Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British author and journalist, most famous for his novels about the British spy James Bond. Fleming chronicled Bond's adventures in twelve novels and nine short stories, a literary output that has sold over 100 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most popular series of related novels of all time. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and two works of non-fiction.
In 2008, The Times newspaper in London, England, ranked Ian Fleming fourteenth on its list of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Fleming was educated at Eton College and was heavily involved in intelligence gathering during the Second World War, working as an officer for the British Naval Intelligence Division. Later in the war, he was principal planning officer with 30 Commando, or 30 Assault Unit and sat on the directing committee of T-Force, whose task was to recover things of value to British Intelligence from the retreating Nazis during the Allied advance through Europe.
Ian Fleming lived to see two of his novels made into what would become the beginning of a long and successful series of Bond movies. A third was underway when he died in Canterbury, England in August 1964, aged 56.
"A horse is dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle.""I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.""Men want a woman whom they can turn on and off like a light switch.""Older women are best, because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.""You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face."
Ian Fleming was born in Mayfair, a wealthy district of London, England. His father was Valentine Fleming, a British Member of Parliament and his mother was Evelyn St. Croix Rose. Fleming's older brother Peter became a travel writer. Ian also had two younger brothers, Michael and Richard Fleming (1910–77) and an illegitimate half-sister, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming. Ian was a grandson of the Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who founded the Scottish American Investment Trust and the merchant bank Robert Fleming and Co.
Ian Fleming was a step-cousin of Christopher Lee, later Sir Christopher Lee, who went on to become a well-known British horror film actor, and his older brother Peter married the successful stage actress Celia Johnson, later Dame Celia Johnson. Ian Fleming had nephews Rory Fleming, Matthew Fleming who played cricket for England, and a great-nephew, the composer Alan Fleming-Baird.
Fleming was first educated at Durnford School, a preparatory school on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, near to the estate of the Bond family, who could trace their ancestry back to an Elizabethan spy called John Bond and whose motto was Non Sufficit Orbis - The World Is Not Enough. Fleming then attended Sunningdale School in Berkshire, the prestigious Eton College at Eton, near Windsor, Berkshire, and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, near Camberley, on the borders between Berkshire and Surrey. He was Victor Ludorum at Eton for two years running, only the second person ever to accomplish this. After leaving Eton, however, he found life at Sandhurst difficult and after an early departure from the Royal Military Academy, his mother sent him to study languages on the continent. He first attended a small private establishment in the town of Kitzbühel, in Austria, run by the Adlerian disciple Ernan Forbes Dennis and his American wife, the novelist Phyllis Bottome. This was in order to improve his German and prepare him for examinations for entry into the Foreign Office. From Kitzbühel he went to Munich University, and, finally, to the University of Geneva to improve his French; however, he was unsuccessful in his application to join the Foreign Office and worked as a sub-editor and journalist for the Reuters news service, spending part of 1933 in Moscow. He then worked as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, in Bishopsgate, London.
In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Rear Admiral John Henry Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy, recruited Fleming, then a reserve subaltern in the Black Watch, as his personal assistant. Fleming was commissioned first as a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and subsequently as Lieutenant Commander, then Commander. His codename was 17F.
In 1940, Fleming and Rear Admiral Godfrey contacted Kenneth Mason, Professor of Geography at Oxford University, about the preparation of reports on the geography of countries involved in military operations. These reports were the precursors of the Naval Intelligence Division Geographical Handbook Series produced between 1941 and 1946.
Fleming instigated a plan named Operation Ruthless to obtain details of the Enigma codes used by the German Navy by crashing a captured German aircraft into the English Channel, where the British crew, dressed in Luftwaffe uniforms, might be rescued by a German patrol boat. The "survivors" could then kill the German crew and hijack the ship, thus obtaining the required information. Much to the annoyance of Alan Turing and Peter Twinn at Bletchley Park, the mission was never carried out. Fleming's niece Lucy Fleming, on a BBC Radio Four programme entitled "The Bond Correspondence" broadcast on 24 May 2008, stated that the reason given was that an official at 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.
Fleming also conceived a plan to use the British occultist Aleister Crowley to trick Rudolf Hess into attempting to contact a fake cell of anti-Churchill Englishmen in Britain, but this plan was not used because soon afterwards Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland in an attempt to broker peace behind Hitler's back. Anthony Masters, in his book The Man Who Was M: The Life of Charles Henry Maxwell Knight asserts that Fleming himself conceived the plan that lured Hess into flying to Scotland in May 1941, to negotiate Anglo—German peace with Churchill, and which resulted in Hess's capture. This claim has no other source, however.
Operation Goldeneye was also one of Fleming's conceptions, a plan to maintain communication with Gibraltar and help in its defence in the unlikely event that Spain joined the Axis Powers and assisted Germany in invasion.
30 Assault Unit
In 1944, Fleming was given control of a specialist unit of commandos, known as 30 Commando, or 30 Assault Unit (30AU: a term not to be confused with the Auxiliary Units in which Fleming's elder brother had served). He was not their field commander but their planner. As an intelligence officer at the Naval Intelligence Division (NID), he had an idea of what information and equipment the enemy had that might be of interest to the Allies and where it was likely to be located. He detailed the "scalps" he required and his "Red Indians", as he called them, were then sent off to acquire them. The basic idea lay in the work of the German intelligence Abwehr field units, which had been recognised by the British in the early campaigns of the war and were now taken up with a vengeance by the Allies.
30 Assault Unit consisted of teams of trained commandos that specialized in targeting enemy headquarters, to secure documentation and items of equipment with an intelligence value; items that the ordinary Allied soldier, or commando, might ignore or destroy. Each team would attach itself to whatever main force could get them closest to their intended targets. They were adept in lock picking, safe cracking, unarmed combat and general techniques and skills for collecting intelligence. The unit contained some of the most enterprising men in the commandos.
In the final stages of the war, the teams were trained and equipped to fight their own way into a headquarters building and secure whatever items they required, before the enemy could remove it or destroy it before leaving. They relied upon surprise, toughness and ruthless efficiency. Prior to D-Day, most of the operations were in the Mediterranean. However, because of their successes in Sicily and Italy, 30AU (based at the Marine Hotel, Littlehampton, West Sussex) became greatly trusted by naval intelligence. Having shown the scope of its achievements and its potential to deliver even more, with the right support and direction, the unit was greatly enlarged and given the job of acquiring specific items and documents. Fleming was the man who would issue these specific objectives.
Fleming visited 30AU in the field during and after Operation Overlord, especially following an attack on Cherbourg. He was concerned that the unit had been incorrectly used as a regular commando force, rather than as 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. Following this, the management of these units was revised.
T-Force
Following the success of 30 Assault Unit, it was decided to establish a "Target Force", which became known as T-Force. Fleming sat on the committee that selected the targets for this unit, helping to create what were known as the "Black Books" which were issued to the officers of this unit. The infantry component of T-Force was in part made up of the 5th Battalion of the King's Regiment, which supported the British 2nd Army. It was responsible for securing targets of interest to the British military. These included nuclear laboratories, gas research centres and individual rocket scientists. The unit's most notable coup was during the advance on the German port of Kiel, where it captured the research centre for German rocket engines used for missiles, fighters and high speed U Boats.
Ian Fleming was to use elements of this activity in his 1955 James Bond novel Moonraker. The story of T-Force and Fleming's connection to its work remained unknown until it was revealed in Sean Longden's book T-Force, the Race for Nazi War Secrets, 1945, published in 2009.
As a result of his former position in the Naval Intelligence Division, Fleming's intelligence work provided the background for his spy novels. In 1953, his first novel was published, Casino Royale, in which the British Intelligence agent James Bond, also famously known by his code number, 007, was introduced to the world. The fictional James Bond may have been based on Sir William Stephenson and what Fleming had learned from him. Sir William Stephenson had set up Camp X, a Second World War paramilitary and commando training installation in Ontario, Canada, which Fleming may have attended, although there is evidence, also, against this claim. Other possible influences upon Fleming's characterisation of James Bond are the naval officer Patrick Dalzel-Job and Fleming's brother Peter.
In Fleming's novel Casino Royale, James Bond appears with the beautiful heroine Vesper Lynd, who was modelled on SOE agent Krystyna Skarbek. Some ideas for his characters and the locations in which Bond operates came from his time at Boodle's. Bond's fictional spymaster, M, frequents a club, Blades, at which Bond is an occasional guest. This club was partially modelled on Boodle's. The name of Bond's arch enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, was based on a fellow member's name.
The name James Bond itself came from a famed ornithologist James Bond, the son of the Bond family who allowed Fleming the use of their estate in Jamaica to write (perhaps also by an Elizabethan Bond from Fleming's earlier years). The Bonds were wealthy manufacturers whose estate outside of Philadelphia, Pa. eventually became the grounds of Gwynedd Mercy College. Fleming reputedly used the name after seeing James Bond's 1936 publication, Birds of the West Indies.
Initially, Fleming's Bond novels were not bestsellers in North America. But when President John F. Kennedy included From Russia With Love on a list of his favourite books, sales quickly jumped.
In the late 1950s, the financial success of Fleming's James Bond series allowed him to retire to Goldeneye, his estate in Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica. The name of the house and estate where he wrote his novels has many possible sources. Ian Fleming himself cited Operation Goldeneye, a plan to hinder the Nazis should the Germans enter Spain during World War II. He also cited the 1941 novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers. The location of the property may also have been a factor: Oracabessa, from the Spanish for "golden head". There is also a Spanish tomb on the property with a carving that looks like an eye on one side. It is likely that most or all of these factors played a part in the name Fleming chose for his Jamaican home. In an interview published in Playboy magazine in December 1964, Fleming states, "I had happened to be reading Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers, and I'd been involved in an operation called Goldeneye during the war: the defence of Gibraltar, supposing that the Spaniards had decided to attack it; and I was deeply involved in the planning of countermeasures which would have been taken in that event. Anyway, I called my place Goldeneye." The estate, which was a few miles away from that of Fleming's friend Noel Coward, is now the centerpiece of an exclusive resort that goes by the same name.
The Spy Who Loved Me, published in 1962, departed stylistically from Fleming's previous novels in the Bond series as it was written in the first person, from the perspective of the (fictional) protagonist, Vivienne Michel, whom Fleming credits as co-author. It is the story of her life, up to the moment when James Bond rescues her.
Besides writing twelve novels and nine short stories featuring James Bond, Fleming also had a hand in creating another spy series, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and he wrote the children's novel Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Fleming also wrote a guide to some of the world's most exciting cities of the 1950s, Thrilling Cities (originally a round-the-world series for The Sunday Times newspaper, London), and a study of international crime, The Diamond Smugglers. Fleming wrote an account of events during the Istanbul Pogroms, which many Greek and some Turkish scholars attributed to secret orchestrations by Britain: "The Great Riot of Istanbul" was published in The Times newspaper on 11 September 1955.
In 1961, Fleming sold the film rights to his already-published as well as future James Bond novels and short stories to Harry Saltzman, who, with Albert R "Cubby" Broccoli, co-produced the film version of Dr. No, which was released in 1962. For the cast, Fleming suggested friend and neighbour Noël Coward as the villain Dr. Julius No, and David Niven or, later, Roger Moore as James Bond. Both were rejected in favour of Sean Connery, who was both Broccoli and Saltzman's choice (Moore would later play the part of James Bond in the movies made from 1973–85). Fleming at first disapproved of Connery taking the lead role. He had also previously suggested his cousin, Christopher Lee for the part, or as Dr No. Although Lee was selected for neither role, in 1974 he portrayed the assassin Francisco Scaramanga, the villain of The Man with the Golden Gun.
Dr No was followed by From Russia with Love (1963), with twice the budget of its predecessor. This second James Bond film was to be the last that Ian Fleming saw. Having visited the set, he had come to approve of the casting and even wrote a Scottish lineage for Bond into his later works, in deference to Connery's portrayal. A close inspection of a film sequence in From Russia with Love involving the Orient Express appears to show Fleming himself alongside the track, caught on camera during his visit to the shoot in Europe. The third Bond film, Goldfinger (1964), was in production at the time of the author's death and he had again visited the set at Pinewood Studios and worked with the producers.
Dr No was far more of a success than even Saltzman or Broccoli had anticipated. It was an instant worldwide sensation that sparked a spy craze in film and television that lasted through the rest of the 1960s and beyond. The film series continued, as planned, with ever-increasing budgets and profits, and continues to do so into the twenty-first century, with token references to Fleming and his writing.
Ian Fleming was a bibliophile and collected a library of books that had, in his opinion, "started something" and therefore were significant to the history of western civilization. He concentrated on science and technology, had a copy of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species but also owned other significant works ranging from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf to Scouting for Boys. He was a major lender to the 1963 exhibition Printing and the Mind of Man. Some six hundred books from Fleming's collection are held (2010) in the Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana.
Fleming was a member of Boodle's, the gentleman's club in St. James's Street, London, England, from 1944 until his death in 1964. He married Anne Charteris, granddaughter of the 11th Earl of Wemyss and former second wife of the second Viscount Rothermere and widow of the third Baron O'Neill, in Jamaica in 1952. The ceremony was witnessed by his friend, the playwright Noel Coward. This made Fleming a brother in law of the Scottish novelist Hugo Charteris.
In March 1960, Fleming met John F Kennedy through Marion Oates Leiter who was a mutual friend and who had invited both to dinner. Leiter had introduced Kennedy to Fleming's books during his recovery from an operation in 1955. After dinner, Fleming related his ideas on discrediting Fidel Castro; these were reported to Central Intelligence Agency chief Allen Welsh Dulles who gave the ideas serious consideration.
In 1961 Fleming, a heavy smoker and heavy drinker, suffered a heart attack and three years later, at the age of 56, had another heart attack on the morning of 12 August 1964 - on his son Caspar's 12th birthday - in Canterbury, Kent, England. He died and was buried in the churchyard of Sevenhampton village, near Swindon. In 1975, Ian Fleming's son Caspar committed suicide with a drug overdose and was buried with his father. Fleming's widow, Anne Geraldine Mary Fleming (born 1913), was also buried with her husband when she died in 1981.
After Fleming's death, his literary executors periodically hired other authors to continue the James Bond novels. These were Kingsley Amis (who wrote as "Robert Markham"), John Gardner, and Raymond Benson. In observance of what would have been Fleming's 100th birthday in 2008, Ian Fleming Publications commissioned Sebastian Faulks to write a new Bond novel entitled Devil May Care. This book, released in May 2008, is credited to "Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming".
In May 2010, bestselling thriller author Jeffery Deaver was chosen to write the next James Bond novel. The new James Bond book will be published in May 2011.
(1) First US paperback edition of Casino Royale was retitled You Asked for It.(2) First US paperback edition of Moonraker was retitled Too Hot to Handle.(3) Short story collection: (i) "From a View to a Kill," (ii) "For Your Eyes Only," (iii) "Risico," (iv) "Quantum of Solace", and (v) "The Hildebrand Rarity."(4) Subject of a legal battle which led to the book's storyline also being credited to Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham; see the controversy over Thunderball(5) Fleming gives co-author credit to "Vivienne Michel", the fictional heroine of the book; Fleming refused to allow a paperback edition to be published in the UK, but one was eventually published after his death. His agreement with Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman only allowed the use of the title for a movie.(6) For years, it has been alleged that William Plomer, and/or others, completed this novel as Fleming died before a finished manuscript was created. Many Fleming biographers dispute this; see the controversy over The Man With The Golden Gun.(7) Posthumously compiled short story collection. Originally published with two stories: (i) "Octopussy" and (ii) "The Living Daylights". The 1967 paperback edition's title was shortened to Octopussy and a third story, "The Property of a Lady", increased its page count. In the 1990s, the collection's longer, original title was restored, and with the 2002 edition, the story, "007 in New York" (originally published in some editions of Thrilling Cities (see below) was added.(8) In 2008, a collection entitled "Quantum of Solace" was released including the contents of "For Your Eyes Only" and "Octopussy and The Living Daylights" (all stories from the 2002 edition).
Children's story
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1964)
Non-fiction
The Diamond Smugglers (1957)
Thrilling Cities (1963; the American editions contain the short story "007 in New York")
Unfinished or unpublished works
Fleming kept a scrapbook containing notes and ideas for future James Bond stories. It included fragments of possible short stories or novels featuring Bond that were never published. Excerpts from some of these can be found in The Life of Ian Fleming by John Pearson. Ian Fleming’s Unpublished Legacy — ajb007.co.uk
The author Geoffrey Jenkins worked with Fleming on a James Bond story idea between 1957 and 1964. After Fleming's death, Jenkins was commissioned by Bond publishers Glidrose Productions to turn this story, Per Fine Ounce, into a novel, but it was never published.
In 1960, Fleming was commissioned by the Kuwait Oil Company to write a book on the country and its oil industry. The typescript is titled State of Excitement: Impressions of Kuwait but it was never published due to disapproval by the Kuwaiti Government. According to Fleming: "The Oil Company expressed approval of the book but felt it their duty to submit the typescript to members of the Kuwait Government for their approval. The Sheikhs concerned found unpalatable certain mild comments and criticisms and particularly the passages referring to the adventurous past of the country which now wishes to be 'civilised' in every respect and forget its romantic origins."
The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1989. A TV movie starring Charles Dance as Fleming. The movie focuses on Fleming's life during World War II, his love life, and the writing of James Bond.
The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1990. A TV movie starring Jason Connery (son of Sean) as the writer in a dramatisation of his career in British intelligence.
Bondmaker, 2005. A TV documentary/drama by Wall to Wall first broadcast on BBC in August 2005. Laurence Olivier Theatre Award-winning British actor Ben Daniels portrays Ian Fleming. Ian Fleming: Bondmaker (2005) (TV) — Full cast and crew
Where Bond Began, 2008. TV documentary about the life of Ian Fleming broadcast 20 October 2008 by the BBC. Presented by former Bond girl Joanna Lumley.
David Giammarco, Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films (ECW Press, 2002)
