Ian Fleming

Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.

While working for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units: 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. He drew from his wartime service and his career as a journalist for much of the background, detail, and depth of his James Bond novels.

Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1952, at age 44. It was a success, and three print runs were commissioned to meet the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two collections of short stories followed between 1953 and 1966. The novels centre around James Bond, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond is also known by his code number, 007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The Bond stories rank among the best-selling series of fictional books of all time, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964) and two works of non-fiction. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming 14th on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Fleming was married to Anne Charteris. She had divorced her husband, the 2nd Viscount Rothermere, because of her affair with the author. Fleming and Charteris had a son, Caspar. A heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life, Fleming died from complications of heart disease in 1964, at the age of 56. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously; other writers have since produced Bond novels. Fleming's creation has appeared in film twenty-seven times, portrayed by six actors in the official film series.

Biography

Birth and family

Ian Lancaster Fleming was born on 28 May 1908, at 27 Green Street in the wealthy London district of Mayfair. His mother was Evelyn "Eve" Fleming () and his father was Valentine Fleming, the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 to 1917. Fleming was a grandson of the Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who co-founded the Scottish American Investment Company and the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co.

In 1914, with the start of the First World War, Valentine Fleming joined "C" Squadron of the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars, and rose to the rank of major. Michael died of wounds in October 1940 after being captured at Normandy while serving with the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Fleming also had a younger maternal half-sister born out of wedlock, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming (1925–1999), whose father was the artist Augustus John. Amaryllis was conceived during a long-term affair between John and Evelyn which had started in 1923, six years after the death of Valentine.

Education and early life

In 1914 Fleming attended Durnford School, a preparatory school on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. He did not enjoy his time at Durnford; he suffered unpalatable food, physical hardship and bullying.

thumb|left|alt=A building in the Tudor style with a courtyard in front|[[Eton College, Fleming's alma mater from 1921 to 1927]]

In 1921 Fleming enrolled at Eton College. Not a high achiever academically, he excelled at athletics and held the title of Victor Ludorum ("Winner of the Games") for two years between 1925 and 1927. He also edited a school magazine, The Wyvern.

Fleming bowed to family pressure again in October 1933, and went into banking with a position at the financiers Cull & Co. In 1935 he moved to Rowe and Pitman on Bishopsgate as a stockbroker. Fleming was unsuccessful in both roles. The same year, Fleming met Muriel Wright whilst skiing in Kitzbühel, and began a long-term relationship with her. After her death during a World War II bombing raid in London in 1944, Fleming was overcome with guilt and remorse, and it is generally thought that she provided the inspiration for the women he was to create for his future novels. Early in 1939 Fleming began an affair with Ann O'Neill, ' Charteris, who was married to the 3rd Baron O'Neill; she was also having an affair with Esmond Harmsworth, the heir to Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail.

Operation Ruthless, a plan aimed at obtaining details of the Enigma codes used by the German Navy, was instigated by a memo written by Fleming to Godfrey on 12 September 1940. The idea was to "obtain" a Nazi bomber, man it with a German-speaking crew dressed in Luftwaffe uniforms, and crash it into the English Channel. The crew would then attack their German rescuers and bring their boat and Enigma machine back to England. Much to the annoyance of Alan Turing and Peter Twinn at Bletchley Park, the mission was never carried out. According to Fleming's niece, Lucy, an official of the Royal Air Force pointed out that if they were to drop a downed Heinkel bomber in the English Channel, it would probably sink rather quickly. Because of its successes in Sicily and Italy, 30AU became greatly trusted by naval intelligence.

In March 1944 Fleming oversaw the distribution of intelligence to Royal Navy units in preparation for Operation Overlord. He was replaced as head of 30AU on 6 June 1944, but maintained some involvement. He visited 30AU in the field during and after Overlord, especially following an attack on Cherbourg for which he was concerned that the unit had been incorrectly used as a regular commando force rather than an intelligence-gathering unit. This wasted the men's specialist skills, risked their safety on operations that did not justify the use of such skilled operatives, and threatened the vital gathering of intelligence. Afterwards, the management of these units was revised. He also followed the unit into Germany after it located, in Tambach Castle, the German naval archives from 1870.

In December 1944 Fleming was posted on an intelligence fact-finding trip to the Far East on behalf of the Director of Naval Intelligence. Much of the trip was spent identifying opportunities for 30AU in the Pacific; the unit saw little action because of the Japanese surrender.

T-Force

thumb|right|alt=A white-washed bungalow with a lawn in front|[[Goldeneye (estate)|Goldeneye, where Fleming wrote all the Bond stories]]

The success of 30AU led to the August 1944 decision to establish a "Target Force", which became known as T-Force. The official memorandum, held at The National Archives in London, describes the unit's primary role: "T-Force = Target Force, to guard and secure documents, persons, equipment, with combat and Intelligence personnel, after capture of large towns, ports etc. in liberated and enemy territory."

Fleming sat on the committee that selected the targets for the T-Force unit, and listed them in the "Black Books" that were issued to the unit's officers. The infantry component of T-Force was in part made up of the 5th Battalion, King's Regiment, which supported the Second Army. It was responsible for securing targets of interest for the British military, including nuclear laboratories, gas research centres and individual rocket scientists. The unit's most notable discoveries came during the advance on the German port of Kiel, in the research centre for German engines used in the V-2 rocket, Messerschmitt Me 163 fighters and high-speed U-boats. Fleming later used elements of the activities of T-Force in his writing, particularly in his 1955 Bond novel Moonraker.

In 1942 Fleming attended an Anglo-American intelligence summit in Jamaica and, despite the constant heavy rain during his visit, he decided to live on the island once the war was over. His friend Ivar Bryce helped find a plot of land in Saint Mary Parish where, in 1945, Fleming had a house built, which he named Goldeneye. (His main residence remained in London, in Victoria). The name of the house and estate where he wrote his novels has many possible sources. Fleming himself mentioned both his wartime Operation Goldeneye and Carson McCullers' 1941 novel Reflections in a Golden Eye, which described the use of British naval bases in the Caribbean by the American navy.

Fleming was demobilised in May 1945, but remained in the RNVR for several years, receiving a promotion to substantive lieutenant-commander (Special Branch) on 26 July 1947. In October 1947, he was awarded the King Christian X's Liberty Medal for his contribution in assisting Danish officers escaping from Denmark to Britain during the occupation of Denmark. He ended his service on 16 August 1952, when he was removed from the active list of the RNVR with the rank of lieutenant-commander.

Post-war

Upon Fleming's demobilisation in May 1945, he became the foreign manager in the Kemsley newspaper group, which at the time owned The Sunday Times. In this role he oversaw the paper's worldwide network of correspondents. His contract allowed him to take three months' holiday every winter, which he took in Jamaica.

1950s

Fleming had first mentioned to friends during the war that he wanted to write a spy novel, He started writing the book at Goldeneye on 15 January 1952, and was finished writing no later than 16 February 1952, averaging more than 2,000 words per day. He claimed afterwards that he wrote the novel to distract himself from his forthcoming wedding to the pregnant Charteris, and called the work his "dreadful oafish opus". His manuscript was typed in London by Joan Howe (mother of travel writer Rory MacLean), Fleming's red-haired secretary at The Times on whom the character Miss Moneypenny was partially based. Clare Blanchard, a former girlfriend, advised him not to publish the book, or at least to do so under a pseudonym.

During Casino Royale's final draft stages, Fleming allowed his friend William Plomer to see a copy, and remarked "so far as I can see the element of suspense is completely absent". Despite this, Plomer thought the book had sufficient promise and sent a copy to the publishing house Jonathan Cape. At first, they were unenthusiastic about the novel, but Fleming's brother Peter, whose books they managed, persuaded the company to publish it. On 13 April 1953 Casino Royale was released in the UK in hardcover, priced at 10s 6d, with a cover designed by Fleming. Kennedy and Fleming had previously met in Washington. a reprint of a series of Sunday Times articles based on Fleming's impressions of world cities in trips taken during 1959 and 1960. Approached in 1964 by producer Norman Felton to write a spy series for television, Fleming provided several ideas, including the names of characters Napoleon Solo and April Dancer, for the series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. However, Fleming withdrew from the project following a request from Eon Productions, who were keen to avoid any legal problems that might occur if the project overlapped with the Bond films.

In January 1964 Fleming went to Goldeneye for what proved to be his last holiday and wrote the first draft of The Man with the Golden Gun. He was dissatisfied with it and wrote to William Plomer, the copy editor of his novels, asking for it to be rewritten. Fleming became increasingly unhappy with the book and considered rewriting it, but was dissuaded by Plomer, who considered it viable for publication.

Death

thumb|upright|alt=An obelisk marking the site of the Fleming family grave|Fleming's grave and memorial, [[Sevenhampton, Wiltshire|Sevenhampton, Wiltshire]]

Fleming was a heavy smoker and drinker throughout his adult life, and suffered from heart disease. In 1961, aged 53, he suffered a heart attack and struggled to recuperate. On 11 August 1964, while staying at a hotel in Canterbury, Fleming went to the Royal St George's Golf Club for lunch and dined at his hotel with friends. The day had been tiring for him, and he collapsed with another heart attack shortly after the meal. Fleming died at age 56 at Kent and Canterbury Hospital in the early morning of 12 August 1964—his son Caspar's 12th birthday. His last recorded words were an apology to the ambulance drivers for having inconvenienced them, saying "I am sorry to trouble you chaps. I don't know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days." Fleming was buried in the churchyard of Sevenhampton, near Swindon. His will was proved on 4 November, with his estate valued at £302,147 (equivalent to £ in ).

Fleming's last two books, The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living Daylights, were published posthumously. The Man with the Golden Gun was published eight months after Fleming's death and had not been through the full editing process by Fleming. As a result, the novel was thought by publishing company Jonathan Cape to be thin and "feeble". The publishers had passed the manuscript to Kingsley Amis to read on holiday, but did not use his suggestions. Fleming's biographer Henry Chancellor observes that the novel "received polite and rather sad reviews, recognising that the book had effectively been left half-finished, and as such did not represent Fleming at the top of his game". The final Bond book, containing two short stories, Octopussy and The Living Daylights, was published in Britain on 23 June 1966.

In October 1975 Fleming's son Caspar died from a barbiturate overdose at the age of 23, and was buried with his father. Fleming's widow, Ann, died in 1981 and was buried with her husband and their son. while Fleming was still writing the first draft of You Only Live Twice. The briefing between Bond and M is the first time in the twelve books that Fleming acknowledges the defections. Black contends that the conversation between M and Bond allows Fleming to discuss the decline of Britain, with the defections and the Profumo affair of 1963 as a backdrop. Two of the defections had taken place shortly before Fleming wrote Casino Royale, and the book can be seen as the writer's "attempt to reflect the disturbing moral ambiguity of a post-war world that could produce traitors like Burgess and Maclean", according to Lycett.

By the end of the series, in the 1965 novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, Black notes that an independent inquiry was undertaken by the Jamaican judiciary, while the CIA and MI6 were recorded as acting "under the closest liaison and direction of the Jamaican CID": this was the new world of a non-colonial, independent Jamaica, further underlining the decline of the British Empire. The decline was also reflected in Bond's use of US equipment and personnel in several novels. Uncertain and shifting geopolitics led Fleming to replace the Russian organisation SMERSH with the international terrorist group SPECTRE in Thunderball, permitting "evil unconstrained by ideology". Black argues that SPECTRE provides a measure of continuity to the remaining stories in the series.

Effects of the war

A theme throughout the series was the effect of the Second World War. The Times journalist Ben Macintyre considers that Bond was "the ideal antidote to Britain's postwar austerity, rationing and the looming premonition of lost power", at a time when coal and many items of food were still rationed.]]

In the late 1950s, the author Geoffrey Jenkins had suggested to Fleming that he write a Bond novel set in South Africa, and sent him his own idea for a plot outline which, according to Jenkins, Fleming felt had great potential. several authors have been commissioned to write Bond novels, including Sebastian Faulks, who was asked by Ian Fleming Publications to write a new Bond novel in observance of what would have been Fleming's 100th birthday in 2008.

During his lifetime Fleming sold thirty million books; double that number were sold in the two years following his death. In 2002 Ian Fleming Publications announced the launch of the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award, presented by the Crime Writers' Association to the best thriller, adventure or spy novel originally published in the UK. The Eon Productions series has grossed over $6.2 billion worldwide, making it one of the highest-grossing film series.

The influence of Bond in the cinema and in literature is evident in films and books including the Austin Powers series, Carry On Spying and the Jason Bourne character. The Lilly Library at Indiana University houses a collection of Fleming manuscripts and first editions as well as his personal library of rare books.

In 2023, it was reported that Fleming's James Bond series was being re-published, removing a number of racial slurs and references. A disclaimer was added at the beginning of each book, reading "This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set." Most of the original versions are available from Project Gutenberg Canada.

Fleming's life is the subject of the 2024 biography, Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, that spans 864 pages and was completed with the help of Fleming's estate. It was written by British novelist and biographer Nicholas Shakespeare.

Works

James Bond novels
Casino Royale (1953)
Live and Let Die (1954)
Moonraker (1955)
Diamonds Are Forever (1956)
From Russia, with Love (1957)
Dr. No (1958)
Goldfinger (1959)
Thunderball (1961)
The Spy Who Loved Me (1962)
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963)
You Only Live Twice (1964)
The Man with the Golden Gun (1965)

James Bond short story collections
For Your Eyes Only (1960)
Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966)
Other works
The Diamond Smugglers (1957)
Thrilling Cities (1963)
Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964)
The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966), story

Biographical films

Goldeneye: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1989. A television film starring Charles Dance as Fleming. The film focuses on Fleming's life during the Second World War, his love life and the writing of James Bond.
Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1990. A television film starring Jason Connery (son of Sean) as Fleming in a Bond-like adventure set during World War II.
Ian Fleming: Bondmaker, 2005. A television drama-documentary, first broadcast on BBC on 28 August 2005. Ben Daniels portrayed Fleming.
Ian Fleming: Where Bond Began, 2008. Television documentary about the life of Ian Fleming, broadcast 19 October 2008 by the BBC. Presented by former Bond girl, Joanna Lumley.
The 2011 film Age of Heroes is based on the exploits of 30 Commando; James D'Arcy played Fleming.
Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond, a BBC America television four-episode mini-series, broadcast in January and February 2014, starring Dominic Cooper in the title role.

Biography

Birth and family

Education and early life

T-Force

Post-war

1950s

Death

Effects of the war

Works

Biographical films

Arms

See also

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

External links