Shaken, stirred and with a licence to chill
James Bond aficionado Adam Bloodworth follows in the footsteps of author Ian Fleming in Jamaica – and spies some of the inspiration for the 007 franchise
Arum and coke seems an odd choice for toasting the new James Bond film, No Time To Die, but my drinking partner doesn’t like vodka martinis. We are sitting high above the powder-white Jamaican coastline at the Jamaica Inn hotel in Ocho Rios, a favourite of Ian Fleming, and the longer we stay, the more the rum feels out of place. How so? Because it was right here in this very bar, I learn, that Fleming devised the famous “shaken not stirred” vodka martini.
I am drinking at a table on the terrace which is, I learn, the exact spot Fleming loved so much. Between 1946 and 1964, the Bond author escaped Britain for the peace and tranquillity of Jamaica for two months each winter, where he would conjure inspiration for the Bond novels. It was here he would relax and socialise with a cohort of wartime friends – the likes of Noël Coward and Roald Dahl – away from a nation he perceived to be tirelessly politically correct. Fleming once posed the question: “Would the books have been born if I had not been living in the gorgeous vacuum of a Jamaican holiday?” to which he replied to himself: “I doubt it.”
Back at the Inn, general manager Kyle Mais is regaling me with the vodka martini story. “Fleming and a bunch of friends were having drinks one night when they decided to have martinis,” he says (I get the sense he has told this story once or twice before). “But we are in Jamaica; it’s hot and humid. So they add ice to the shaker and ask the bartender to shake it for as long as he can. He pours it into a martini glass and that is where the concept of shaken, not stirred, came from.”
The Jamaica Inn is one of several luxury properties across Jamaica that can boast a storied James Bond past. And gloriously for Bond fans, very little has changed in the 60 years since the first Bond film, Dr No, was filmed here. Recognisable locations from that film and 1973’s Live and Let Die lie largely unbothered by locals, unchanged with the passing of time.
“Bond is retiring where it all began,” Kyle responds, when I ask why he thinks Bond returns to Jamaica for a fourth outing in No Time To Die (parts of The Man With the Golden Gun are also set in Jamaica but it was filmed in Thailand, Hong Kong and Macau). Replacing my drink, barman Derek joins in by gesturing across the hotel lawn towards the ocean. “The only thing that has changed over the years is the coconut palm trees. Most of those washed away.”
The palms may have gone, but Derek asserts that all else is “basically the same” as it was in Fleming’s day. He should know: Derek is in his 40th year of employment when we meet. Until recently another hotel employee would have been able to regale me with stories of the filming of Dr No in 1962: Teddy Tucker, who sadly died last April, began working at Jamaica Inn in 1958 as a bar porter and went on to run the hotel’s beach bar, renamed Teddy’s Bar in his honour, until his death after 62 years of service.
A few miles down the coastline at Goldeneye, Fleming’s private villa in Oracabessa Bay, there is a more obvious sense of Bond history. (You would certainly hope so for the price tag at this former home turned lux retreat.) In the villa, the minimalist style Fleming enjoyed so much required very little modernising: large oblong windows frame the sea view and only a few expensive looking sofas and carefully positioned coffee table books give away the secret that this private home is now an incredibly expensive hotel suite. Access to the whole Fleming Villa starts at about £7,600 per night.
A handmade-looking wooden plank bridge leads down to a row of oceanview villas that are also part of the hotel. On either side of the walkway, simple metal stairways give access to secluded pockets of ocean. An infinity pool curves flirtatiously by the bar.
“You sometimes see guests arrive to breakfast with outfits copied from the Bond films,” a staff member tells me as we look at the blue and white waves from a reception room stuffed with Bond paraphernalia. “Someone once wore a famous and not particularly flattering outfit worn by Sean Connery in one of the films: shorts and a blue collared top. I saw someone else with it another time, too.”
A short drive into the Blue Mountains along a steep side road takes me to Firefly, once the hilltop hideaway of Noël Coward. Here, he would seek discretion with his partner Graham Payn and a different sort of discretion with Fleming: in the mountains the duo would enjoy rampant and uncensored creative and political debates. Coward said in his final interview with The New York Times that “one’s real inside self is a private place and should always stay like that… I have taken a lot of trouble with my public face”.
This pronouncement feels especially pertinent at the remote Firefly, where Coward’s garden grave looks out to the view of the sprawling and magnificent ocean he must have so enjoyed watching from this vantage point. Inside the house, piles of crockery lie untidied and a monogrammed towel hangs in the bathroom, giving the sense that the late playwright has merely popped to the shops.
Laughing Waters in Ocho Rios is perhaps the island’s most iconic Bond attraction. It is here that Dr No’s Honey Ryder, played by Ursula Andress, rises from the water to meet Bond. Private beach status means the spot remains as untouched today as it was for the film shoot. “We haven’t had any Bond visitors in three months,” one staff member tells me as I am signed onto the discreet property by security. (Request access from the Jamaican tourist board ahead of your trip to visit.)
Almost nothing seems to have changed here since Connery serenaded Andress with Under the Mango Tree. Eager fans will remember a sandbank where Bond, Ryder and Quarrell hide from Dr No’s henchman. Storms and erosion have made role-playing that particular scene impossible as the sandbank has disappeared, but I would recommend sauntering out of the water in swimwear just as Honey did. (One word of warning: you will have to bring your own conch shell to recreate the scene, as shells on the beach are scarce and tiny.)
The beach is named after the Laughing Waters waterfall, which babbles away just feet from where Andress would have posed for the promo shot that she has since spent decades autographing for fans at memorabilia shows. Dr No die-hards will remember Ryder, Bond and Quarrell escaping up this waterfall to evade the bad guys. Recreating this scene is easier – or you could simply remove your shoes and paddle past the tumbling falls to experience the sensation of the cool mountain water clashing with the bathtub-warm ocean. Try it: you will be stirred, not shaken.