The Man with the Golden Typewriter

by Bloomsbury Publishing

  Winston Churchill ranked high in the pantheon of Fleming’s personal heroes. Not only had he led Britain to victory in the Second World War but he had been a close friend of Fleming’s father, Valentine. The two men had served in the same regiment and when Val died in the trenches in 1917 Churchill wrote his obituary for The Times.

  1st April, 1954

  Since I have had the presumption to steal from “Thoughts and Adventures” your dramatic tribute to the Secret Service, which my publishers have printed on the jacket of my book, I am now also presuming to send you a copy.

  It is an unashamed thriller and its only merit is that it makes no demands on the mind of the reader.

  I hope you will accept it and forgive my theft of a hundred words of your wonderful prose.

  With my kindest regards and best wishes,

  On the jacket flap of Live and Let Die Fleming included the following quote from Churchill’s Thoughts and Adventures: ‘In the higher ranges of Secret Service work the actual facts in many cases were in every respect equal to the most fantastic inventions of romance and melodrama. Tangle within tangle, plot and counter-plot, ruse and treachery, cross and double-cross, true agent, false agent, double agent, gold and steel, the bomb, the dagger and the firing party, were interwoven in many a texture so intricate as to be incredible and yet true. The Chief and the High Officers of the Secret Service revelled in these subterranean labyrinths, and pursued their task with cold and silent passion.’

  TO DR. ALAN BARNSLEY, 374 Loose Road, Maidstone, Kent

  A doctor from Maidstone complained that Cape had sent him a copy of Live and Let Die. ‘Foolishly, I opened it and started to read: I immediately found myself deep under water carrying a limpet mine. [. . .] There was no alternative but to go back to the beginning.’ He hadn’t been able to put it down, had been late for his surgery, and now had recurring images of a limpet mine kissing a hull. It was quite extraordinary because, ‘I am such an inveterate non-reader before breakfast that I do not even take a daily newspaper.’ Why had Cape sent him such an irritating book? Anyway, who was this so-called Ian Fleming? Was it a pen name? Or could he be related to a distinctly unbookish Fleming he had known at medical school?

  21st April, 1954

  I was driving myself up from Dover yesterday morning and it took me more than half an hour to get through Maidstone. Unworthily I cursed the town little realising what a beneficent influence was at work there. Only an hour later I got to London to find your letter.

  It really is extremely kind of you to have written so charmingly and I only wish the book had been sent to you by me. But it must have been some rival physician trying to sabotage your practice as I am no relation of any medical Fleming – not even of Sir Alexander.

  If after finishing LIVE AND LET DIE you would still like to know more about the author and are prepared to lay out 10/6d for a copy of CASINO ROYALE, my previous book, you will find a potted biography of the author and an extremely moderate pencil drawing.

  I flash through the town in a 2½ litre, black Riley, every Friday evening ten minutes either side of 7 p.m. and back again every Monday morning either side of 11 a.m. and if I ever hit anything in the process I shall come straight along to Loose Road to be mended.

  Again with very many warm thanks for your really charming letter.

  TO DAVID CAPE, 30, Bedford Square, W.C.1.

  23rd June, 1954

  Dear David,

  Many thanks for your letter of June 21st and I must say that if you made a loss on CASINO ROYALE and are now making a loss on LIVE AND LET DIE I shudder to think what you must be suffering from some of the other books on your list.

  I always understood that on a 10/6d novel the get-out figure was around three thousand copies and since you have sold about eight thousand of both my books you should be what is generally known as “comfortably situate”.

  But perhaps the secret lies in your mention of overheads which presumably include the salaries and expenses of the directors and staff of Cape’s. But then it is very misleading to compare your net profit with my gross profit. I also have overheads and could show a comfortable net loss on both these books.

  However, since in theory we are both agreed that the book would benefit by the advertising campaign you suggested and since your firm is clearly on the verge of bankruptcy, I will agree to go fifty-fifty and let us proceed forthwith on the lines of your proposed campaign.

  If we are to do the book any good we should press on with this immediately and before everyone has left on their holidays.

  But I do recommend on behalf of all Cape authors that you now abandon the “all prices are net” line at the end of your copy which is quite meaningless and not used by any other publishers. The space thus saved may even turn your losses into profits.

  This is rather like the man who went to the Gillette Company saying that he had the secret of how to increase their profits gigantically. He refused to divulge his secret until a substantial payment had been made and he then said “put five blades into each packet instead of six”.

  The only difference is that I give you this brilliant idea for nothing.

  TO A. J. JOSEY, ESQ., Evening Despatch, Corporation Street, Birmingham 4

  Keen as always to encourage publicity, Fleming was delighted by the approach a Birmingham newspaper took to its serialisation of Live and Let Die.

  25th August, 1954

  I have just got back from America and I must hasten to thank you and congratulate you on the really fine show you gave to LIVE AND LET DIE.

  Apart from the pleasure you gave me I do think that the whole treatment of the serial was quite brilliant. The competition was an excellent one but above all the editing and cutting, analysis of the characters and “The Story so Far” pieces were most expertly done by somebody who really knows what he was doing.

  As an editor you really squeezed the utmost value out of the serial instead of, as did other papers who ran it, just slapping it on to the page with a “take it or leave it” attitude to your readers.

  Your treatment was real salesmanship and I should be surprised if you don’t find it easy to get the authors you want if you accord them this sort of handling.

  I would be most interested to hear how the serial went and what sort of response you got to your competition, so please drop me a line if you have a moment.

  My next book is with Cape’s but will not be appearing until April. I think it will make a good serial although the “Saturday Evening Post” have turned it down on the grounds that “it is too dramatic”.

  For LIVE AND LET DIE Cape’s sold the Group rights to the Provincial Press and I suppose it would be a question of getting your London office to have a look at it if you are interested.

  Anyway many thanks and congratulations for your treatment of the last one and if you would like a letter from me on the results of your competition or any other promotion idea of this sort, please let me know and I will be delighted to help.

  TO MRS. H. M. POLLEY, 3 Royal Crescent, Brighton

  Hilda Polley, pointed out that Live and Let Die was the title of the last comedy written by her husband Syd. ‘It was a very ingenious title,’ she wrote, ‘and I remember Frank Cellier saying he’d like to play in it if only for the title.’ How, she wondered, had Fleming come by it? Further, Mr Polley had nearly finished a novel when he died, and although Sir Osbert Sitwell had suggested an ending Mrs Polley felt he would be too busy to finish the book himself. Might Cape (or, by inference, Fleming) be interested in the manuscript? She enclosed an SAE for reply.

  25th August, 1954

  Dear Madam,

  Thank you very much for your letter of August 17th and I am sorry that owing to my absence abroad I did not reply earlier.

  It is indeed a curious coincidence that I should have chosen the same title as your late husband but it did in fact simply come to me out of the blue one day when I was driving down the Dover Road.

  Regarding your late husband’s novel, I r
eally think your best course would be to send it to a literary agent such as Curtis Brown Ltd who are good people and would advise you as to whether a publisher would be interested.

  In return Mrs Polley said the Dover Road was a most romantic place to think of a title. ‘Her husband’s Live and Let Die had been written for the Australian actress Marie Lohr, but the war had intervened. Syd, she continued, had a genius for arriving at titles – ‘Firelight’, ‘Bridleway’, ‘Something Must Be Done’, ‘The Story Speaks’, ‘Portrait Of A Lady’ and ‘Quiet Please’. Should Fleming ever be at a loss he was welcome to use any of them.

  TO LORD BEAVERBROOK, Flat 95, Arlington House, London W.1.

  Beaverbrook was a man whom Fleming admired. During the Second World War he had served as Minister of Supply and his newspapers were noted for their daring and ingenuity. (In tribute, Fleming made the Express one of the few papers that Bond read on a regular basis.) When he enquired about serialisation rights, Fleming was enthusiastic. Nothing came of it, but the Express later ran a series of James Bond cartoon strips that would achieve iconic status.

  31st August, 1954

  Ann’s told me of your very kind message about LIVE AND LET DIE and I was certainly surprised and delighted by Malcolm Thompson’s review,8 which I am sure did the sales some good.

  He is by far the best fiction reviewer and I wish we could steal him from you for the “Sunday Times”.

  As a matter of fact, before publication the “Evening Standard”, according to Jonathan Cape’s, were dickering with the idea of serializing LIVE AND LET DIE but I dare say it was decided that small adds [sic] made even better reading.

  However, just in case any of your papers might be interested, the third book, which Cape’s say is the best of the three, is now with Curtis Brown and EVERYBODY’S put in a first bid for it. In America the “Saturday Evening Post” were interested but came to the conclusion that it was too dramatic! – a disadvantage which I imagine would not dismay your editors.

  Anyway there it is and for countless reasons I would much prefer that it was sent to the Express Group, if you have any use for fiction these days.

  Ann sends her love. She is just off to Northern Ireland for a few days to roast an ox in aid of her son’s twenty-first birthday.

  TO IAN MCKENZIE, “Nahariya”, 33 Silsoe Street, Hamilton, New South Wales

  Ian McKenzie was a lawyer practising in the Australian coal town of Newcastle. He had only written one fan letter before, to an actor in the touring Stratford Company – ‘because so much good work goes unpraised’ – and now felt he should write a second. He and his friends had admired Casino Royale and Live and Let Die and were looking forward to the next. Fleming’s reply gave an intriguing glimpse into his wartime service and hinted at a Bond adventure that, alas, never came to fruition. As often, when referring to Bond’s armaments, Fleming meant Beretta the gun, rather than Biretta the ecclesiastical headgear.

  2nd September, 1954

  It really was extremely kind of you to have written such a charming letter.

  I only once wrote such a letter – to an Austrian novelist Leo Perutz9 – and I remember what an effort it was.

  But when you come to write your first book, even if it’s upon an abstruse point of law, you will know what a warm glow it causes to hear from a reader.

  My third book is just being printed and will appear next April. The publishers are pleased with it and I hope it will also satisfy you and your friends.

  I have wonderful memories of Australia as a result of having served briefly at our Pacific Fleet Headquarters in the “Daily Half Mile” in Sydney, and I hope one day I shall come back and bring James Bond and his Biretta with me in search of trouble and just that one, final, fatal Australian blonde.

  TO WILLIAM HICKEY, ESQ., “Daily Express”, Fleet Street, E.C.4.

  William Hickey was a Regency memoirist whose name had been appropriated by the Daily Express for its gossip column. In December 1954 ‘Hickey’ ran a piece that concerned a Dublin grocer’s remarks about Live and Let Die. Fleming, who wasn’t above writing lightweight chatty columns himself, hastened to advise.

  2nd December, 1954

  SO FRESH!

  Your Dublin grocer reads thrillers.

  On Lexington Avenue, New York, there is a restaurant called “Gloryfried Ham-N-Eggs” which boasts that “The Eggs we serve Tomorrow are still on the Farm”.

  This restaurant features briefly in a Secret Service thriller of mine entitled LIVE AND LET DIE, but I “improved” their slogan into “The Eggs we serve Tomorrow are still in the Hens”.

  On Monday I was in New York and my American publishers told me that, for the American edition, they were reverting to the original slogan in order to avoid letters of correction from New Yorkers. So I was all the more delighted to read on my return to London that my version has been rescued for posterity by a thriller-addicted grocer in Dublin!

  TO MR. CHARLES BROWNHILL, 1 Warwick Avenue, Bedford

  In very neat handwriting schoolboy Charles Brownhill wrote to say how much he had enjoyed Live and Let Die. He had never written to an author (though he had once completed an Enid Blyton competition) and he was keen to get his hands on Casino Royale even if it meant disrupting his A levels.

  26th May, 1955

  Thank you very much indeed for your letter of May 24th which gave me a great deal of pleasure.

  Authors are always pleased to get such praise from one of their readers just as I expect you will be when you see your marks in the Advanced Level Certificate!

  I have just published a new thriller called MOONRAKER, which I hope will give you as much fun as LIVE AND LET DIE.

  Again with many thanks for your kind thought in writing.

  TO RICHARD USBORNE,10 “Firlands”, Ellesmere Road, Weybridge, Surrey

  To appease his obstreperous author, Cape made a lucrative deal with Foyle’s bookshop for a Book Club edition whereby 20,000 copies of Live and Let Die were to be published by their subsidiary World Books. Richard Usborne’s review, which first appeared as a puff in ‘World Books’ Broadsheet’, featured prominently on the dust jacket. It touched a chord with Fleming, who feared comparison with his literary contemporaries.

  6th July, 1956

  I have just seen your very kindly review of “Live and Let Die” in the “World Books Broadsheet”.

  You have always understood that my object in writing these books is to entertain, and you are one of the few reviewers who seem to understand this lowly objective and you never tell me that I ought to be writing like somebody else, which is what depresses me about some critics.

  I remember that, in a previous review, you wrote that you would like to hear more about Smersh. The message got through and you may be interested to know that the next volume in the collected works, provisionally entitled “From Russia with Love”, deals with an attempt by Smersh to destroy Bond. In fact, the first half of the book takes the reader entirely into the Smersh camp.

  I don’t know how the book will do and many will certainly find the inner workings of Smersh rather slow-going, but at any rate I feel that I have made an attempt to pay off a debt of gratitude to one of James Bond’s most kindly sustainers.

  TO MISS JOAN HOARE, 33 Monkridge, Crouch End Hill, N.8

  Miss Joan Hoare said she hadn’t enjoyed a book so much since reading Bulldog Drummond at the age of fourteen. But, ‘in a spirit of constructive criticism’, she felt obliged to point out that it was Balmain, not Dior, who produced the perfume ‘Vent Vert’.

  ‘I venture to write because in the “Broadsheet” accompanying the book you say you take a real interest in avoiding such mistakes [. . .]. It can well be imagined that a modern thriller gains effect from references to the latest fashions in living & I would suggest that any lady of your acquaintance with the requisite “savoir vivre” would surely be only too delighted to help you check your slips in the feminine field.’

  21st October, 1958

  Thank you ver
y much for your charming letter of October 17th and for all the kind things you have to say.

  Of course you are quite right about the Vent Vert. This egregious slip was picked up by many sapient females at the time of its first publication and, through some oversight, my correction never got into the cheaper edition.

  I suppose until I go to my grave sharp-eyed, sweet-scented women will continue to rap my bruised knuckles for this mistake, and I can only say that I rather enjoy the process!

  Again with many thanks for taking the trouble to write.

  3

  Moonraker

  At the outset, 1954 boded well for Fleming. He had been awarded the post of Atticus, leading columnist for the Sunday Times, which gave him free rein to expatiate on anyone and anything that caught his fancy. It was an enviable position for a journalist and during his three-year tenure he made the most of it. Best of all, however, was a letter he received in January from film producer Alexander Korda1 saying how much he had enjoyed a proof copy of Live and Let Die and asking Fleming if he would be interested in writing for films. Fleming replied that his forthcoming novel might be just what Korda was looking for. And with this glittering prospect in mind he departed London for Goldeneye.

  There were good moments. During his two-month furlough he inveigled Ann into the sea and taught her how to catch and cook an octopus. ‘I was sad about the octopus,’ Ann wrote in a letter to Evelyn Waugh. All the same, it made a very good lunch, fried with conch and lobster, served on saffron rice. When she looked at Fleming’s work she felt even sadder: ‘The heroine is a policewoman called Gala, she has perfect measurements. I was hopelessly ignorant about such important facts . . .’ Only when Noël Coward brought a corsetry saleswoman for drinks did she get her husband’s drift.

  And there were bad. Although Fleming worked with his habitual discipline, Ann’s guests were more than he could stand – among them a honeymoon couple who stayed for ‘twelve interminable days’. After a while he had had enough. ‘Ian said I was to tell them that they must not call “Lion” and “Bear” to each other while he was writing,’ Ann recorded, ‘but I could think of no tactful approach; finally Ian whose tact is notorious said at luncheon “We should love you to continue using the house but we are going away for three or four days.” An appalling silence fell.’ Ann mollified as best she could, with the result that the honeymooners stayed a little longer. Fleming called her a traitor.