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Ian Lancaster Fleming (May
28, 1908 – August 12, 1964) was
a British author, journalist
and Second World War Navy
Commander. Fleming is best
remembered for creating the
character of James Bond and
chronicling his adventures in
twelve novels and nine short
stories. Additionally, Fleming
wrote the children's story
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and two
non-fiction books.
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. 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). He
was cousin to actor Christopher
Lee and actress Dame Celia
Johnson was 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 was
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.
 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. His known
codename was 17F.
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.
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
defence in the unlikely event
that Spain joined the Axis
Powers and, together with
Germany, invaded the
Mediterranean colony.
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.
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. 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. Bond's name came
from famed ornithologist James
Bond, the son of the Bond
family who allowed Fleming the
use of their estate in Jamaica
to write. The Bonds were
wealthy manufacturers whose
estate outside of Philadelphia,
Pa. eventually became the
grounds of Gwynedd Mercy
College. Fleming used the name
after seeing Bond's Birds of
the West Indies (1936).
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, but
also included other
significant works ranging
from 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 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;
these were reported to Central
Intelligence Agency chief Allen
Welsh Dulles, who gave the
ideas serious
consideration.
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. Caspar committed
suicide with a drug
overdose.
Source : Some
of the information on this page
came from a Wikipedia
article and is
licensed under the GNU
Documentation License.
©2008
www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Ian
Fleming - Generator
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