Switzerland has never been merely a backdrop for writers.
Its mountains, lakes, secluded hotels and cosmopolitan cities have helped shape some of the world’s most thrilling stories.
On the shores of Lake Geneva, Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein. Thomas Mann transformed a Davos sanatorium into the intellectual universe of The Magic Mountain. Ernest Hemingway placed part of A Farewell to Arms in the Swiss landscape, while Arthur Conan Doyle turned the Reichenbach Falls into the scene of Sherlock Holmes’s legendary confrontation with Professor Moriarty.
Switzerland also left its mark on Ian Fleming.
Long before James Bond, Fleming studied languages at the University of Geneva. His Swiss experiences and fascination with Alpine settings later echoed through several Bond adventures, including Goldfinger and, most memorably, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which Bond pursues Blofeld to his mountaintop hideaway in the Swiss Alps.
This enduring relationship between place, imagination and storytelling continues in Gstaad.
On 29 and 30 August, WoW Gstaad—World of Words returns for its sixth edition: an intimate two-day celebration of literature, ideas and conversation in the heart of the Swiss Alps.
Founded by Thomas D. Gommes, the festival brings together internationally acclaimed writers, readers and thinkers for author conversations, creative masterclasses, book signings, Alpine walks and gourmet lunches at The Alpina Gstaad.
One of this year’s most timely sessions will examine what happens when artificial intelligence enters the world of books—not as science fiction, but as a practical tool for research, writing, publishing and marketing.
10:30–11:30 — Susie Boyt
Light in Dark Times: Novels of Courage and Care
Interviewer: Thomas D. Gommes, Founder and Literary Director
11:30–12:30 — DBC Pierre
Masterclass: How to Make the Voices in Your Head Pay Rent
13:00–15:00 — Lunch at The Alpina Gstaad
For authors and eligible ticket holders
13:00–15:00 — AI Masterclass and Light Lunch with Willem Veenstra
An interactive session exploring how artificial intelligence is transforming the complete lifecycle of a book—from the initial idea and research to writing, publishing, marketing and repurposing—while asking where human creativity continues to matter most.
15:00 — Optional Riverside Walk to Saanen
16:00–17:00 — Apéro and Book Signings
At Librairie des Alpages, Saanen
17:30–18:30 — Jill Dawson
Reality as Fiction
Interviewer: Louise Doughty, bestselling author and journalist
18:30–19:30 — Sadie Jones
Money, Families and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
Interviewer: Louise Doughty
10:30–11:30 — Jakuta Alikavazovic
The Power of Narrative: Books, Art, and How We See Ourselves
Interviewer: Kyra Dupont Troubetzkoy, journalist, author and WoW Board Member
11:30–12:30 — Douglas Kennedy
Fiction as Reassurance in an Age of Anxiety
Interviewer: Dennis Paul, WoW Board Member
13:00–15:00 — Farewell Lunch at The Alpina Gstaad
For authors and eligible ticket holders
16:00 — Free Street Conversation: Madame Gstaad
With Andrea and Gottfried von Siebenthal
A public conversation about Emilie Steffen-von Siebenthal and Gstaad’s remarkable transformation from a farming hamlet into one of the world’s most celebrated Alpine destinations.
Susie Boyt
British novelist and journalist celebrated for emotionally intelligent fiction exploring family, identity, memory and resilience. Her books include The Small Hours, My Judy Garland Life and Loved and Missed.
DBC Pierre
Australian-born author whose darkly comic debut novel, Vernon God Little, won the Booker Prize. His work combines satire, social criticism and an unmistakably unconventional literary voice.
Jill Dawson
Award-winning British novelist, poet and editor, and the author of eleven novels, including Fred & Edie, The Great Lover, The Crime Writer and The Bewitching. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is also the founder of Gold Dust Mentoring.
Sadie Jones
Critically acclaimed British novelist and screenwriter known for emotionally rich, character-driven storytelling. Her debut, The Outcast, won the Costa First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize.
Jakuta Alikavazovic
French novelist and essayist recognised for intellectually rich and stylistically distinctive writing examining identity, language, art and perception. She received the Prix Goncourt du premier roman for her debut.
Douglas Kennedy
Internationally bestselling American novelist and the author of 26 books, including The Big Picture, The Pursuit of Happiness, Leaving the World and The Moment. His work has been translated into 23 languages, and he has been named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Willem Veenstra
AI specialist leading a practical masterclass on the opportunities—and creative limits—of artificial intelligence across writing, publishing and book marketing.
Against one of Europe’s most inspiring landscapes, WoW Gstaad offers something increasingly rare: the opportunity to meet distinguished writers, exchange ideas and rediscover the pleasure of sustained conversation.
📅 29–30 August 2026
📍 Gstaad, Switzerland
🏔️ Main venue: The Alpina Gstaad
🎟️ Full Programme
Buy tickets here and benefit from the THE BRIEF readers 10% off with code: WOWWELCOME10
Preserve literature. Support writers. Encourage readers.
“Bond. James Bond.”
Before 007 became cinema’s most famous British secret agent, Switzerland had already helped shape both his creator and his fictional identity.
Ian Fleming arrived in Geneva in 1930, aged 21, to study languages at the University of Geneva while preparing for a possible career in the British Foreign Office. His time in Switzerland exposed him to the multilingual, cosmopolitan world of diplomats, financiers, aristocrats and international travellers that would later populate his fiction.
Fleming also gave Bond a Swiss bloodline. In the author’s official biography of 007, Bond is the son of Scottish father Andrew Bond and Swiss mother Monique Delacroix, from the Canton of Vaud. Ian Fleming Publications still describes Bond as being of “Scottish and Swiss descent.”
Switzerland subsequently appeared in Fleming’s books as a place of beauty and discretion—but also secrecy, money, surveillance, and danger.
Goldfinger — 1959
Bond follows Auric Goldfinger across France and into Switzerland, travelling through Geneva and the Alpine roads towards Goldfinger’s metalworks near Coppet, on Lake Geneva.
Tilly Masterton—renamed Tilly Masterson in the film—also follows Goldfinger, seeking revenge for the murder of her sister. The Swiss section combines Fleming’s interests in fast cars, gold, banking, industrial power and covert surveillance.
The Spy Who Loved Me — 1962
Switzerland appears briefly but significantly in the history of Vivienne Michel, the novel’s narrator. After becoming pregnant, she is sent to Switzerland by her lover for an abortion before he abandons her.
It is one of Fleming’s darker uses of the country: Switzerland as a discreet destination where wealthy men could make personal complications disappear.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service — 1963
This is Fleming’s great Swiss Bond novel.
Bond discovers that Ernst Stavro Blofeld is hiding in a private allergy clinic at Piz Gloria, a fictional mountaintop retreat above Pontresina in the Engadin. Disguised as heraldry expert Sir Hilary Bray, Bond travels to Switzerland to investigate.
There he encounters Blofeld’s “Angels of Death”: 12 young women supposedly receiving treatment for allergies. In reality, they are being hypnotised and prepared to carry biological agents back to Britain and Ireland.
The novel combines Alpine glamour, medical manipulation, biological warfare, seduction and psychological control. It also contains Bond’s most consequential love story: his relationship with Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo, the only woman he marries in Fleming’s original series.
You Only Live Twice — 1964
Fleming finally revealed Bond’s Swiss ancestry in the obituary written after 007 is presumed dead. Bond’s mother, Monique Delacroix, came from the Canton of Vaud.
Switzerland was therefore not merely another assignment for Bond. It was part of who he was.
James Bond: Sean Connery
Director: Guy Hamilton
Swiss locations: Furka Pass, Andermatt, Realp and the Urseren Valley
The Swiss sequence gave cinema one of its defining images of Bond: Sean Connery driving the silver Aston Martin DB5 through the spectacular hairpin bends of the Furka Pass while shadowing Goldfinger’s Rolls-Royce.
Bond meets Tilly Masterson—played by Tania Mallet—on the Alpine road after she attempts to shoot Goldfinger.
Other prominent women in the film include:
Jill Masterson — Shirley Eaton: Goldfinger’s assistant, who helps Bond cheat her employer before being murdered and covered in gold paint.
Tilly Masterson — Tania Mallet: Jill’s sister, seeking revenge rather than romance.
Pussy Galore — Honor Blackman: Goldfinger’s pilot and leader of an all-female flying team, who ultimately helps Bond stop Operation Grand Slam.
None is technically a conventional “honey trap” sent to seduce Bond. They are better understood as a captive accomplice, a revenge-seeker and an adversary who changes sides.
James Bond: George Lazenby
Director: Peter R. Hunt
Swiss locations: Schilthorn, Mürren, Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, Bern and Stechelberg
For his only appearance as 007, George Lazenby inherited the most thoroughly Swiss story in the Bond series.
The unfinished revolving restaurant on the 2,970-metre Schilthorn became Blofeld’s headquarters, Piz Gloria. The production helped finance its completion, and the location remains one of the world’s most recognisable Bond attractions.
Tracy di Vicenzo — Diana Rigg
Tracy is not a honey trap. She is Bond’s equal, rescuer and eventual wife. She helps him escape Blofeld’s men and becomes the emotional centre of the story. Their marriage ends in tragedy when she is murdered by Blofeld and Irma Bunt.
Ruby Bartlett — Angela Scoular
Ruby is one of Blofeld’s allergy patients. She secretly invites Bond—disguised as Sir Hilary Bray—to her room. Although she seduces him, she is not knowingly working as an intelligence trap. She is herself being manipulated by Blofeld.
Nancy — Catherine Schell
Another patient at Piz Gloria who becomes involved with Bond while he conducts his investigation.
The “Angels of Death”
The international group includes performers such as Joanna Lumley, Julie Ege, Anouska Hempel, Jenny Hanley and Helena Ronee.
They resemble honey traps because Blofeld surrounds Bond with attractive, socially confident young women. But their real function is more sinister: they are unwitting biological-warfare couriers, hypnotised to contaminate British and Irish agriculture.
Irma Bunt — Ilse Steppat
Blofeld’s formidable assistant supervises the women and watches Bond closely. She ultimately fires the shots that kill Tracy.
James Bond: Pierce Brosnan
Director: Martin Campbell
Swiss location: Contra Dam, also known as the Verzasca Dam, Ticino
Pierce Brosnan’s first Bond film opens with 007 making an extraordinary bungee jump from the 220-metre Swiss dam. In the story, the location represents a Soviet chemical-weapons facility in Arkhangelsk.
The sequence helped introduce a new Bond for the post-Cold War era.
Xenia Onatopp — Famke Janssen
Xenia is the clearest genuine “honey trap” among the women associated with the Swiss-linked Bond films.
A former Soviet fighter pilot and assassin working for the Janus crime syndicate, she weaponises seduction. She lures powerful men into intimate encounters and kills them through crushing physical force.
Unlike Tracy, Tilly or Ruby, Xenia knowingly uses sexual attraction as an operational method.
Natalya Simonova — Izabella Scorupco
A Russian computer programmer and survivor of the GoldenEye attack. She becomes Bond’s ally and plays a central role in stopping the satellite weapon.
In intelligence terminology, a honey trap deliberately uses romance or sexual attraction to compromise, recruit, blackmail or eliminate a target. Not every “Bond girl” fits that description.
There is one more celebrated Swiss connection: Ursula Andress, born in the Canton of Bern, became the first globally iconic Bond heroine when she played Honey Ryder opposite Sean Connery in Dr. No in 1962.
Despite her character’s name, Honey Ryder was not a honey trap. She was an independent shell collector who became caught in Bond’s mission. But her emergence from the Caribbean Sea in a white bikini created one of the most famous entrances in cinema history.
From Fleming’s student years in Geneva and Bond’s Swiss mother to Goldfinger’s Alpine pursuit, Piz Gloria and the leap from the Verzasca Dam, Switzerland is woven into the literary and cinematic DNA of 007.
It represents everything Fleming wanted in a Bond setting: beauty, wealth, discretion, danger—and the suspicion that nothing is quite as tranquil as it appears.
This relationship between landscape and storytelling continues at WoW Gstaad—World of Words, taking place on 29–30 August 2026 in Gstaad.
Buy Tickets. THE BRIEF readers apply WOWWELCOME10 for 10% off.
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