Biography
Ian Fleming was born in Mayfair, London, to Valentine Fleming, a Member of Parliament, and his wife Evelyn Ste Croix Fleming (née Rose). Ian was the younger brother of travel writer Peter Fleming and the older brother of Michael and Richard Fleming (1910–77). He also had an illegitimate half-sister, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming.
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 been achieved only 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 Kitzbühel, 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.
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. The double '00' indicating that he has a licence to kill. Bond appears with the beautiful heroine Vesper Lynd, who was modelled on SOE agent Christine Granville[citation needed]. Ideas for his characters and settings for Bond came from his time at Boodle's. Blade's, M's club (at which Bond is an occasional guest), is partially modelled 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 favourite 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 estate in Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica. The name of the house and estate where he wrote his novels has many sources. Notably, Ian Fleming himself cited Operation Goldeneye, a plan to bedevil 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, or "Golden head". There is also a Spanish tomb on the property with a bit of carving that looks like an eye on one side. It is likely that most or all of these factors played a part in Fleming's naming his Jamaican home. In Ian Fleming's interview published in Playboy in December 1964, he 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 defense 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, next door to that of Fleming's friend and rival Noel Coward, is now the centerpiece of an exclusive resort by the same name.
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. He also wrote a guide to some of the worlds most famous cities in "Thrilling Cities" and a novel on diamond smuggling entitled "The Diamond Smugglers".
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 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. 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 The Sunday Times on 11 September 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.
In March 1960, Fleming met John F. Kennedy through Marion Oates Leiter who was a mutual friend and invited 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 that were reported to Central Intelligence Agency chief Allen Welsh Dulles who gave the ideas serious consideration.[3]
Fifty-six-year-old Ian Fleming died of a heart attack on the morning of August 12, 1964, in Canterbury, Kent, England, and was later buried in the churchyard 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. Sadly, Caspar committed suicide with a drug overdose.
Selected works
James Bond books
1. Casino Royale1
2. Live and Let Die
3. Moonraker²
4. Diamonds Are Forever
5. From Russia with Love
6. Dr. No
7. Goldfinger
8. For Your Eyes Only³
9. Thunderball4
10. The Spy Who Loved Me5
11. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
12. You Only Live Twice
13. The Man with the Golden Gun6
14. Octopussy and The Living Daylights7
childern's story
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Non-fiction
• The Diamond Smugglers
• Thrilling Cities
Unfinished/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 hat were never published. Excerpts from some of these can be found in The Life of Ian Fleming by John Pearson.
• 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 was never published due to Kuwait government disapproval. 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."
Biographical films
• Goldeneye: 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, and his love life, and the factors that led to his creation of James Bond.
• Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1990. A TV movie starring Jason Connery (son of Sean) as the writer in a fanciful dramatisation of his career in British intelligence. His life is depicted with the kind of Bond-like action and glamour that Fleming secretly wished he could have had.
• Ian Fleming: 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.
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