Ian Fleming

3/5

Biography

Born into a wealthy and influential English family, Ian Fleming spent his early years attending top British schools such as Eton and Sandhurst military academy. He took to writing while schooling in Kitzbuhel, Austria, and upon failing the entrance requirements for Foreign Service joined the news agency Reuters as a journalist -- winning the respect of his peers for his coverage of a "show trial" in Russia of several Royal Engineers on espionage charges. Fleming briefly worked in the financial sector for the family bank, but just prior to the Second World War, was recruited into British Naval Intelligence where he excelled, shortly achieving the rank of Commander. When the war ended, Fleming retired to Jamaica where he built a house called "Goldeneye," took up writing full-time and created the character that would make him famous -- British Secret Service agent James Bond, in a novel called "Casino Royale." Fleming spent the rest of his life writing and traveling the world, but as his Bond character reached new heights of popularity on movie screens, Fleming was in ailing health. He died of a heart attack in England in August 1964 at the age of 56.

  • Active years
  • 88
  • Primary profession
  • Writer·miscellaneous
  • Nationality
  • Scottish (Scots· Scotsman)
  • Gender
  • Male
  • Birth date
  • 28 May 1908
  • Place of birth
  • Mayfair
  • Death date
  • 1964-08-12
  • Death age
  • 56
  • Place of death
  • Canterbury
  • Cause of death
  • Natural causes
  • Children
  • Spouses
  • Ann Fleming
  • Education
  • Eton College·Royal Military College· Sandhurst·Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • Knows language
  • English language
  • Member of
  • Fitzroy Football Club·Western Bulldogs·Kent County Cricket Club·Dundee F.C.·Brechin City F.C.·Kilmarnock F.C.·Sheffield Wednesday F.C.·Aberdeen F.C.
  • Parents
  • Valentine Fleming·Evelyn St. Croix Fleming
  • Influence
  • Peter Fleming·

Movies

TV

Books

Awards

Trivia

Half-brother of cellist Amaryllis Fleming.

Featured in the novel "James Bond: The Unauthorized Biography of 007" by John Pearson. This novel, which is considered part of the Bond canon by some, suggests that Bond was real and that Fleming wrote stories based on Bonds real-life adventures as a strange way of hiding classified information "in plain sight."

Cousin of Christopher Lee.

He died on his sons birthday (12th of August 1964). Casper died of a drug overdose in Jamaica in 1974. Anne survived them both, and died in 1981. Her son by her first marriage, Raymond Arthur ONeill, is now the 4th Baron ONeill.

His wife, Anne Geraldine Charteris, was the granddaughter of the 9th Earl of Wemyss, and had been previously married to Shane ONeill, 3rd Lord ONeill (she was his widow) and then to Esmond Cecil Harmsworth, 2nd Viscount Rothermere, whom she divorced to marry Ian. Anne and Ian had one son, Casper Robert Fleming, born 12th of August 1952.

The largest collection of his novels is located at the Lilly Library on the Indiana University campus, Bloomington, IN.

His James Bond novels and story elements were originally used in the films, beginning with Dr. No . Until Casino Royale , the last James Bond movie to use elements from Flemings stories was Licence to Kill .

His home in Jamaica was named "Goldeneye" and was the source of the name of the 1995 James Bond movie GoldenEye .

His elder brother Peter Fleming (a travel writer of some note in the 1930s) was married until his death to Celia Johnson ( Brief Encounter ). His nieces Kate Fleming (now Grimond) and Lucy Fleming are now his literary heirs.

Supposedly modeled the character of James Bond after Merlin Minshall, a man who worked for Mr. Fleming during WWII as a spy.

Raymond Chandler was a fan of the James Bond novels and urged Fleming to continue writing them in the mid-1950s.

His nephew, Nichol Fleming, wrote an adventure story in the Bond style titled "Counter Paradise" in 1968.

Distantly related by marriage to Leslie Charteris.

He initially objected to the casting of Sean Connery as James Bond in Dr. No because he felt that Connery was too "unrefined". He later changed his mind after seeing Connerys performance in the finished film.

Is portrayed by Jason Connery in The Secret Life of Ian Fleming . Jason is the son of Sean Connery , who became famous for playing James Bond in the 1960s.

Flemings health had never been strong, and it was not helped by his lifestyle. At 38, complaining of chest pains, he had informed a startled doctor that he consumed 70 cigarettes and a bottle of gin a day. In 1961 he had a massive heart attack, which was followed by a series of increasingly debilitating illnesses, including a severe chest infection and pleurisy. Finally, on 11 August 1964--the night before his sons 12th birthday--he collapsed. He died the next morning on his sons birthday.

Film stars who were an influence on his vision of James Bond included David Niven , Rex Harrison , Cary Grant and Hoagy Carmichael.

He was a bird-watcher and supposedly named "James Bond" after an ornithologist of the same name (See James Bond ) whose book, "The Birds of the West Indies", he had read. He borrowed the name because it was the "dullest" name he could think of. The book title "Goldeneye" is also a birding reference, as goldeneyes are a type of duck.

As a member of British Intelligence during WWII, he worked with the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the predecessor to the CIA. He contributed his experience and expertise to the OSS and later helped the Americans set up the CIA.

His scrapbook was sold at a charity auction in December 1992 by his step-daughter, Fionn ONeill. It was auctioned at Sothebys in New Bond Street, which was used as a location in Octopussy . Reportedly it was acquired for 30,000 by Flemings nieces Lucy, Kate and Nichol. Proceeds went to the London Library.

Geoffrey Jenkins collaborated with him on a James Bond story between 1957-64. Glidrose Publishers contracted Jenkins to develop the story into a full novel after Fleming died in 1964. The book was entitled "Per Fine Ounce" but has never been available to readers and published.

Supposedly based the character of James Bond on real-life spy Sidney Reilly.

Was a huge fan of Studebakers. One of his last cars was a Studebaker Avanti.

The reason he excelled at his studies was to please his mother, a beautiful but cold woman who never showed him any affection.

In 1995 the gold-plated Royal typewriter on which he hammered out many of his 007 novels was auctioned by Christies of London for 50,000 to a buyer who still remains anonymous. This is the most expensive typewriter to date.

According to the National Geographic, CNN and the BBC, he patterned James Bond after Dusko Popov , a Serbian double agent nicknamed Tricycle. Popov was a worthy predecessor to the fictional spy James Bond. He was noted as a womanizer and was dating many famous actresses (some of them were Hollywood stars). He also stayed at the best hotels, ate at top restaurants, visited smart casinos and was a bon vivant. While Fleming worked in British naval intelligence during WWII, he was detailed to trail this charismatic spy, who eventually became a double agent for the British (among other intelligence work, he provided information to the FBI that the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor).

Upon his death, his remains were interred at St. Andrews Churchyard in Sevenhampton, Gloucestershire, England.

Not to be confused with the creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming.

Fair haired, dapper Australian-born character actor in British films, often as public servants or judicial figures. Acted on stage from 1904. He was best known as a rather self-effacing Dr. Watson opposite Arthur Wontner in several Sherlock Holmes films made in the mid-1930s.

(July 2011) West Deptford, NJ- Office manager

Vocalist of Ritual, Black Metal band from L.A.

Quotes

[mid-1950s] My James Bond novels are really for a very specialized,limited market. I am not counting the great unwashed public and do not,expect them to fancy anything I write.

I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find,James Bond was much better than something more interesting like,"Peregrine Maltravers". Exotic things would happen to and around him,but he would be a neutral figure--an anonymous blunt instrument wielded,by a government department.

[interview in The Daily Express, 1962] The target of my books lay,somewhere between the solar plexus and the upper thigh.

Men want a woman whom they can turn on and off like a light switch.

[on how he wrote "Casino Royale"] Writing about 2,000 words in three,hours every morning, "Casino Royale" dutifully produced itself. I wrote,nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had,looked back at what I had written the day before, I might have,despaired.

I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

[his last words, reportedly to the ambulance attendants] Awfully sorry,to trouble you chaps.

You only live twice:Once when you are bornAnd once when you look death in the face,I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn’t care, or at least I told myself that I wouldn’t care, because none of them would ever own him—own any larger piece of him than I now did.

He shrugged his shoulders to shift the pain of failure---the pain that is so much greater than the pleasure of success.

If you fail at the large things it means you have not large ambitions. Concentration, focus - that is all. The aptitudes come, the tools forge themselves.

The conventional parabola--sentiment, the touch of the hand, the kiss, the passionate kiss, the feel of the body, the climax in the bed, then more bed, then less bed, then the boredom, the tears and the final bitterness--was to him shameful and hypocritical.

When she had failed once or twice to respond to some conversational gambit or other, Bond also relapsed into silence and occupied himself with his own gloomy thoughts.

You are about to awake when you dream that you are dreaming.

His headache was still sitting over his right eye as if it had been nailed there.

Unfortunately most ways of making big money take a long time. By the time one has made the money one is too old to enjoy it.

Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.

All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful.

She explained to me later that she must have been possessed by a subconscious desire to be raped. Well she found me in the mountains and she was raped - by me.

For her, sex was nothing more than an itch. And this phsychological and physiological neutrality of hers at once relieved her of so many human emotions and sentiments and desires. Sexual neutrality was the essence of coldness in an individual. It was a great and wonderful thing to be born with.

Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment.

You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death. So take it easy.

A scar had been beaten into his mind which would only heal by experience.

He had seen how the spirit, the reserves in [Bond], could pull him out of badly damaged conditions that would have broken the normal human being. He knew how a desperate situation would bring out those reserves again, how the will to live would spring up again in a real emergency. He remembered how countless neurotic patients had disappeared for ever from his consulting rooms when the last war had broken out. The big worry had driven out the smaller ones, the greater fear the lesser. He made up his mind. He turned back to M. "Give him one more chance.

It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.

Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.

Never say ‘no’ to adventures. Always say ‘yes,’ otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life.

Follow your fate, and be satisfied with it, and be glad not to be a second-hand motor salesman, or a yellow-press journalist, pickled in gin and nicotine, or a cripple - or dead.

In the centre of Bond was a hurricane-room, the kind of citadel found in old-fashioned houses in the tropics. These rooms are small, strongly built cells in the heart of the house, in the middle of the ground floor and sometimes dug down into its foundations. To this cell the owner and his family retire if the storm threatens to destroy the house, and they stay there until the danger is past. Bond went to his hurricane room only when the situation was beyond his control and no other possible action could be taken. Now he retired to this citadel, closed his mind to the hell of noise and violent movement, and focused on a single stitch in the back of the seat in front of him, waiting with slackened nerves for whatever fate had decided for B. E. A. Flight No. 130.

From the first, Istanbul had given him the impression of a town where, with the night, horror creeps out of the stones. It seemed to him a town the centuries had so drenched in blood and violence that, when daylight went out, the ghosts of its dead were its only population.

In angry protest the red telephone splintered the silence.

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success,Those who deserve to die, die the death they deserve.

Outside the bus the smell of sulphur hit Bond with sickening force. It was a horrible smell, from somewhere down in the stomach of the world.

Prohibition is the trigger of crime.

Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due.

Danger, like a third man, was standing in the room.

Never job backwards. What might have been was a waste of time.

The naked man who lay splayed out on his face beside the swimming pool might have been dead.

Champagne and Benzedrine! Never again.

Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.

History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.

Luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued. But he was honest enough to admit that he had never yet been made to suffer by cards or by women. One day, and he accepted the fact he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck.

Just as, at least in one religion, accidia is the first of the cardinal sins, so bordom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned.

When the odds are hopeless, when all seems to be lost, then is the time to be calm, to make a show of authority – at least of indifference,And people with obsessions, reflected Bond, were blind to danger.

You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.

Older women are best, because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.

As a result of 50 years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits. . . the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. .

Comments