Ian Fleming

Ian Lancaster Fleming (May 28, 1908 – August 12, 1964) was an English author, journalist and ex-Navy Commander. Fleming is best remembered for creating the character of James Bond and chronicling his 007 adventures in twelve novels and nine short stories. Additionally, Fleming wrote the children's story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and two non-fiction books.

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Easton Press Ian Fleming books

  14 volume complete James Bond 007 set - 1990 - including titles in order:
Casino Royale
Live and Let Die
Moonraker
Diamonds Are Forever
From Russia with Love
Dr. No
Goldfinger
For Your Eyes Only
Thunderball
The Spy Who Loved Me
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
You Only Live Twice
The Man with The Golden Gun
Octopussy and The Living Daylights

  From Russia with Love (published by Easton Press as stand alone James Bond edition and bound in red leather) - 1990

  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Magical Car - 2017

  James Bond The Legacy 007 By John Cork and Bruce Scivally - 2002

  50 Years of James Bond by Life Magazine - 2013

  Trigger Mortis - A James Bond novel by Anthony Horowitz and commissioned by the estate of Ian Fleming - signed limited edition - 2017

 

Author Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming was born in Mayfair, London, to Valentine Fleming, a Member of Parliament, and his wife Evelyn St. Croix Rose. Ian was the younger brother of travel writer Peter Fleming and the older brother of Michael and Richard Fleming (1910–77). He also had an illegitimate half-sister, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming. He was the grandson of Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who founded the Scottish American Investment Trust and merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. (since 2000 part of JP Morgan Chase.) He was cousin to actor Christopher Lee and actress Dame Celia Johnson was his sister-in-law (wife of his brother Peter), and great-uncle to the composer Alan Fleming-Baird. His nephew Matthew Fleming played cricket for England.

Fleming was educated at Sunningdale School in Berkshire, Eton College, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He was Victor Ludorum at Eton two years running, something that had been achieved only once before him. He found Sandhurst to be uncongenial, and after an early departure from there, his mother sent him to study languages on the continent. He first went to a small private establishment in Kitzbühel, Austria, run by the Adlerian disciples Ernan Forbes Dennis and his American wife, the novelist Phyllis Bottome, to improve his German and prepare him for the Foreign Office exams, then to Munich University, and, finally, to the University of Geneva to improve his French. He was unsuccessful in his application to join the Foreign Office, and subsequently worked as a sub-editor and journalist for the Reuters news service, including time in 1933 in Moscow, and then as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, in Bishopsgate. He was a member of Boodle's, the gentleman's club in St. James's Street, from 1944 until his death in 1964.

His marriage in Jamaica in 1952 to Anne Charteris, daughter of Lord Wemyss and former wife of Viscount Rothermere, was witnessed by his friend, playwright Noel Coward. 

World War II

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy, recruited Fleming (then a reserve subaltern in the Black Watch) as his personal assistant. He was commissioned first as a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve lieutenant and subsequently promoted to Lieutenant Commander, then Commander. His known codename was 17F.

In 1940, Fleming and Godfrey contacted Kenneth Mason, Professor of Geography at Oxford University, about preparing reports devoted to the geography of countries engaged in military operations. These reports were the precursors of the Naval Intelligence Division Geographical Handbook Series produced between 1941 and 1946.

He also conceived of a plan to use British occultist Aleister Crowley to trick Rudolf Hess into attempting to contact a fake cell of anti-Churchill Englishmen in Britain, but this plan was not used because Rudolf Hess had flown to Scotland in an attempt to broker peace behind Hitler's back. Anthony Masters' book The Man Who Was M: The Life of Charles Henry Maxwell Knight asserts Fleming conceived the plan that lured Hess into flying to Scotland, in May 1941, to negotiate Anglo–German peace with Churchill, and resulted in Hess's capture: this claim has no other source.

Fleming also formulated Operation Goldeneye, a plan to maintain communication with Gibraltar as well as a plan of defence in the unlikely event that Spain joined the Axis Powers and, together with Germany, invaded the Mediterranean colony. 

30 Assault Unit

In 1944, Fleming gained control of a specialist unit of commandos, known as 30 Commando, or 30 Assault Unit (30AU). He neither founded the organisation, nor was he their field commander. He was, however, the planner. As an intelligence officer at the Naval Intelligence Division (NID), he had an idea of what information and equipment the enemy had that was of interest to the Allies and where it was likely to be located. He detailed the 'scalps' he required and his "Red Indians", as he called them, set off to acquire them. The basic idea lay in the work of the Abwehr field units, which had been noted in the early campaigns of the war and now taken up with a vengeance by their enemy.

30 Assault Unit were teams of trained commandos, specialising in targeting enemy headquarters, to secure documentation and items of equipment with an intelligence value, that the ordinary Allied soldier, or even commando, might ignore or even destroy. They trained in lock picking, safe cracking, unarmed combat, and general techniques and skills for collecting intelligence. The unit contained some of the most 'gung-ho' operatives in the commandos. The term AU has no connection with the Auxiliary Units in which Fleming's elder brother had served.

The unit did not operate as a single unit, but as specialist teams that would attach themselves to whatever main force would get them closest to their individual targets. In the final stage, the teams were trained and equipped to fight their own way into a headquarters building and secure whatever items they required, before the enemy extracted it themselves, or destroyed it before leaving. To adapt a phrase, whilst they may not have relied on fear, they did rely on surprise, toughness and ruthless efficiency. Prior to D-Day, Fleming had only indirect access, as most of the action was away in the Mediterranean. However, because of their successes in Sicily and Italy, 30AU (based at the The Marine Hotel Littlehampton, West Sussex, now a public house and venue for the annual reunion of the 30AU veterans) became greatly trusted by naval intelligence. Having seen the scope of its achievements and its potential, with the right support and the right direction, to deliver even more, the unit was much enlarged and it was given direct tasks: specific items and documents to acquire. Fleming was the man who would give these specific directives.

Fleming visited 30AU in the field during and after Operation Overlord, especially after the Cherbourg attack. He was concerned that the unit had been incorrectly used as a main line Commando force, rather than in its intelligence gathering role. This wasted the men's specialist skills; hazarded them on a task not appropriate to the risk; threatened either the total loss, or devaluation through delay, of the intelligence priorities. From then on, the management of the units was revised.

As a desk-bound officer for much of the war, Fleming yearned to be connected with real heroes and with direct action. Access to this unit gave him that vicarious involvement, without the pain of having to do the arduous training himself. It also made him see that intelligence-gathering could be macho, masculine and main stream, not the obscure work of odd-balls and the effete. When he began his writing career, Fleming would have his fictional hero incorporate the macho attitude of the naval commandos into the more sophisticated milieu of the traditional spy novel: the combination would take the spy novel forward and create a new genre. 

 


Writing

As the NID's personal assistant, Fleming's intelligence work provided the background for his spy novels. In 1953, he published his first novel, Casino Royale. In it he introduced secret agent James Bond, also famously known by his code number, 007. Legend has it that Camp X included Fleming, though there is evidence against this claim. The character of James Bond was supposedly based on Camp X's Sir William Stephenson and what Fleming learned from him. Two men have supplied the basis for Bond's character: naval officer Patrick Dalzel-Job, and Fleming's brother, Peter. Casino Royale: Bond appears with the beautiful heroine Vesper Lynd, who was modelled on SOE agent Krystyna Skarbek. Ideas for his characters and settings for Bond came from his time at Boodle's. Blade's, M's club (at which Bond is an occasional guest), is partially modelled on Boodle's and the name of Bond's arch enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, was based on a fellow member's name.[citation needed] Bond's name came from famed ornithologist James Bond, the son of the Bond family who allowed Fleming the use of their estate in Jamaica to write. The Bonds were wealthy manufacturers whose estate outside of Philadelphia, Pa. eventually became the grounds of Gwynedd Mercy College. Fleming used the name after seeing Bond's Birds of the West Indies (1936).[citation needed]

Initially Fleming's Bond novels were not bestsellers in America, but when President John F. Kennedy included From Russia With Love on a list of his favourite books, sales quickly jumped.[14] Fleming wrote 14 Bond books in all: Casino Royale (1953), Live and Let Die (1954), Moonraker (1955), Diamonds Are Forever (1956), From Russia with Love (1957), Dr. No (1958), Goldfinger (1959), For Your Eyes Only (1960), Thunderball (1961), The Spy Who Loved Me (1962), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963), You Only Live Twice (1964), The Man with the Golden Gun (1965), and Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966).

In the late 1950s, the financial success of Fleming's James Bond series allowed him to retire to Goldeneye, his estate in Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica. The name of the house and estate where he wrote his novels has many sources. Notably, Ian Fleming himself cited Operation Goldeneye, a plan to bedevil the Nazis should the Germans enter Spain during World War II. He also cited the 1941 novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers. The location of the property may also have been a factor — Oracabessa, or "Golden head". There is also a Spanish tomb on the property with a bit of carving that looks like an eye on one side. It is likely that most or all of these factors played a part in Fleming's naming his Jamaican home. In Ian Fleming's interview published in Playboy in December 1964, he states, "I had happened to be reading Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers, and I'd been involved in an operation called Goldeneye during the war: the defense of Gibraltar, supposing that the Spaniards had decided to attack it; and I was deeply involved in the planning of countermeasures which would have been taken in that event. Anyway, I called my place Goldeneye." The estate, a few miles away from that of Fleming's friend Noel Coward, is now the centerpiece of an exclusive resort by the same name.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) stylistically departs from other books in the Bond series as it is written in the first person perspective of the (fictional) protagonist, Vivienne Michel, whom Fleming credits as co-author. It is the story of her life, up until when James Bond serendipitously rescues her from the wrong circumstance at the wrong place and time.

Besides writing twelve novels and nine short stories featuring James Bond, Fleming also wrote the children's novel Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He also wrote a guide to some of the world's most famous cities in Thrilling Cities and a study of The Diamond Smugglers.

In 1961, he sold the film rights to his already published as well as future James Bond novels and short stories to Harry Saltzman, who, with Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, co-produced the film version of Dr. No (1962). For the cast, Fleming suggested friend and neighbour Noël Coward as the villain Dr. Julius No, and David Niven or, later, Roger Moore as James Bond. Both were rejected in favour of Sean Connery, who was both Broccoli and Saltzman's choice. Fleming also suggested his cousin, Christopher Lee, either as Dr. No or even as James Bond. Although Lee was selected for neither role, in 1974 he portrayed assassin Francisco Scaramanga, the eponymous villain of The Man with the Golden Gun.

Neither Saltzman nor Broccoli expected Dr. No to be much of a success, but it was an instant sensation and sparked a spy craze through the rest of the 1960s.

The successful Dr. No was followed by From Russia with Love (1963), the second and last James Bond movie Ian Fleming saw.

During the Istanbul Pogroms, which many Greek and some Turkish scholars attributed to secret orchestrations by Britain, Fleming wrote an account of the events, "The Great Riot of Istanbul", which was published in the The Sunday Times on 11 September 1955.

Later life and death

Fleming was a bibliophile who collected a library of books that had, in his opinion, "started something", and therefore were significant in the history of western civilization. He concentrated on science and technology, e.g. On the Origin of Species, but also included other significant works ranging from Mein Kampf to Scouting for Boys. He was a major lender to the 1963 exhibition Printing and the Mind of Man. Some six hundred books from Fleming's collection are held in the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A.

In March 1960, Fleming met John F. Kennedy through Marion Oates Leiter who was a mutual friend and invited both to dinner. Leiter had introduced Kennedy to Fleming's books during his recovery from an operation in 1955. After dinner, Fleming related his ideas on discrediting Fidel Castro; these were reported to Central Intelligence Agency chief Allen Welsh Dulles, who gave the ideas serious consideration.

In 1961, Fleming, a heavy smoker and heavy drinker, suffered a heart attack.

Fleming died at the age of 56 of a heart attack on the morning of August 12, 1964, in Canterbury, Kent, England, and was later buried in the churchyard of Sevenhampton village, near Swindon. Upon their own deaths, Fleming's widow, Ann Geraldine Mary Fleming (1913–1981), and son Caspar Robert Fleming (1952–1975), were buried next to him. Caspar committed suicide with a drug overdose.

In observance of what would have been Fleming's 100th birthday in 2008, Ian Fleming Publications commissioned Sebastian Faulks to write a new Bond novel entitled Devil May Care. The book, released in May 2008, is credited to "Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming"
 

James Bond 007 books

Casino Royale

British Secret Service agent James Bond, a.k.a. 007, is sent to play in a high-stakes baccarat game in an effort to take down Le Chiffre, a financier for the villainous SMERSH. Things get more complex when Bond is partnered with Vesper Lynd, a beautiful and smart MI6 employee with a dark secret.

James Bond is one of the most iconic characters in 20th-century literature. In addition to the 12 novels and 9 short stories written by Ian Fleming, there have been over 40 novels and short stories written about the spy by other authors, and 26 films produced, starring actors such as Sean Connery and Daniel Craig as 007.

Live and Let Die

"Her hair was black and fell to her shoulders. She had high cheekbones and a sensual mouth, and wore a dress of white silk. Her eyes were blue, alight and disdainful, but, as they gazed into his with a touch of humour, Bond realized that they contained a message. Solitaire watched his eyes on her and nonchalantly drew her forearms together so that the valley between her breasts deepened. The message was unmistakable."

The beautiful, fortune-telling Solitaire is the prisoner (and criminal tool) of Mr Big - master of fear, artist in crime, and Voodoo Baron of Death. James Bond has no time for superstition, he knows that this criminal heavy hitter is also a top SMERSH operative and a real threat to international security. More than that, after tracking him through the jazz joints of Harlem to the everglades in Florida, and on to the Caribbean, 007 realizes that Big is one of the most dangerous men that he has ever faced. And no-one, not even the mysterious Solitaire, can be sure how their battle of wills is going to end…

Moonraker

‘For several minutes he stood speechless, his eyes dazzled by the terrible beauty of the greatest weapon on earth’

He’s a self-made millionaire, head of the Moonraker rocket programme and loved by the press. So why is Sir Hugo Drax cheating at cards? Bond has just five days to uncover the sinister truth behind a national hero, in Ian Fleming’s third 007 adventure.

Diamonds Are Forever

"Listen, Bond," said Tiffany Case. "It’d take more than Crabmeat Ravigotte to get me into bed with a man. In any event, since it’s your check, I’m going to have caviar, and what the English call 'cutlets,' and some pink champagne. I don’t often date a good-looking Englishman and the dinner’s going to live up to the occasion."

Meet Tiffany Case, a cold, gorgeous, devil-may-care blonde; the kind of girl you could get into a lot of trouble with if you wanted. She stands between James Bond and the leaders of a diamond-smuggling ring that stretches from Africa via London to the States. Bond uses her to infiltrate this gang, but once in America the hunter becomes the hunted. Bond is in real danger until help comes from an unlikely quarter, the ice-maiden herself…

From Russia with Love

James Bond is marked for death by the Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH in Ian Fleming’s masterful spy thriller. It's the novel that President John F. Kennedy named as one of his favourite books of all time.

SMERSH stands for ‘Death to Spies’ and there’s no secret agent they’d like to disgrace and destroy more than 007, James Bond. But ensnaring the British Secret Service’s most lethal operative will require a lure so tempting even he can’t resist. Enter Tatiana Romanova, a ravishing Russian spy whose ‘defection’ springs a trap designed with clockwork precision.

Her mission: seduce Bond, then flee to the West on the Orient Express. Waiting in the shadows are two of Ian Fleming’s most vividly drawn villains: Red Grant, SMERSH’s deadliest assassin, and the sinister operations chief Rosa Klebb - five feet four inches of pure killing power.

Bursting with action and intrigue, "From Russia with Love" is one of the best-loved books in the Bond canon, an instant classic that set the standard for sophisticated literary spycraft for decades to come.

Dr. No

Dispatched by M to investigate the mysterious disappearance of MI6’s Jamaica station chief, Bond was expecting a holiday in the sun. But when he discovers a deadly centipede placed in his hotel room, the vacation is over.

On this island, all suspicious activity leads inexorably to Dr Julius No, a reclusive megalomaniac with steel pincers for hands. To find out what the good doctor is hiding, 007 must enlist the aid of local fisherman Quarrel and alluring beachcomber Honeychile Rider.

Together they will combat a local legend the natives call ‘the Dragon,’ before Bond alone must face the most punishing test of all: an obstacle course designed by the sadistic Dr No himself that measures the limits of the human body’s capacity for agony.

Goldfinger

Auric Goldfinger is the richest man in England though his wealth can’t be found in banks. He’s been hoarding vast stockpiles of his namesake metal, and it’s attracted the suspicion of 007’s superiors at MI6. Sent to investigate, Bond uncovers an ingenious gold smuggling scheme, as well as Goldfinger’s most daring caper yet: Operation Grand Slam, a gold heist so audacious it could bring down the world economy and put the fate of the West in the hands of SMERSH. To stop Goldfinger, Bond will have to survive a showdown with the sinister millionaire’s henchman, Oddjob, a tenacious karate master who can kill with one well-aimed toss of his razor-rimmed bowler hat.

For Your Eyes Only

Bond watched her as she reached the edge of the tables and came up the aisle. It was hopeless. She was coming to meet someone her lover. She was the sort of woman who always belongs to somebody else. What damnable luck! Before Bond could pull himself together, the girl had come up to his table and sat down. ‘I’m sorry I’m late. We’ve got to get moving at once. You’re wanted at the office.’ She added under her breath: ‘Crash dive.

Thunderball

"The girl looked him up and down. He had dark, rather cruel good looks and very clear, blue-grey eyes. He was wearing a very dark-blue lightweight single-breasted suit over a cream silk shirt and a black knitted silk tie. Despite the heat, he looked cool and clean. 'And who might you be?' she asked sharply. 'My name's Bond, James Bond ...'"

When a stranger arrives in the Bahamas, the locals barely turn their heads, seeing another ex-pat with money to burn at the casino tables. But James Bond has more than money on his mind: he's got less than a week to find two stolen atom bombs hidden among the coral reefs. While acting the playboy, Bond meets Domino, sultry plaything of secretive treasure hunter Emilio Largo. In getting close to this gorgeous Italian girl, Bond hopes to learn more about Largo's hidden operation...

The Spy Who Loved Me

'He was about six feet tall, slim and fit. The eyes in the lean , slightly tanned face were a very clear grey-blue and as they observed the men they were cold and watchful. His good looks had a dangerous, almost cruel quality that had frightened me. But now I knew he could smile, I thought his face exciting, in a way no face had ever excited me before ...'

Vivienne Michel is in trouble. Trying to escape her tangled past, she has run away to the American backwoods, winding up at the Dreamy Pines Motor Court. A far cry from the privileged world she was born to, the motel is also the destination of two hardened killers-the perverse Sol Horror and the deadly Sluggsy Morant. When a coolly charismatic Englishman turns up, Viv, in terrible danger, is not just hopeful, but fascinated. Because he is James Bond, 007; the man she hopes will save her, the spy she hopes will love her...

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

A Lancia Spyder with its hood down tore past him, cut in cheekily across his bonnet and pulled away, the sexy boom of its twin exhausts echoing back at him. It was a girl driving, a girl with a shocking pink scarf tied round her hair. And if there was one thing that set James Bond really moving, it was being passed at speed by a pretty girl.

When Bond rescues a beautiful, reckless girl from self-destruction, he finds himself with a lead on one of the most dangerous men in the world Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. In the snow-bound fastness of his Alpine base, Blofeld is conducting research that could threaten the safety of the world. To thwart the evil genius, Bond must get himself and the vital information he has gathered out of the base and keep away from SPECTRE’s agents.

You Only Live Twice

The tragic end to James Bond’s last mission courtesy of Ernst Stavro Blofeld has left 007 a broken man and of little use to the British Secret Service.

At his wit’s end, M decides that the only way to snap his best agent out of his torpor is to send him on an impossible diplomatic mission to Japan. Bond’s contact there is the formidable Japanese spymaster Tiger Tanaka, who agrees to do business with the West if Bond will assassinate one of his enemies: a mysterious Swiss botanist named Dr. Guntram Shatterhand. Shatterhand is not who he seems, however, and his impregnable fortress – known to the locals as the ‘Castle of Death’ is a gauntlet of traps no gaijin has ever penetrated.

But through rigorous ninja training, and with some help from the beautiful and able Kissy Suzuki, Bond manages to gain access to Shatterhand’s lair. Inside lurks certain doom at the hands of 007’s bitterest foe – or a final chance to exact ultimate vengeance.

The Man with The Golden Gun

Bond may have a license to kill, but “Pistols” Scaramanga has a talent for it. He’s a KGB trained assassin who’s left a trail of dead British Secret Service agents in his wake. His weapon of choice? A gold-plated Colt .45.

In the aftermath of his brainwashing by the Soviets, Bond is given one last chance to win back M’s trust: terminate Scaramanga before he strikes MI6 again. Traveling to Jamaica under an assumed name, Bond manages to infiltrate Scaramanga’s organization and soon discovers that the hit man’s criminal ambitions have expanded to include arson, drug smuggling, and industrial sabotage. Worst of all for Bond, Scaramanga has a golden bullet inscribed with the numbers 007 and he’s eager to put it to use.

Under the heat of the Caribbean sun, Bond faces a seemingly impossible task: win a duel against the Man with the Golden Gun.

Octopussy and The Living Daylights

Whether it is tracking down a wayward major who has taken a deadly secret with him to the Caribbean or identifying a top Russian agent secretly bidding for a Fabergé egg in a Sotheby’s auction room, Bond always closes the case with extreme prejudice.

This new Penguin edition comprises four stories, including  Fleming’s little-known story “007 in New York,” showcasing Bond’s taste for Manhattan’s special pleasures from martinis at the Plaza and dinner at the Grand Central Oyster Bar to the perfect anonymity of the Central Park Zoo for a secret rendezvous.

Trigger Mortis - A James Bond novel by Anthony Horowitz

Incorporating original, never before-published material from 007 creator Ian Fleming, New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz returns literary legend James Bond to his 1950s heyday in this exhilarating and dashing thriller.

The world's most famous spy, James Bond, has just returned victorious from his showdown with Auric Goldfinger in Fort Knox. By his side is the glamorous and streetwise Pussy Galore, who played no small part in his success. As they settle down in London, the odds of Galore taming the debonair bachelor seem slim but she herself is a creature not so easily caught.

Meanwhile, the struggle for superiority between the Soviet Union and the West is escalating. In an attempt to demonstrate Soviet strength, SMERSH plans to sabotage an international Grand Prix in the hot zone of West Germany. At the Nürburgring Racing Circuit, Bond must play a high-speed game of cat and mouse to stop them, but when he observes a secretive meeting between SMERSH's driver and a notorious Korean millionaire, it becomes clear that this is just the infamous organization's opening move.

An orphan of the Korean War, he has a personal reason for wanting to bring America to its knees. He's helping SMERSH decisively end the white-hot space race but how? With the help of an American female agent, Bond uncovers a plan that leads first to Florida and then to New York City, where a heart-stopping face-off will determine the fate of the West.

This thriller has all the hallmarks of an original Ian Fleming adventure and features welcome familiar faces, including M and Miss Moneypenny. Horowitz delivers a smooth and seductive narrative of fast cars and beautiful women, ruthless villains and breathtaking plot that will leave readers hanging until the very end.

 

Other books by Ian Fleming

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Magical Car

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the name of the flying, floating, driving-by-itself automobile that takes the Pott family on a riotous series of adventures as they try to capture a notorious gang of robbers. This is a story filled with humor, adventure, and gadgetry that only a genius like Fleming could create.

Source and additional information: Ian Fleming