Background and career
Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father Valentine Fleming was the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing. While working for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units: 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. He drew from his wartime service and his career as a journalist for much of the background, detail, and depth of his James Bond novels. Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1952, at age 44. It was a success, and three print runs were commissioned to meet the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two collections of short stories followed between 1953 and 1966. The novels centre around James Bond, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond is also known by his code number, 007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The Bond stories rank among the best-selling series of fictional books of all time, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964) and two works of non-fiction. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming 14th on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Fleming was married to the British socialite Anne Charteris. She had divorced her husband, the 2nd Viscount Rothermere, because of her affair with the author. Fleming and Charteris had a son, Caspar. A heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life, Fleming died from complications of heart disease in 1964, at the age of 56. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously; other writers have since produced Bond novels. Fleming's creation has appeared in film twenty-seven times, portrayed by six actors in the official film series.
Ian Lancaster Fleming was born on 28 May 1908, at 27 Green Street in the wealthy London district of Mayfair. His mother was Evelyn "Eve" Fleming (née Rose) and his father was Valentine Fleming, the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 to 1917. As an infant he briefly lived with his family at Braziers Park in Oxfordshire. Fleming was a grandson of the Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who co-founded the Scottish American Investment Company and the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. In 1914, with the start of the First World War, Valentine Fleming joined "C" Squadron of the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars, and rose to the rank of major. He was killed by German shelling on the Western Front on 20 May 1917. Winston Churchill wrote an obituary for him that appeared in The Times. Because Valentine had owned an estate at Arnisdale, his death was commemorated on the Glenelg War Memorial. Fleming's elder brother Peter became a travel writer and married actress Celia Johnson. Peter served with the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, was later commissioned under Colin Gubbins to help establish the Auxiliary Units, and became involved in behind-the-lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war. Fleming had two younger brothers, Richard and Michael, who also served in the Second World War. Richard served with Scottish regiments (the Lovat Scouts and Seaforth Highlanders) and was the father of author James Fleming. Michael died of wounds in October 1940 after being captured at Normandy while serving with the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Fleming also had a younger maternal half-sister born out of wedlock, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming (1925–1999), whose father was the artist Augustus John. Amaryllis was conceived during a long-term affair between John and Evelyn which had started in 1923, six years after the death of Valentine.
In 1914 Fleming attended Durnford School, a preparatory school on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. He did not enjoy his time at Durnford; he suffered unpalatable food, physical hardship and bullying.
In 1921 Fleming enrolled at Eton College. Not a high achiever academically, he excelled at athletics and held the title of Victor Ludorum ("Winner of the Games") for two years between 1925 and 1927. He also edited a school magazine, The Wyvern. His lifestyle at Eton brought him into conflict with his housemaster, E. V. Slater, who disapproved of Fleming's attitude, his hair oil, his ownership of a car and his relations with women. Slater persuaded Fleming's mother to remove him from Eton a term early for a crammer course to gain entry to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He spent less than a year there, leaving in 1927 without gaining a commission, after contracting gonorrhea. In 1927, to prepare Fleming for possible entry into the Foreign Office, his mother sent him to the Tennerhof in Kitzbühel, Austria, a small private school run by the Adlerian disciple and former British spy Ernan Forbes Dennis and his novelist wife, Phyllis Bottome. After improving his language skills there, he studied briefly at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Geneva. While in Geneva, Fleming began a romance with Monique Panchaud de Bottens and the couple became engaged just before he returned to London in September 1931 to take the Foreign Office exam. He scored an adequate pass standard, but failed to get a job offer. His mother intervened in his affairs, lobbying Sir Roderick Jones, head of Reuters News Agency, and in October 1931 he was given a position as a sub-editor and journalist for the company. In April 1933 Fleming spent time in Moscow, where he covered the Stalinist show trial of six engineers from the British company Metropolitan-Vickers, generally known as the Metro-Vickers Affair. While there he applied for an interview with Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and was amazed to receive a personally signed note apologising for not being able to attend. Upon returning from Moscow he ended the engagement to Monique after his mother threatened to cut off his trust fund allowance. Fleming bowed to family pressure again in October 1933, and went into banking with a position at the financiers Cull & Co. In 1935 he moved to Rowe and Pitman on Bishopsgate as a stockbroker. Fleming was unsuccessful in both roles. The same year, Fleming met Muriel Wright whilst skiing in Kitzbühel, and began a long-term relationship with her. After her death during a World War II bombing raid in London in 1944, Fleming was overcome with guilt and remorse, and it is generally thought that she provided the inspiration for the women he was to create for his future novels. Early in 1939 Fleming began an affair with Ann O'Neill, née Charteris, who was married to the 3rd Baron O'Neill; she was also having an affair with Esmond Harmsworth, the heir to Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail.
In May 1939 Fleming was recruited by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy, to become his personal assistant. He joined the organisation full-time in August 1939, with the codename "17F", and worked out of a Room 39 at the Admiralty. Fleming's biographer, Andrew Lycett, notes that Fleming had "no obvious qualifications" for the role. As part of his appointment, Fleming was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in July 1939, initially as lieutenant, but was promoted to lieutenant commander a few months later. Fleming proved invaluable as Godfrey's personal assistant and excelled in administration. Godfrey was known as an abrasive character who made enemies within government circles. He frequently used Fleming as a liaison with other sections of the government's wartime administration, such as the Secret Intelligence Service, the Political Warfare Executive, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Prime Minister's staff. On 29 September 1939, soon after the start of the war, Godfrey circulated a memorandum that, "bore all the hallmarks of ... Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming", according to historian Ben Macintyre. It was called the Trout Memo and compared the deception of an enemy in wartime to fly fishing. The memo contained several schemes to be considered for use against the Axis powers to lure U-boats and German surface ships towards minefields. Number 28 on the list was an idea to plant misleading papers on a corpse that would be found by the enemy; the suggestion is similar to Operation Mincemeat, the 1943 plan to conceal the intended invasion of Italy from North Africa, which was developed by Charles Cholmondoley in October 1942. The recommendation in the Trout Memo was titled: "A Suggestion (not a very nice one)", and continued: "The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thomson: a corpse dressed as an airman, with despatches in his pockets, could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that has failed. I understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the Naval Hospital, but, of course, it would have to be a fresh one." In 1940 Fleming and Godfrey contacted Kenneth Mason, Professor of Geography at Oxford University, about the preparation of reports on the geography of countries involved in military operations. These reports were the precursors of the Naval Intelligence Division Geographical Handbook Series produced between 1941 and 1946. Operation Ruthless, a plan aimed at obtaining details of the Enigma codes used by the German Navy, was instigated by a memo written by Fleming to Godfrey on 12 September 1940. The idea was to "obtain" a Nazi bomber, man it with a German-speaking crew dressed in Luftwaffe uniforms, and crash it into the English Channel. The crew would then attack their German rescuers and bring their boat and Enigma machine back to England. Much to the annoyance of Alan Turing and Peter Twinn at Bletchley Park, the mission was never carried out. According to Fleming's niece, Lucy, an official of the Royal Air Force pointed out that if they were to drop a downed Heinkel bomber in the English Channel, it would probably sink rather quickly. Fleming also worked with Colonel "Wild Bill" Donovan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's special representative on intelligence co-operation between London and Washington. In May 1941 Fleming accompanied Godfrey to the United States, where he assisted in writing a blueprint for the Office of the Coordinator of Information, the department that turned into the Office of Strategic Services and eventually became the CIA. Admiral Godfrey put Fleming in charge of Operation Goldeneye between 1941 and 1942; Goldeneye was a plan to maintain an intelligence framework in Spain in the event of a German takeover of the territory. Fleming's plan involved maintaining communication with Gibraltar and launching sabotage operations against the Nazis. In 1941 he liaised with Donovan over American involvement in a measure intended to ensure the Germans did not dominate the seaways.
In 1942 Fleming formed a unit of commandos, known as No. 30 Commando or 30 Assault Unit (30AU), composed of specialist intelligence troops. 30AU's job was to be near the front line of an advance—sometimes in front of it—to seize enemy documents from previously targeted headquarters. The unit was based on a German group headed by Otto Skorzeny, who had undertaken similar activities in the Battle of Crete in May 1941. The German unit was thought by Fleming to be "one of the most outstanding innovations in German intelligence". Fleming did not fight in the field with the unit, but he selected targets and directed operations from the rear. On its formation the unit was 30 strong, but it grew to five times that size. The unit was filled with men from other commando units, and trained in unarmed combat, safe-cracking and lock-picking at the SOE facilities. In late 1942 Captain (later Rear-Admiral) Edmund Rushbrooke replaced Godfrey as head of the Naval Intelligence Division, and Fleming's influence in the organisation declined, although he retained control over 30AU. Fleming was unpopular with the unit's members, who disliked his referring to them as his "Red Indians". Before the 1944 Normandy landings, most of 30AU's operations were in the Mediterranean, although it is possible that it secretly participated in the Dieppe Raid in a failed pinch raid for an Enigma machine and related materials. Fleming observed the raid from HMS Fernie, 700 yards offshore. Because of its successes in Sicily and Italy, 30AU became greatly trusted by naval intelligence. In March 1944 Fleming oversaw the distribution of intelligence to Royal Navy units in preparation for Operation Overlord. He was replaced as head of 30AU on 6 June 1944, but maintained some involvement. He visited 30AU in the field during and after Overlord, especially following an attack on Cherbourg for which he was concerned that the unit had been incorrectly used as a regular commando force rather than an intelligence-gathering unit. This wasted the men's specialist skills, risked their safety on operations that did not justify the use of such skilled operatives, and threatened the vital gathering of intelligence. Afterwards, the management of these units was revised. He also followed the unit into Germany after it located, in Tambach Castle, the German naval archives from 1870. In December 1944 Fleming was posted on an intelligence fact-finding trip to the Far East on behalf of the Director of Naval Intelligence. Much of the trip was spent identifying opportunities for 30AU in the Pacific; the unit saw little action because of the Japanese surrender.
