Profile of Ian Fleming on Famous Like Me

Ian Lancaster Fleming (May 28, 1908 – August 12, 1964) was an English author, best remembered for writing the James Bond series of novels as well as a children's story, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He is not to be confused with the legendary British actor of the same name.

Biography

Fleming was born in Mayfair, London, England, to the wealthy Scottish banker Valentine Fleming and his wife Evelyn St. Croix Fleming, and was a younger brother of travel writer, Peter Fleming. He was educated at Eton College, Fettes College and Sandhurst military academy, then studied languages on the Continent, first at Kitzbühel, Austria, then at Munich University, Bavaria, Germany; afterwards working, first as a journalist for the Reuters news service, and later as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, in Bishopsgate.

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy, recruited Fleming as personal assistant, first as Lieutenant, then as Commander. Fleming travelled to Whitby, Ontario to train at Camp X, a top secret training school for Allied forces. While in Naval Intelligence, Fleming conceived, and was author of Operation Ruthless, a plan — left unexecuted — for capturing the German naval version of the Wehrmacht's Enigma communications encoder. He also came up with an attempt to use British occultist Aleister Crowley to trick Rudolph Hess into attempting to contact a faux cell of anti-Churchill Englishmen in Britain. This plan wasn't used, however, as Rudolph Hess had flown to England and parachuted 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 (ISBN 0-631-13392-5), asserts Fleming conceived the plan that successfully lured Nazi Party Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess into flying to Scotland — in May 1941, to negotiate Anglo–German peace with Churchill — and consequent captivity; this claim has no other source.

As the DNI's personal assistant, Fleming's intelligence work was the background and experience for writing spy novels. The first James Bond novel was Casino Royale, published in 1953. It is believed the woman character, Vesper Lynd, was inspired by real-life SOE agent, Christine Granville; likewise, various inspirations for James Bond, the protagonist, have been suggested. Besides writing the twelve novels and nine short stories featuring James Bond, secret agent 007, Ian Fleming also is known for writing the children's novel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The books became wildly successful and part of 1950s popular culture even before being filmed, permitting Fleming to retire comfortably to his home in Jamaica.

In 1961 Fleming agreed to allow Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman produce a movie based on Dr. No. In 1962, Fleming suggested his cousin, actor Christopher Lee play Dr. Julius No, the villain of the first film; sources say Lee also was considered for the James Bond role. Although Lee was not selected for either role in Dr. No, he would be cast the eponymous villain of the film The Man with the Golden Gun, Francisco Scaramanga. Dr. No became a huge hit, and was followed by Broccoli and Saltzman producing From Russia With Love, which would be the last Bond picture Fleming would live to see released.

Ian Fleming was also a noted bibliophile, and put together an important library on the theme of significant books in the history of western civilization, books which had "started something". He particularly collected books relating to science and technology such as On the Origin of Species, but also included such milestones as Mein Kampf and Scouting for Boys. He was a major lender to the 1963 exhibition Printing and the Mind of Man and 600 books from his collection are now in the Lilly Library at Indiana University.

Early on the morning of August 12, 1964, Ian Fleming died of a heart attack in Canterbury, Kent, at age 56, and is interred in the churchyard cemetery in the village of Sevenhampton, near Swindon, next to his wife Ann Geraldine Mary Fleming (1913–1981) and their only son, Caspar Robert Fleming (1952–1975). Some notable surviving relatives of the writer include the composer Alan Fleming-Baird and the cellist Amyrilis Fleming.

On May 5, 1995, Pierce Brosnan, the fifth official James Bond actor, bought the gold-plated typewriter on which Ian Fleming wrote some of his James Bond novels in Jamaica for a reported £52,800.

Selected works

James Bond books

• Casino Royale (1953)¹
• Live and Let Die (1954)
• Moonraker (1955)²
• Diamonds Are Forever (1956)
• From Russia With Love (1957)
• Dr. No (1958)
• Goldfinger (1959)
• For Your Eyes Only (1960)³
• Thunderball (1961)⁴
• The Spy Who Loved Me (1962)⁵
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963)
• You Only Live Twice (1964)
• The Man with the Golden Gun (1965)⁶
• Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966)⁷

Notes

¹First U.S. paperback edition was retitled, You Asked for It.
²First U.S. paperback edition was retitled, Too Hot to Handle.
³Short story collection: (i) "From A View to a Kill," (ii) "For Your Eyes Only," (iii) "Risico," (iv) "Quantum of Solace", and (v) "The Hildebrand Rarity."
⁴Subject of a legal battle over story credit which led to the book's storyline also being credited to Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham; see the controversy over Thunderball
⁵Fleming gives co-author credit to "Vivienne Michel", the fictional heroine of the book; Fleming refused to allow a paperback edition to be published in the UK, but one was eventually published after his death. His agreement with Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman only allowed the use of the title for a movie.
⁶For years, it has been alleged that Kingsley Amis, and/or others, completed this novel as Fleming died before a finished manuscript was created. Many Fleming biographers dispute this; see the controversy over The Man with the Golden Gun.
⁷Posthumously compiled short story collection. Originally published with two stories: (i) "Octopussy" and (ii) "The Living Daylights". The 1967 paperback edition's title was shortened to Octopussy and a third story, "The Property of a Lady", lengthened its page count. In the 1990s, the collection's longer, original title was restored, and with the 2002 edition, the story, "007 in New York" (originally published in some editions of Thrilling Cities (see below) was added.

Children's story

• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1964)

Non-fiction

• The Diamond Smugglers (1957)
• Thrilling Cities (1963; the American editions contain the short story, "007 in New York")

Unfinished/unpublished works

• Fleming kept a scrapbook containing notes and ideas for future James Bond stories. Included were fragments of possible short stories or novels featuring Bond that were never published. Excepts from some of these can be found in The Life of Ian Fleming by John Pearson.
• 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.

Biographical films

• Goldeneye: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1989. A TV movie starring Charles Dance as Ian Fleming. The movie focuses on Fleming's life during World War II, and his love life that led to the 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 which is depicted with the kind of Bond-like action and glamour that Fleming secretly wished it could have been.
• Ian Fleming: Bondmaker, 2005. A TV docudrama first broadcast on BBC in August 2005.

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