I will gather together a great bundle of our advertisements and ship them out to you but the twenty-foot square posters would be too much for the mails and I will have to try and send a photograph.
Incidentally, they would just about paper the outside walls of your villa and I like the idea of you and Alan emerging from between your lips. It would be a good scene in a Cocteau or Dali film, and I may steal it for my fourth thriller.6 (The third is with Cape’s and they say it is the best but it doesn’t amuse me as much as the others.)
Anyway the whole venture has aroused interest all over the world and everybody is delighted.
As part of the ballyhoo I was requested to write a light piece on my visit to you and in some trepidation I did so.
But Lord K is so overwhelmed by the importance of the occasion and so loth, I think, to allow it to be thought that it was anybody’s idea but his own that he told me he thought the piece was not sufficiently “dignified”.
So I send it to you to see what you yourself think. It is difficult not to be vulgar in these sort of things but I feel I have avoided the major pitfalls.
Annie is in wonderful form and is delighted with the announcement in the “Times” this morning, although she says it isn’t enough and hopes that you have at least precedence over Dame Sitwell.7 She’s spinning like a top through the Season and I am looking forward to enjoying her company again when she comes to rest at the end of July. She loved your letter and will, I expect, reply this week-end from St. Margaret’s.
I must stop now as the chapel bells are ringing and this is too long by at least half.
FROM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
16th June, 1954
My dear Ian,
I have read your article with great amusement. I don’t see that it is undignified. There is nothing I want less than to have anyone take me for a stuffed shirt on a pedestal. The only objection I have to make is firstly you speak of my having a chef, whereas my simple, and even spartan needs are satisfied by a cook. Secondly, you speak of the poetess being offered soup at luncheon. That is something that I should be ashamed to offer any guest, drunk or sober. I look upon soup at luncheon as barbarous, detestable, uncivilized and conducive to promiscuous immorality.
If you have a moment to spare, and can tell me what sort of reaction the first article has had on the public at large, I shall be most grateful.
Yours always,
Willie
TO WREN HOWARD
29th June, 1954
Having brushed up the typescript a bit as the result of the comments of William and Daniel, I am sending it over to you.
There’s one fairly long rewriting job on Chapter 22 which Daniel recommended, with which I agree, and I have simply not had time to get down to it and it doesn’t in fact affect the book in any way.
I am not entirely happy with the title but nothing we have been able to think up is an improvement.
If any other readers have ideas I shall be most grateful to hear them.
TO J. B. REED, ESQ., The Bowater Paper Corporation Ltd., Bowater House, Stratton Street, W.1.
One of the dramatic set pieces in Moonraker involved a car chase in which Bond’s vehicle was thrown off the road when Drax’s henchman, Krebs, unleashed a roll of newsprint from the lorry ahead. For advice, Fleming sought out Bowater, the world’s biggest supplier of newsprint and an organisation of near Blofeldian stature, which not only operated paper mills but, to safeguard against strikes, owned its own forests and ran its own dedicated shipping line.
30th June, 1954
Dear Sir,
I wonder if you would be kind enough to give me a little help in my capacity as a spare-time writer of thrillers.
In my next book a Bowater’s newsprint carrier features briefly and dramatically, and I wonder if you would tell me if the following sentences are correct:
1)“One of Bowater’s huge Foden Diesel carriers was just grinding into the first bend of the hairpin labouring under five tons of newsprint it was taking on a night run to one of the Ramsgate newspapers.”
(Apart from correcting the facts, have you actually got a customer in Ramsgate or elsewhere on the Isle of Thanet?)
2)“His head lamps showed the long carrier with the eight gigantic rolls, each containing half a mile of newsprint.”
If you would be kind enough to scribble in corrections or suggestions on this letter and return it to me, I would be most grateful.
Yours Faithfully,
He was advised that although Bowater had a client on the Isle of Thanet, they did not deliver at night. Their lorries were eight-wheeled AECs which typically carried twenty-one rolls, each containing five miles of newsprint. It was the very kind of detail that Fleming relished.
TO WREN HOWARD
9th July, 1954
Very many thanks for your letter of yesterday and I am delighted you are pleased with the book.
Your points of detail are all excellent and most valuable and they will all have attention. Any other similar comments, however harsh, will be very welcome.
Curiously enough the book was always called THE MOONRAKER until a week after I finalised it when Noël Coward reminded me that Tennyson Jesse8 once used the same title.
Do you think it would matter using it again or that we ought to get clearance from somebody?
Alternatively perhaps we could call it “THE MOONRAKER SECRET” or “THE MOONRAKER PLOT” or at any rate tack on one other word.
I have the master typescript and I will tidy it up and give it to Michael at the end of the month so that it can go early to the printers.
My Autumn looks as if it’s going to be rather busy and I would very much like to get the proofs corrected and off my chest as soon as possible.
I will also rough out a jacket for Michael to consider.
I will attack the contract next week.
TO WREN HOWARD
The search for a title continued . . .
15th July, 1954
What do you think of THE INFERNAL MACHINE as a title?
Or alternatively WIDE OF THE MARK or THE INHUMAN ELEMENT?
Personally, I think the first might be the one. It is an expression everyone knows but has long been out of fashion.
Despite Fleming’s enthusiasm for The Infernal Machine, none of his suggestions found favour. At the bottom of the letter Howard scribbled a list of alternatives: Bond and the Moonraker, The Moonraker Scare and The Moonraker Plot. All were later crossed out, leaving at the end just a single word. He circled it firmly: Moonraker.
TO MICHAEL HOWARD
Fleming took particular pride in designing dust jackets for his novels. Casino Royale and Live and Let Die had both been his and now with Moonraker he made a third attempt. An abstract design of pillars of flame, by Ken Lewis, it wasn’t as successful as the previous two.
28th October, 1954
I have now devised the enclosed and I think it’s on the right lines. Robert Harling also very much approves which, in case you don’t know him, is a considerable triumph.
What do you think?
I think the author’s name could be a bit larger or alternatively in a different type, and I think the motif of the background might be a little bit bolder and not quite so niggly.
But it at any rate contains the red, yellow and black, which experts have always told me are the most striking for poster purposes, so it should show up well on the bookstalls.
I await your verdict and I also enclose an alternative design on which Harling has turned his thumbs down.
The colours are wrong but I still think something could be made of the idea if you don’t like the flaming one.
TO E. B. STRAUSS, ESQ., 45 Wimpole Street, London, W.1.
Eric Strauss (1894–1961) was an eminent psychiatrist who treated both Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. Fleming had sought his advice on megalomania and discovered in Strauss’s Men of Genius that childhood thumb-sucking could have baneful consequences – hence the gap-toothed Drax.
5th January, 1955
It is now exactly a year since I borrowed your “Men of Genius” and I have felt ashamed of myself for not having returned it to you before.
The Hemmung [psychological inhibition] was undoubtedly created by my desire to keep the book in my possession. It appears to be quite unobtainable and it has given me so much pleasure that even now I am loath to let it go.
However, please forgive me for the delay and thank you most warmly for your kindness in lending it to me, and in being so patient with the borrower.
A perfectly horrible man whose diabolical schemes for the destruction of this country stem, I have maintained, directly from a pronounced diastema of the centrals has resulted from your loan and will appear in my next thriller, THE MOONRAKER, of which I will send you a copy on its publication in April.
I hope you will then approve of the motivation I have provided for my villain.
Again with many apologies and my warmest thanks and very best wishes for 1955.
TO MICHAEL BODENHAM, ESQ., Director, Floris Ltd., 89 Jermyn Street, London, S.W.1.
Floris, perfumiers and soap makers to the gentry, were ‘most interested to read your kind mention of “Floris” in your new book “The Moonrakers”’. They sent their appreciation, plus a sample of their products and ‘thanks to you for this association in a most excellent and entertaining novel’. Fleming was an enthusiastic endorser of the products used.
23rd August, 1955
Having been a life-time consumer of your products the least I could do was to pay tribute to your firm in enumerating the luxurious appointments of Blades Club, and it was quite unnecessary though very nice of you to have sent me such a fragrant bouquet in return.
My books are spattered with branded products of one sort or another9 as I think it is stupid to invent bogus names for products which are household words, and you may be interested to know that this is the first time that a name-firm has had the kindly thought of acknowledging the published tribute.
Again with many thanks.
TO GEOFFREY M. CUCKSON, ESQ., Nottingham
19th September, 1955
Thank you very much for your kind letter of September 7th which greeted me on my return from Istanbul.
I am so glad you like the adventures of James Bond. They also give me much pleasure but you are one of the few of my readers who has suggested that the background work does require a great deal of trouble.
All your comments are, as a matter of fact, very much to the point and I agree that perhaps Gala should have been gagged. On the other hand the effects of the bang behind the ear she got would not, I think, have worn off within the three-quarters of an hour drive left to Ebury Street. I think you can rely on the fact that Krebs made sure she was still more or less unconscious before he and Drax helped her cross the pavement into the house.
After Bond’s rather frustrating holiday abroad he immediately got involved in some further hair-raising adventures which will appear in April under the title DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, and I hope the book will bring another charming and perceptive letter from you.
TO MISS JEAN GRAMAN, 109 Sheen Lane, East Sheen, S.W.14.
On a point of German etiquette, Jean Graman told Fleming he had got his honorifics wrong. ‘While a creature like Krebs is only too possible, he would not dream of addressing his superior as “mein Kapitan”.’ She proposed several alternatives along a military line – i.e. Obergruppenführer – and concluded with the words, ‘I hope this small hint will help to make your next book as authentic as possible.’
19th October, 1957
Thank you very much for your letter of October 9th and I am delighted that you enjoyed “Moonraker”.
I see your point about ‘mein Kapitan’ and I had thought of various other possibilities, of which perhaps a better one was ‘mein Chef’.
The point is that this was a peacetime organisation in which military titles would have been inappropriate. It was perhaps because I was myself in the Navy that I decided to use ‘Kapitan’ as being possible and also understandable to the many of my readers who do not know German nearly as well as you do.
Anyway, many thanks for having taken the trouble to write on a very legitimate point of criticism.
TO MISS SHIRLEY HILLYARD, 302 Chapel Lane, Cardington
Shirley Hillyard, who worked at the Bedford Public Library, was one of Fleming’s most delightful correspondents. On behalf of her colleagues (but maybe just herself), she said, ‘We would have written before but until a traveller told us that you were foreign correspondent to the Sunday Times, we did not know who you were.’ They were intrigued to know if he was anything like his hero, and having read that he had just returned from Istanbul on the Orient Express were certain that he must be. ‘We all like James Bond,’ she added, ‘except the librarian who thinks he is very immoral but perhaps that doesn’t matter when you are in the Secret Service.’
5th October, 1955
Thank you very much for your charming letter of October 3rd and I am delighted to hear that you and your friends at the library are not disturbed by the passionate side of James Bond’s nature.
I entirely agree with you that he should be allowed some relaxation in the midst of the perils he has to face, and if he were to marry and settle down he would be of little value to the Secret Service.
Another of his adventures will appear in April together with the daffodils. It will be called DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER and I hope you will enjoy it.
Kindest regards and best wishes.
TO MICHAEL HOWARD
6th June, 1958
We talked about a reprint of “Moonraker” the other day. Since then I have been in to Hatchards and they asked me when one was coming along as they are having many enquiries for it.
If you remember, it was in the same way that I finally persuaded you to reprint “Casino Royale” which appears to have gone well.
If you feel it necessary to make a similar arrangement over “Moonraker” as we did over “Casino Royale”, by all means do so, but I think it is a pity not to catch the crest of this wave by keeping all the books in print until the wave has subsided.
Undoubtedly if you decide to do a reprint a new jacket would help. The one we had was, I am sure you will agree, the worst of the lot.
TO MRS. COLLINS, Battle House, Goring, Oxon
Regarding Bond’s bridge game with Drax, Mrs Collins was disappointed. ‘Surely,’ she wrote, ‘a good player as Drax was supposed to be would have taken out the re-double into 7 No Trumps – Doubled but not vulnerable 3 down (2 clubs & the Queen of Diamonds) the penalty would only have been 500!’ Quite.
28th July, 1959
Thank you very much for your letter of July 23rd and of course you are perfectly right about the Bridge problem. A still better suggestion would have been that Drax should have bid 7 hearts, which he makes.
But the point was that, with that gigantic hand not knowing that his partner had support in hearts and void in clubs, it was natural for him to expect a gigantic penalty in the club bid.
Incidentally, he was not a particularly good player, but a very good cheat!
Thank you very much for having taken the trouble to write.
TO MAJOR V. P. TALLON, M.B.E., R.A.M.C., British Military Hospital, Hannover, BFPO33
Among the characters in Moonraker was Major Tallon, Head of Security at Drax’s missile base. It was too much of a coincidence for Major Tallon, Security Officer at the Hannover hospital for the British Army of the Rhine. Tallon was an uncommon name, and his was the only one to have featured on the Army List since the war. How had Fleming come by it?
Tallon, a stickler for detail, had written to the Daily Express in May to comment on various unlikely details to do with the ship featured in Moonraker and, the fictional Tallon having been killed in the book, wrote jokingly to deny the reports of his own demise. The Express apologised, saying they couldn’t find him in any of their obituaries. ‘Much amusement was got out of it – mainly at m
y expense.’
18th August, 1959
Thank you very much for your letter of August 11th and it is indeed a remarkable coincidence that your name and duties should have featured in “Moonraker”.
Unfortunately, this book was written some six years ago and I cannot for the life of me remember how I came to choose the name of Tallon. I might have seen it in a newspaper or, more likely, on a shop front. When I see a name that attracts me, I jot it down and use it for an appropriate character.
Oddly enough, you are the second person to have written recently on this subject. Two or three weeks ago I had a letter from Australia from a Miss Moneypenny asking me how I had come to choose her name for M.’s secretary.
Alas, I am afraid I had to give her an equally unhelpful reply.
At least both Major Tallon and Miss Moneypenny were excellent servants of the State!
TO S. PLEETH, ESQ., 18 West Parade, Rhyl, N. Wales
Seheer Pleeth, a Swiss national living in Wales, wrote that Fleming had misspelled Patek Philippe as Parek Phillippe. While on the subject of watches, and given that Fleming appeared to be a perfectionist, the most exclusive watch in the world was actually an Audemars Piguet – a Hispano-Suiza compared to the mere Rolls-Royce or Bentley of Patek Philippe. ‘How about a tale involving Bond in a situation within the boundaries of my own rather spy infested country – Switzerland?’
29th June, 1960
Thank you very much for your letter of June 26th and for having taken the trouble to write to me.
Certainly a mis-print has crept into the edition of “Moonraker” you read, and I will take the matter up with the publishers.
I am very interested in what you have to say about Audemars Piguet which, on your recommendation, will feature in a subsequent book.
I have just come back from Switzerland and I daresay one of these days ‘M’ will send James Bond there in the course of his duties. In the meantime, I am actually to-day writing about Switzerland, and in particular Geneva as part of a Thrilling Cities Series which will appear in the Sunday Times in August. I hope it does not infuriate your country too much.
The Man with the Golden Typewriter Page 7