The Washington Times ran my On Crime column on Ian Fleming’s Inspiration.
In 2006, the year of the Ian
Fleming Centenary celebration, Corinne Turner of Ian Fleming Publications
stated, “There will be a broad range of events and publications designed to
celebrate the life of this literary legend and to examine his legacy. The program
includes a major exhibition featuring never-before-seen material and events
will reflect Fleming’s passions and experiences in the worlds of art,
literature, journalism, sport, motoring and travel.”
Ms. Turner added that the Ian
Fleming
Centenary presented an exciting opportunity to celebrate an extraordinary life.
That extraordinary life, as a World War II British naval intelligence officer,
a world-traveling journalist and the author of the James Bond thrillers, led Edward Abel
Smith (seen in the bottom photo) to write “Ian Fleming’s Inspiration: The Truth Behind the
Books” (Casemate).
The book interested me as
I’ve been an Ian Fleming
aficionado since my teenage years in the 1960s, when I saw the first James Bond
film “Dr. No” and went on to read Fleming’s more complex and darker James Bond
novels.
I reached out to Edward Abel
Smith and asked him why he wrote the book. “After finishing my first
book about a group of individuals who saved thousands of Jews before the
outbreak of war, I wanted to find another topic to write about. I grew up
loving the Bond films and then more recently the Bond books, so I was
interested to learn about their creator,” Mr. Smith
replied.
“When I started to read more
about Fleming,
I instantly started to link in my head his life experiences to those in his
books. From there, when I saw that no book existed which told his life in this
way, I decided to pitch the idea to publishers.”
Mr. Smith
said that Fleming
would sit behind his desk in the Admiralty and think up the most fantastical
and bizarre plans of how to help the war effort. He said the difference then
was that he would make most of these plans a reality and his dreamed-up ideas
would be carried out by commandos.
“A lot of his plans — for
example Operation Ruthless and Operation Tracer — were so farfetched it is
amazing that they ever got the go ahead from his bosses. Therefore, having
dreamed up real plans which seemed fictional, it was natural for him to write
these down in later life,” Mr. Smith
said. “So James Bond
could play out his dream of not only sending men on dangerous and daring
missions, but actually taking part himself.”
… I spent a grand week with
my wife at Ian Fleming’s
Jamaican villa Goldeneye (seen in the below photo) in the 1980s, when the villa and grounds were still as
rustic as when he lived there and wrote the James Bond
novels. How inspirational, I asked, was Goldeneye?
“Jamaica
was his oasis and a place where he was able to run away from his real life for
a few months per year. When you read his letters, you see a real upbeat in his
tone when he is there,” Mr. Smith
said. “Given that Bond spends more time in Jamaica than anywhere else abroad in
the books, I think Fleming
would have struggled to bring to life other such exotic locations, as he would
not have had the same intimate knowledge or love for them.”
You can read the rest of the
piece below or via the below link:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/sep/11/ian-flemings-inspiration-the-truth-behind-the-book/
You can also read my
Counterterrorism magazine piece on Commander Ian Fleming’s WWII experiences via
the below link:
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