Heatley Michael - The Little Book of Bond

From creation to Quantumthe whole story.

The creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming, was born in Mayfair, London on 28 May 1908, the second of four sons. His father Valentine, a Conservative MP, was killed in the First World War, shortly before Ians ninth birthday, leaving his formidable widow Eve (nicknamed M by her sons) in charge of the family. A rebellious, moody but charming boy, Ian attended Eton where he was a distinguished athlete but lived in the shadow of his brilliant elder brother Peter. In 1926, at his mothers insistence, he enrolled for officer training at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Finding the strict regime absurd, he left in September 1927 without taking a commission.

Fleming was sent to a private finishing school in Kitzbhel in the Austrian Tyrol, where he wrote his first short story, then attended the Universities of Munich and Geneva, studying German and French. Returning to England, he failed the Foreign Offices entrance exam for the diplomatic service before taking a job at the international news agency Reuters when he was 23. In 1933, he was sent to Moscow to cover the trial of six British subjects charged with spying. Later that year, he resigned from Reuters to become a stockbroker.

On the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Fleming was headhunted for a job in Naval Intelligence, as personal assistant to the director. He quickly attained the status of commander the same rank as James Bond. As with his Russian sojourn, Flemings wartime experiences provided him with a great deal of material for his novels.

*Ian Fleming and his wife on their way to their home Goldeneye in Jamaica.

After being discharged, Fleming became foreign manager at Kemsley Newspapers, publisher of the Sunday Times, which allowed him to travel abroad frequently on assignments. In 1953 he took charge of Atticus, the papers equivalent of a gossip column. Fleming had visited Jamaica for a conference in 1944 and was so enchanted by the island that he bought some land overlooking the ocean and built a house, Goldeneye, there. Fleming accepted the job at Kemsleys on condition that he be allowed two months paid holiday per year, allowing him to escape the English winter by spending every January and February in Jamaica. From 1952 until his death in 1964, he would use the vacation to write a Bond book.

Fleming joked that the first novel, Casino Royale, was written as a reaction to marrying for the first time at 43. His wife, Anne, was one of many women in his life. Their affair began during the war and continued after she married Viscount Rothermere in 1945. When Anne became pregnant with the couples only child, Caspar in 1952, she divorced Rothermere.

*Ian Fleming on the beach near Goldeneye, 1964.

Fleming had been harbouring the notion of writing the spy story to end all spy stories for several years. Antecedents included Rudyard Kiplings 1901 novel Kim and works by Dornford Yates, William Le Queux and E Phillips Oppenheim. Fleming was also influenced by John Buchan, author of The Thirty-nine Steps, W Somerset Maughams Ashenden series and HC Sapper McNeiles patriotic hero Bulldog Drummond.

Although many role models for Bond have been suggested, including Peter Fleming who himself published a novel in 1951 and helped secure Casino Royale a berth at publishers Cape, the character most likely represented an idealised version of Ian Fleming himself. 007 and his creator shared many of the same tastes in cigarettes, clothes, food and women, whilst Bonds appearance was based on American composer/musician Hoagy Carmichael.

Casino Royale, published in April 1953, was a notable success for a first novel and was followed by 13 more books, including two volumes of short stories. The Bond books were generally well-received by the critics who dubbed the authors vigorous style the Fleming Sweep and popular with the public, but the literary establishment sneered at them. Fleming had an ambivalent relationship with his creation, referring to Bond as a blunt instrument and a cardboard booby. He dallied with killing 007 off at the end of From Russia With Love but, of course, the secret agent returned.

*Ian Fleming in his study with a copy of For Your Eyes Only.

Aware of the screen potential of his creation, Fleming made several attempts to bring Bond to the cinema or television. The first adaptation was Casino Royale which appeared on US television in 1954, starring Barry Nelson as an American Jimmy Bond. The following year, Fleming sold the film rights for Casino Royale to producer Charles K Feldman, resulting in a spoof Bond film in 1967. A deal for the rest of the novels was finally made in 1961 with Eon Productions, the production partnership of Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.

The series began with Dr No in 1962, with the relatively unknown Sean Connery in the lead role. The box-office success of the movies reignited interest in Flemings novels and spawned a host of imitators. Having survived a heart attack in 1961, Fleming declined to compromise his lifestyle which included considerable amounts of cigarettes and alcohol. He suffered a second, fatal coronary in August 1964, before he could revise the first draft of The Man With the Golden Gun.

Shortly after his death, the third 007 film, Goldfinger, was released, setting Bond-mania in motion. James Bond became one of the worlds best-known fictional characters and the movies became the highest-grossing and longest-running series in movie history, periodically renewing and reinventing itself as George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig succeeded Connery over the years.

Fleming had transferred his copyright in Bond to Glidrose Productions which authorised new 007 novels after his death and English novelist and Bond buff Kingsley Amis, writing as Robert Markham, produced Colonel Sun in 1968. Apart from novelisations The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker (as the films were radically different from the novels), 13 years elapsed before the next new Bond book when British thriller writer John Gardner stepped into Flemings shoes in 1981. He was replaced in 1997 by American Bond expert and screenwriter Raymond Benson.

*Ursula Andress and Peter Sellers stars of the 1967 Casino Royale .

When Benson resigned in 2002, the company (now known as Ian Fleming Publications and run by the authors family) chose comic actor Charlie Higson to create a series of five prequels featuring Young Bond. To mark the centenary of Flemings birth, the adult Bond returned to action in 2008. Devil May Care by British novelist Sebastian Faulks is set in 1967 after the events of The Man With The Golden Gun, Flemings final novel.

Book List

By Ian Fleming

CASINO ROYALE (1953)

LIVE AND LET DIE (1954)

MOONRAKER (1955)

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1956)

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1957)

DOCTOR NO (1958)

GOLDFINGER (1959)

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (Short Stories) (1960)

THUNDERBALL (1961)

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1962)

ON HER MAJESTYS SECRET SERVICE (1963)

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1964)