 Ian
Lancaster Fleming (May 28, 1908 - August 12, 1964) was a British author and
journalist as well as Second World War Naval Officer, best remembered for
writing the series of novels featuring the character James Bond, as well as the
children's story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Biography
Ian Fleming was born in Mayfair, London, to Valentine Fleming, a Member of
Parliament, and his wife Eve Fleming. Ian was the younger brother of travel
writer Peter Fleming and the older brother of Michael and Richard Fleming (1910
- 1977). He also had an illegitimate half-sister, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming.
He was the grandson of Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who founded the
Scottish American Investment Trust and merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. (since
2000 part of JP Morgan Chase). The actor Christopher Lee is his cousin, and
actress Dame Celia Johnson is his sister-in-law (wife of his brother Peter).
Fleming was educated at Durnford School in Dorset, Eton College and the Royal
Military Academy Sandhurst. He won the Victor Ludorum at Eton two years running,
something that had only been achieved once before him. He found Sandhurst to be
uncongenial, and after an early departure from there, his mother sent him to
study languages on the continent. He first went to a small private establishment
in Kitzbuhel, Austria run by the Adlerian disciples Ernan Forbes Dennis and his
American wife, the novelist Phyllis Bottome, to improve his German and prepare
him for the Foreign Office exams, then to Munich University, and, finally, to
the University of Geneva to improve his French. He was unsuccessful in his
application to join the Foreign Office, and subsequently worked as a sub-editor
and journalist for the Reuters news service, including time in 1933 in Moscow,
and then as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, in Bishopsgate. He was a member
of Boodle's the gentleman's club in St. James's Street, from 1944 until his
death in 1964.
His marriage in Jamaica in 1952 to Anne Charteris, daughter of Lord Wemyss and
former wife of Viscount Rothermere, was witnessed by his friend, playwright Noel
Coward.
World War II
In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of
Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy, recruited Fleming (then a reserve
subaltern in the Black Watch) as his personal assistant. He was commissioned
first as a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve lieutenant, and subsequently promoted
to Lieutenant Commander, then Commander.
In 1940 Fleming and Godfrey contacted Kenneth Mason, Professor of Geography at
Oxford University, about preparing reports devoted to the geography of countries
engaged in military operations. These reports were the precursors of the Naval
Intelligence Division Geographical Handbook Series produced between 1941 and
1946.
In Naval Intelligence, Fleming conceived of Operation Ruthless, a plan - not
executed - for capturing the German naval version of the Wehrmacht's Enigma
communications encoder.
He also conceived of a plan to use British occultist Aleister Crowley to trick
Rudolf Hess into attempting to contact a faux cell of anti-Churchill Englishmen
in Britain, but this plan was not used because Rudolf Hess had flown to Scotland
in an attempt to broker peace behind Hitler's back. Anthony Masters's book The
Man Who Was M: The Life of Charles Henry Maxwell Knight asserts Fleming
conceived the plan that lured Hess into flying to Scotland, in May 1941, to
negotiate Anglo-German peace with Churchill, and resulted in Hess's capture:
this claim has no other source.
Fleming also formulated Operation Goldeneye, a plan to maintain communication
with Gibraltar as well as a plan of defense in the unlikely event that Spain
joined the Axis Powers and, together with Germany, invaded the Mediterranean
colony.
In June 1941 General William Donovan requested that Fleming write a memorandum
describing the structure and functions of a secret service organization; for
that, Fleming was rewarded with a .38 Police Positive Colt revolver pistol
inscribed, "For Special Services." Parts of this memorandum were later used in
the official charter for the OSS, which was dissolved in 1945 following the end
of World War II; the OSS's successor, the Central Intelligence Agency, was
created two years later.
In 1942 Fleming formed an Auxiliary Unit known as 30AU or 30 Assault Unit that
he nicknamed his own "Red Indians"; it was specifically trained in lock-picking,
safe-cracking, forms of unarmed combat, and other techniques and skills for
collecting intelligence. He meticulously planned all their raids, alongside
Patrick Dalzel-Job (one of the Inspirations for James Bond), going so far as to
memorize aerial photographs so that their missions could be planned in detail;
because of their successes in Sicily and Italy, 30AU was greatly enlarged and
Fleming's direct control was increased before D-Day.
Fleming even visited 30AU in the field during and after Operation Overlord,
especially after the Cherbourg attack, in which he felt that the unit had been
incorrectly used as a frontline force rather than as an intelligence gathering
unit, and from then on tactics were revised.
It is often reported, and perpetuated by Fleming, that he traveled to Whitby,
Ontario to train at Camp X, a top secret training school for Allied forces.
However, this is most likely untrue, as no evidence of Fleming having been at
Camp X has ever been uncovered, nor do any of the staff recall Fleming ever
having been there.
Writing Career
As the DNI's personal assistant, Fleming's intelligence work provided the
background for his spy novels. In 1953, he published his first novel, Casino
Royale. In it he introduced secret agent James Bond, also famously known by his
code number, 007, which indicates that he has a license to kill. Bond appears
with the beautiful heroine Vesper Lynd, who was modeled on SOE agent Christine
Granville. Ideas for his characters and settings for Bond came from his time at
Boodle's. Blade's, Bond's club, is partially modeled on Boodle's and the name of
Bond's arch enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, was based on a fellow member's name.
Initially Fleming's Bond novels were not bestsellers in America, but when
President John F. Kennedy included From Russia With Love on a list of his
favorite books, sales quickly jumped. Fleming wrote 14 Bond books in all: Casino
Royale (1953), Live and Let Die (1954), Moonraker (1955), Diamonds are Forever
(1956), From Russia With Love (1957), Dr. No (1958), Goldfinger (1959), For Your
Eyes Only (1960), 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), and Octopussy/The Living Daylights (1966).
In the late 1950s, the financial success of Fleming's James Bond series allowed
him to retire to Goldeneye, his Jamaican estate. The name of the house and
estate where he wrote his novels honors Operation Goldeneye, an anti-Nazi
operation he had created during his wartime career. The origin of the name is
clearly from his wartime career, rather than being derived from some other
likely sources, such the place name Oracabessa (Spanish for 'head of gold') or
the novel Reflections in a Golden Eye, by Carson McCullers.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) stylistically departs from other books in the Bond
series as it is written in the first person perspective of the (fictional)
protagonist, Vivienne Michel, whom Fleming credits as co-author. It is the story
of her life, up until when James Bond serendipitously rescues her from the wrong
circumstance at the wrong place and time.
Besides writing twelve novels and nine short stories featuring James Bond,
Fleming also wrote the children's novel Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
In 1961, he 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 (1962). For the cast,
Fleming suggested friend and neighbor Noel Coward as the villain Dr. Julius No,
and David Niven or, later, Roger Moore as James Bond. Both were rejected in
favor of Sean Connery, Broccoli and Saltzman's choice. Fleming also suggested
his cousin, Christopher Lee, either as Dr. No or even as James Bond. Although
Lee was selected for neither role, in 1974 he portrayed assassin Francisco
Scaramanga, the eponymous villain of The Man with the Golden Gun.
Neither Saltzman nor Broccoli expected "Dr. No" to be much of a success, but it
was an instant sensation and sparked a spy craze through the rest of the 1960s.
The successful "Dr. No" was followed by "From Russia with Love" (1963), the
second and last James Bond movie Ian Fleming saw.
During the Istanbul Pogroms, which many Greek and some Turkish scholars
attributed to secret orchestrations by Britain, Fleming wrote an account of the
events, "The Great Riot of Istanbul", which was published in the Sunday Times,
on September 11, 1955.
Later Life
Fleming was a bibliophile who collected a library of books that had, in his
opinion, "started something", and therefore were significant in the history of
Western Civilization. He concentrated on science and technology, e.g. On the
Origin of Species, yet he also collected sociological milestones such as Mein
Kampf and Scouting for Boys. He was a major lender to the 1963 exhibition
Printing and the Mind of Man. Currently, some six hundred books from Fleming's
collection are in the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana,
U.S.A.
Fifty-six-year-old Ian Fleming died of a heart attack the morning of August 12,
1964, in Canterbury, Kent, England, U.K., and later was buried in the churchyard
cemetery of Sevenhampton village, near Swindon. Upon their own deaths, Fleming's
widow (Ann Geraldine Mary Fleming (1913-1981)) and son (Caspar Robert Fleming
(1952-1975)) were buried next to him.
James Bond Books
1. Casino Royale 1953
2. Live and Let Die 1954
3. Moonraker 1955
4. Diamonds Are Forever 1956
5. From Russia with Love 1957
6. Dr. No 1958
7. Goldfinger 1959
8. For Your Eyes Only 1960
9. Thunderball 1961
10. The Spy Who Loved Me 1962
11. On Her Majesty's Secret Service 1963
12. You Only Live Twice 1964
13. The Man with the Golden Gun 1965
14. Octopussy and The Living Daylights 1966
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