But you are absolutely right, and it just shows that you must tell Jack never again to ask me to do reviews for him. My eye is absolutely out!
But be a good chap and lend me this definitive work in the “New York Review of Books” which I have never heard of. I promise it will come back to you safely.
Anyway it was lovely to hear from you and I now see that the only way to get more than a short paragraph from you is to offend your critical senses!
Salud.
Dictated by Ian Fleming and signed in his absence
TO DENIS HAMILTON, 25 Roebuck House, Stag Place, London, S.W.1.
15th June, 1964
My dear C.D.,
Forgive the typing and the signature but I am still not running on all cylinders.
It was lovely to get your note, but I am sorry you have been playing the fool in the garden. You must know that all forms of gardening are tantamount to suicide for the normal sedentary male. For heaven’s sake leave the whole business alone, it is an absolute death trap.
Alas, next week won’t work as with any luck I’m going to be allowed down to Brighton to play ring-a-roses with the Mods and Rockers.
So please let us make it the week after and I will get in touch.
You are a wonderful chap to take my broadsides in such good grace, but I have always felt that we have so much talent on the paper that just doesn’t do its weekly stint and is not, from time to time, given the limelight of the leader page.
There are some tremendous names there, often with axes to grind, off their usual beat and I feel it would be a great accolade for many of them to get on the leader page – and a stimulus and a challenge, for the matter of that.
But to draw them out of their shells might need something like a round robin letter or series of small luncheon parties.
But we will hack away at each other in a few days time, and in the meantime, for heavens sake keep away from that blasted garden.
TO PERCY MUIR, ESQ., Elkin Matthews Ltd., Takeley, Bishop’s Stortford, Essex
22nd June, 1964
Dear Mr. Muir,
Thank you for your letter of June 19th. Alas, I’m afraid Mr. Fleming has been quite ill. He had a cold, played golf and got very wet, the cold turned to influenza and the influenza to pleurisy. All this of course has proved to be a strain on his heart. He was in Sister Agnes hospital for some weeks, then at home for two weeks, and last Wednesday he went to Brighton. I expected him back in London tomorrow, but I’ve just heard that he is not so well and will have to stay another ten days or so.
As you can imagine he is very bored and now he is only allowed to go out every other day. It’s all very worrying. However, I know he would like to hear from you so long as you ask him not to reply. He gets exhausted very quickly and sends all his letters to the office, and I know he feels it is rather impolite not answering them personally.
I thought the Book Fair excellent, but the attendance was terribly poor.
Mr. Fleming’s address is The Dudley Hotel, Hove, Sussex, so please write and cheer him up, he needs it.
Yours Sincerely,
Secretary to Ian Fleming
Afterword
Although Fleming died in 1964, Agent 007 did not. The Bond novels continued to sell in their millions – initially thanks to Pan Books, whose paperback covers were reinvented so often and so inventively that they became almost as iconic as Chopping’s original designs. If the literary establishment had once looked down upon Fleming as a sensationalist, his contemporaries would now have given their eye teeth to achieve even a smidgeon of his fame. When Kingsley Amis’s The James Bond Dossier came out in 1965 Evelyn Waugh wrote to his friend Nancy Mitford, ‘Ian Fleming is being posthumously canonised by the intelligentsia. Very rum.’ More importantly, perhaps, his books acted as a touchstone for a new breed of thriller writer.
Fleming’s literary estate was managed at first by Ann, who guarded his reputation until her death in 1981, and by his brother Peter along with the agent Peter Janson-Smith. Caspar Fleming led a troubled life, which included a fascination for guns, drugs and Ancient Egypt before committing suicide in 1975. To safeguard the copyright in James Bond, Glidrose commissioned Kingsley Amis to write a continuation Bond novel, Colonel Sun, which came out in 1968, following which several other authors have since assumed the Bond mantle.
The grip Bond held on the world’s imagination was enhanced beyond measure by his career on screen. Producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman took a leap in the dark when they bought the film rights in 1961 (appropriately, they named their company EON: ‘Everything Or Nothing’) but their perseverance paid dividends. Fleming’s credo had always been that if you wanted to make proper money from writing you had to get your books made into films. And he was quite right.
The first three Bond films – Dr No, From Russia with Love and Goldfinger – were produced while Fleming was still alive, though he lived to see only the first two. They followed, more or less faithfully, the novels – among the highlights were 007’s game of golf with Goldfinger and his duel with Rosa Klebb and her poison-bladed shoes in From Russia with Love. Thereafter, Bond took wing, flying in a variety of directions yet always uplifted by a glamour and sense of excitement that reflected Fleming’s original vision. The result, managed by the same family-run company, headed now by Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, is a massive entertainment industry that shows no sign of diminishing.
At the time of writing, Fleming’s books have sold more than 100 million copies (excluding translations) and it has been estimated that one in five of the world’s population has seen a Bond film. All this from a man who in 1953 offered to flip a coin with his publisher over who should pay for a few extra promotional copies of Casino Royale.
The Works of Ian Fleming
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)1
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)
Octopussy and the Living Daylights (1966)2
The Diamond Smugglers (1957)
Thrilling Cities (1963)
Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964–5)3
The James Bond Films
Of necessity, this volume concentrates on Fleming’s literary output. Yet, for many people their first acquaintance with James Bond may come from a cinema rather than a bookshop. Here, therefore, is a list of the films, with their release dates. Most of them have been produced by Eon, the partnership created by Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, but as befits Fleming’s tangled arrangements in this sphere, there are a couple of anomalies. The list is complete at the time of publication, November 2015.
Dr. No (1962)
From Russia with Love (1963)
Goldfinger (1964)
Thunderball (1965)
You Only Live Twice (1967)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
Diamonds are Forever (1971)
Live and Let Die (1973)
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Moonraker (1979)
For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Octopussy (1983)
A View to a Kill (1985)
The Living Daylights (1987)
Licence to Kill (1989)
GoldenEye (1995)
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Die Another Day (2002)
Casino Royale (2006)
Quantum of Solace (2008)
Skyfall (2012)
Spectre (2015)
Also:
Casino Royale (1967)
Never Say Never Again (198
3)
Acknowledgements
Many books have been written about Ian Fleming and this latest addition to the canon would have been a lot harder without the spade work of those who have gone before. In this respect I owe a debt of gratitude to Ian’s two major biographers, John Pearson and Andrew Lycett (who battled valiantly to retrieve lost computer files), and to Ian’s bibliographer, Jon Gilbert. Special mention, too, must be made of The Ian Fleming Estate who not only sanctioned the book but who own the copyright to Ian’s letters and have been more than generous with their assistance throughout.
Thanks are also due to the following: The Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington, for access to its collection of Ian Fleming correspondence; the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, New York, for copies of Ernest Cuneo’s letters and memoirs; Ian Fleming Publications, London, for permission to use the occasional James Bond extract and for much else besides; the Jonathan Cape Archive at the University of Reading (Special Collections) and the Random House Archive, Rushden, which together hold the bulk of Ian Fleming’s publishing correspondence; and the Beinecke Library, Yale University.
Letters by Noel Coward are reproduced courtesy of Alan Brodie Literary Agency; those by Aubrey Forshaw courtesy of Pan Macmillan; Somerset Maugham by permission of United Agents on behalf of the Royal Literary Fund; Raymond Chandler courtesy of the Raymond Chandler Estate via Ed Victor Ltd; and with thanks to the estates of Geoffrey Boothroyd, Ernest Cuneo and Herman W. Liebert. The copyright in letters by Jonathan Cape, David Cape, Daniel George, Michael Howard, Wren Howard and William Plomer is held by Penguin Random House, of which Jonathan Cape is now an imprint.
Letters have been contributed most kindly by Jon Gilbert of Adrian Harrington Rare Books and The Ian Fleming Bibliographical Archive (Villiers); John Goodwin (The Oxford University James Bond Club); James Trepanier (Frewin); and Mark Davies (D. N. Davies). And, as so often in matters Fleming, many thanks to Mike VanBlaricum, John Cork and Brad Frank for their contributions and advice.
A special thanks to those individuals who have helped with the research. At Bloomington: David Frasier, Cherry Williams and particularly Erika Jenns for her transcriptions. In London: Corinne Turner, Jo Lane and Phoebe Taylor. In New York: William Baehr and Virginia Lewick. In Reading: Danni Corfield. In Rushden: Charlotte Heppell. And at Yale University, Michael Rush.
Occasional extracts have been used from Michael Howard’s history of Jonathan Cape and Mark Amory’s edited letters of Ann Fleming. In the absence of source notes here is a concise but informative bibliography.
Amory, M. (ed) – The Letters of Ann Fleming. Collins Harvill, London, 1985.
Gilbert, J. – Ian Fleming: The Bibliography. Queen Anne Press, London, 2012.
Howard, M. – Jonathan Cape, Publisher. Jonathan Cape, London, 1971.
Lycett, A. – Ian Fleming. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1995.
Pearson, J. – The Life of Ian Fleming. Jonathan Cape, London, 1966.
Finally, on matters of publication, Gordon Wise of Curtis Brown helped this book into the hands of Bill Swainson at Bloomsbury. Bill has been the most assiduous of editors: he has scoured the text with kind precision and any errors or omissions are entirely my own. In its final stages Anna Simpson gave the manuscript her stalwart attention and Alexandra Pringle brought the whole thing together.
Notes
Introduction
1John Pearson’s The Life of Ian Fleming (1965) and Andrew Lycett’s Ian Fleming (1995).
2Ann’s two children from her first marriage to Lord O’Neill were Raymond (b. 1933), who inherited both the title and the family seat in Northern Ireland, and Fionn (b. 1936), who took her husband’s name on her marriage to John Morgan in 1961.
3Peter (1907–71) was an acclaimed travel writer, Richard (1911–77) a prominent banker, Michael (1913–40) a successful businessman until his death at Dunkirk, and Amaryllis (1925–99) one of the nation’s foremost cellists.
4Although the scoop failed he did receive an apology signed by the dictator himself.
5John F. C. ‘Ivar’ Bryce (1906–85), who married the American heiress Jo Hartford, had first met Fleming in 1917 on a beach holiday. They remained inseparable companions and would become involved in a variety of uncertain enterprises.
6Née Charteris, Ann was the widow of Lord O’Neill, who had been killed in the Second World War.
7A list of the works of Ian Fleming with dates of original publication can be found here.
1 Casino Royale
1Actually it was 1952.
2Waugh was not impressed when it came out later that year. ‘Ian Fleming’s idiot printing firm’, as he described it, had made ‘a great balls-up of a little book of mine.’
3Robert Harling (1910–2008), author, publisher and typographer. He had worked for the Admiralty during the Second World War and had been a member of Fleming’s ‘Red Indian’ commando unit, 30AU, in the closing stages of the war. He later joined Fleming at the Sunday Times, as typographical adviser. Among his many typographical innovations was the font ‘Tea Chest’, which would become a hallmark of the Bond dust jackets.
4William Plomer (1903–73), author, editor, poet and librettist. Born in South Africa, he travelled to Japan and beyond before settling in the drab environs of post-war London. He pronounced his name ‘Ploomer’.
5Cape’s only previous foray into thrillerdom had been James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934).
6A wartime intelligence operative and Fleming’s one-time girlfriend, she now worked for the Kemsley Group in America.
7William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (1879–1964), business tycoon, politician, press magnate and owner of the Daily Express which, for a while, had the largest circulation of any newspaper in the world.
8He did, however, employ Naomi Burton of Curtis Brown agents on the East Coast of America who successfully placed Casino Royale with Macmillan in New York.
9For tax reasons, and perhaps with a canny eye to the future, Fleming transferred the copyright in his work to a company called Glidrose.
10Paul Gallico (1897–1976), novelist and sportswriter. One of Fleming’s many journalistic contacts, he had won international fame for his novella The Snow Goose (1941).
11The font came to Fleming’s notice thanks to his friend Robert Harling who had used it for the Queen Anne Press colophon.
12Leonard Russell (1906–74), Literary Editor of the Sunday Times. Married to journalist and author Dilys Powell.
13‘Swanee’ Swanson was Fleming’s West Coast agent in the US.
14The London home to which he and Ann had recently moved.
15Fleming’s second Bond novel, which he had delivered that spring.
16Macmillan would publish all the Bond novels until Fleming moved to Viking in 1959.
17Sir William Stephenson (1897–1989), Canadian soldier, aviator, businessman, inventor and spymaster. Colloquially, ‘Little Bill’ as against ‘Big Bill’ Donovan, head of the US Secret Service. He had first met Fleming while head of British Intelligence in North America and their friendship continued after the war. Fleming liked to say that whereas Bond was a romanticised version of a spy, Stephenson was the real thing.
2 Live and Let Die
1Peter Quennell (1905–93), biographer and man of letters.
2It would not, however, always be a matter of jeopardy. Fleming’s female characters were often a match for his hero.
3Reginald Evelyn Peter Southouse Cheyney (1896–1951), British crime writer. His hard-boiled American-style novels were enormously popular in their day. In 1946 alone he sold more than 1,500,000 copies worldwide.
4The book in question was Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean (1911–96), author, soldier and politician. A friend of Fleming, who served as a commando during the Second World War and later wrote knowledgeably about espionage, Maclean has since entered the list of characters upon whom Bond is supposed to have been based.
5Fleming’s working title, The Undertaker’
s Wind (named after the Jamaican term for a strong evening breeze), was eventually consigned to a chapter head. He tried several alternatives before settling on Live and Let Die.
6Malcolm Muir (1885–1979), editor and president of Newsweek magazine.
7Fleur Cowles (1908–2009), writer and editor. An oft-married and colourful presence on the US publishing scene. Look magazine was owned by her third husband whom she divorced in 1955.
8George Malcolm Thompson (1899–1996), Beaverbrook’s personal secretary and critic for the Evening Standard. He described Live and Let Die as ‘tense, ice-cold, sophisticated; Peter Cheyney for the carriage trade’.
9Leo Perutz (1882–1957), Austrian mathematician and novelist. Fleming was probably referring to his Between Nine and Nine (1918), a tale of romance and intrigue set in Imperial Vienna, which was translated to widespread acclaim in the 1920s and possibly influenced Fleming’s first short story, ‘A Poor Man Escapes’.
10Richard Usborne (1910–2006), journalist and author who had served with SOE during the war. As befitted the eccentric recruitment policy of British Intelligence he spent the last forty-five years of his life studying the works of P. G. Wodehouse.
3 Moonraker
1Alexander Korda (1893–1956), a leading figure in the British film industry.
2Alan Searle (1904–85), Maugham’s secretary and companion.
3The proposed serialisation of Maugham’s short stories.
4Alexander Frere (1892–1984), Maugham’s editor at William Heinemann.
5Bond’s secretary, but in real life the aristocratic society figure Loelia Ponsonby (1902–93). Fleming often appropriated his friends’ names for characters in his books.
6The idea was used in From Russia with Love.
7Maugham was awarded the Companion of Honour that year. He had, however, been hoping for the more prestigious Order of Merit.
8F. Tennyson Jesse (1888–1958), English crime writer. Her book Moonraker was first published in 1927.
9Here and elsewhere, Fleming was ahead of his time in the art of what is known today as product placement – though in his case it was for verisimilitude’s sake rather than gain.
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