Yes, the name is Fleming James (erm) Ian Fleming
CASINO ROYALE, the book which introduced James Bond to the world and kick-started the iconic film franchise, turns 70 tomorrow.
Like his fictional 007, the man behind the book and the character had a rollercoaster life too.
As well as working as an undercover agent, author Ian Fleming was a harddrinking womanizer, just like the MI6 operative from the pages of his novels.
He also had habits that would make even Bond blush.
Born in London in 1908, the son of a beautiful socialite and an MP who died fighting in World War One, Fleming was schooled at Eton College. He was badly beaten, academically poor but sporty.
And like the backstory of his character Bond, Fleming would leave after getting into trouble with a maid.
He went to train as an Army officer at Sandhurst instead, and his tutor said that he’d make a good soldier “provided always that the ladies don’t ruin him”.
Ironically, he contracted a sexually transmitted disease from a prostitute and ended up leaving there too, later attending an Austrian school run by an ex-MI6 operative. After university, Ian tried his hand at banking and journalism but what he really excelled at was gambling, partying and seducing women.
He began an affair with model Muriel Wright, who would be killed in an air raid in 1944 which left him devastated.
But he’d already been juggling flings with other women, including maintaining a relationship with upper-crust Ann Charteris during her marriages with two different aristocrats.
One of his friends said: “No one I have ever known had sex so much on the brain as Ian.”
During World War Two, Fleming worked in naval intelligence, devising espionage plots such as Operation Mincemeat.
It saw a dead homeless man, disguised in British uniform, dropped into the sea with a briefcase holding “top secret” documents designed to trick Nazi agents into thinking the Allies weren’t about to invade Sicily in 1943 – which they then did successfully.
During the conflict, Fleming formed the specialist No 30 Commando unit and sometimes went on intelligence
missions himself in France and Germany. In 1945, he moved to Jamaica where he built a quirky concrete home called Goldeneye, named after one of his wartime operations. t later gave its moniker to a 1995 Bond movie. Here, he wrote for a living While smoking 80 cigarettes a day and sinking Bond-style martinis and gin.
When warned about how much booze he was drinking, Fleming simply switched to isky. Like 007, he adored dgets and fast cars, d also loved entaining celeb ls such as Noel ward and David ven. More bizarrely, he pt a large collection erotica which he’d oudly show off to guests.
When Ann fell pregnant with his second child – the first with having been stillborn – she finally got a divorce and two were wed in 1952.
They had heated sex sessions that included sado-masochism. But it didn’t stop Fleming bedding other women, often wives of his own pals. Once describing women as “like pets” he would also claim that he only sat down to start penning Casino Royale to take his mind off getting married. Finished in a mere eight weeks and published on April 13, 1953, it was a hit.
Fleming would go on to write 12 Bond books in total, selling more than 100million copies to date.
The book’s hero James Bond was named after a prominent birdwatcher. Fleming said he wanted “the dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find... yet very masculine”.
The character was partly based on his dashing older brother and war hero Peter.
But Fleming’s description of Bond was also physically similar to himself and 007 was no doubt the fantasy of the ultimate agent he’d have liked to have been.
MI6 chief “M” was based on his old intelligence boss, and Miss Moneypenny on wartime secretaries he had known. Bond’s first love, Vesper Lynd, is thought to have been inspired by Polish-born British spy Krystyna Skarbek. Fleming used the surnames of fellow school pupils he’d disliked, such as Blofeld and Scaramanga, for his villains. And his story Octopussy was inspired by a boat given to him by lover Blanche Blackwell.
She may have been the basis for the character Honey Ryder, famously played by Ursula Andress in the first Bond movie Dr No, in 1962.
After overcoming doubts about Sean Connery in the role of 007, Fleming found the filming of his novels “a riot”.
But he would only see two made and had apparently already tired of his character, saying: “I used to believe – sufficiently – in Bonds and blondes and bombs.
“Now, I fear the zest may have gone. I shall definitely kill off Bond in my next book.” But it was Fleming himself who would die – suddenly, from a heart attack – in 1964, aged 56, while his character lived on as a movie sensation.
The writer’s death came on the 12th birthday of his son, shortly after he’d written the children’s book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for Caspar.
It was a world away from the “ironical, brutal and cold” Bond of the gritty Casino Royale.