Bond and an anti-Fleming man"—was damning in his review, saying that "From Russia, with Love" was Fleming's "longest and poorest book". Boucher further wrote that the novel contained "as usual, sex-cum-sadism with a veneer of literacy but without the occasional brilliant setpieces". The critic for the "New York Herald Tribune", conversely, wrote that "Mr Fleming is intensely observant, acutely literate and can turn