This, then, was the man who, after a morning swim to wash out the hangover of the night before, hunched over the desk in his Jamaican home ‘Goldeneye’ and began to type, using six fingers, on his elderly Royal portable typewriter. Only during the war, working in the Intelligence Division of the Royal Navy, had he found a task – as an officer in naval intelligence dreaming up schemes to bamboozle the enemy – worthy of his vivid imagination.
As a young man of English privilege, he had toyed with the idea of being a soldier, or a diplomat, but neither had worked out. He had tried his hand at banking, stockbroking and working as a newspaper correspondent. Ian Fleming had never written a novel before, though he had done much else. The circumstances were not immediately auspicious.
One morning in February 1952, in a holiday hideaway on the island of Jamaica, a middle-aged British journalist sat down at his desk and set about creating a fictional secret agent, a character that would go on to become one of the most successful, enduring and lucrative creations in literature. Book Notes: For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond, by Ben MacintyreĠ01: ‘The Scent and Smoke and Sweat of a Casino…’
