Ticket 2 Ride

Ian Fleming, best known for creating James Bond, is an amazing man in his own right. He’s been written about numerous times in the 60 years since his death, so I was curious what more is there to mine about Fleming? His estate wanted another biography and selected Nicholas Shakespeare for the mission. Shakespeare wouldn’t agree to the job unless he could find something new, a thread that hadn’t been used before, to justify five years of his life. Fair enough.

“What I like about the phrase ‘complete man’ is that it suggests one of the central themes to have emerged: there is much more to Fleming than Bond, a character he created almost as an afterthought in the last twelve years of his life, when the most interesting part of it was essentially over.” – Nicholas Shakespeare

At over seven hundred pages, Ian Fleming: The Complete Man (HarperCollins, 2024) has to be the most in-depth book on Fleming. The amount of detail is astounding, like drinking from a fire-hose.

There is no denying that Ian Fleming was enigmatic, yet exceptionally talented in numerous fields of endeavor. Shakespeare paints a picture of a man that spent the first half of his life struggling to establish his own sense of self. He bounced from school to school, career to career, woman to woman, location to location, in pursuit of that comet he was meant to ride. He quickly became bored following the path he was encouraged to follow, and struggled for years to worked himself free from his mother’s control. Fleming was also trapped in the shadow of his more successful brother Peter, who seemed to excel at whatever he touched, including a literary career.

Fleming became a newsman for Reuters and covered such events as an international trial of British subjects in Stalinist Russia, and was in Berlin to witness Hitler’s ascension to full authoritarian. His training for a foreign service career had taken him around Europe and gave him German and Russian language skills, tools that would become useful as a newsman, and for his undercover work during WWII. Ian Fleming led many lives, so seven hundred pages might not have covered it after all.

One of his closest friends, Mary Pakenham described Fleming as never noticing the attraction men and women had for him. With women, he “took them up thoughtlessly, and after a short inspection, let them drop with a crash.”

There were a few exceptions, one being Maud Russell, with who he had a long affair. It was Russell who later gave Fleming the funds to build his Goldeneye. Fleming had many affairs, even after he married. His strongest friendships seemed with women; those he loved and those who loved him. Sadly, it seemed for many in Fleming’s circle, marriage was the slow death of love.

Fleming didn’t just fall into a career writing about secret agents; he trained his entire life for it without having planned it. From his quest to join England’s foreign service, his years at Reuters covering events in Russia and Germany, publishing articles and letters on the politics in Europe, and his connections to British Naval Intelligence, all of this set him up for arguably his great triumph: intelligence work during the Second World War.

Commissioned as a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve, Fleming finally found his role as Britain moved toward war. As a reservist, Fleming kept his job as a partner in trading company, but served full-time in the Naval Intelligence Section. A healthy section of the Shakespeare’s book details Fleming’s war years, where he gained the foundation for the James Bond character. Fleming actually had an important job in Naval Intelligence, planning missions, analyzing intelligence apparatus in foreign countries, using his banking contacts to move money around the world to fund operations, and working with the Americans on setting up their own intelligence service. Fleming traveled extensively, but was prohibited from field operations, unlike brother Peter who served in front line roles and nearly died from injuries. Fleming may not have collected medals, but he came away with something much more valuable: knowledge of spy-craft, a perspective of the fragility of life, and a taste of worldliness.

At the conclusion of the war, Fleming had little desire to live in Europe or England. His homeland was cold, damp and depressing. England was in tatters and the British empire had mainly dissolved or would in the next few years. It wasn’t England that called to him, it was Jamaica; the sunny, sweet-smelling paradise, that welcomed misfits. With Russell’s funds, Fleming planned his dream house on Jamaica.

Goldeneye would be Fleming’s winter home for 20 year and where he wrote all of his Bond novels.

“He just loved the feel of the island and particularly the land at Goldeneye, right off the ocean and with its own beach,” says Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, who bought the villa in the ’70s (from Bob Marley), on the advise of his mother, Blanche Blackwell, who carried on a long affair with Fleming. Blackwell gradually built a 52-acre, 45-key resort around it. “He (Fleming) would wake up, swim, and then write in the bedroom, with windows closed, until another swim in the afternoon.” Shakespeare writes that Fleming boasted that he knew every fish and hole in waters near his home.

Another of Fleming’s longtime loves, Ann Charteris, who later became Fleming’s wife, was carrying on her own longtime affair while married to Fleming. While married to newspaper publisher Esmond Rothermere, her previous husband, Charteris became pregnant with Fleming’s child. That baby didn’t survive; but the marriage did until Charteris became pregnant again by Fleming. This time she hurriedly divorced Rothermere and married Fleming before their son was born. Rothermere carried on, but he hadn’t been a model faithfulness, guessing that he had slept with a thousand women in his lifetime. When his first wife divorced him, she listed two dozen correspondents, although she neglected to list any of her own dalliances. Anyone who says the English are boring, did not know the Fleming crowd.

Fleming’s postwar life brought a wife, child, Jamaican paradise, newspaper job that mixed overseas intelligence work, and distance from his family.

Fleming wasn’t yet done with Peter’s shadow yet. In 1950, Peter published a novel that stoked Fleming desire to outdo his brother. It took him years to write his first Bond novel.

The origins of James Bond are discussed at length in this book. Certainly, Fleming mined his war experience, and his sense of fading British influence in the world, with the new world order. There is much about his Bond books that draws on this tug of war between the heritage of the past, with the modern realities of current geopolitics. Bond was essentially a detective, a modern gumshoe on the world stage. Shakespeare writes that Bond is closer to American detectives like Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Mike Hammer than British heroic characters that lacked realism. While the British Empire might be fading into history, Bond and British Intelligence were saving the world.

Everyone could fantasize they were Bond, Shakespeare writes. “This is the Bond effect. He is a suave vacuum who invites us all to put ourselves in his position and say, ‘This is how I want to live.’”

Casino Royale was published in 1953, followed by Live and Let Die. Shakespeare writes that the first five Bond novels sold modestly, but none surpassed 12,000 hardcover copies and Fleming wondered if he should move on from Bond. He even wrote off the American market where his books sold even fewer copies.

According to Shakespeare, Fleming’s new friendship with author Raymond Chandler failed to solicit kind words. Paraphrasing, Chandler thought Fleming aimed low in his writing and his Bond series got worse instead of better with each book. To cap that off, Fleming told his wife that he was getting tired of “that ass Bond.”

And then Egyptian President Nassar moved to nationalize the Suez Canal, setting off a chain of events that benefited both Fleming and Bond, courtesy of the British Prime Minister and Fleming’s Goldeneye. Long story short, the PM sought relaxation from the Suez Canal crisis and found it at Goldeneye. The sudden notoriety, and connection to Fleming’s fictional hero, turbocharged Fleming’s fame and it crossed over into the Bond books, which got new life through serialization and a newspaper comic strip. While Fleming enjoyed Bond’s resurgence, wife Ann enjoyed a new affair with the leader of Britain’s Labour Party. Fleming would begin his equally long affair with Blanche Blackwell.

The arc of the Bond books is a surprising one. I never knew how close Fleming was to ending the series, and how his creative juices were drying up for fresh Bond ideas. Good fortune shone on Bond as President John F. Kennedy endorsed Bond as his favorite read, and that resonated with the American market. Ironically, as Fleming’s health deteriorated, Bond’s popularity rose. Shakespeare notes Fleming’s health and legal problems occupied the last years of his life, even as Thunderball soared as a best-seller, reversing the trend of the Bond books. Thunderball was also ensnared in a nasty lawsuit with Kevin McClory over plagiarism (originating from a film script Fleming had worked on with McClory and Jack Whittingham). The lawsuits with McClory no doubt contributed to Fleming’s health decline. The story of Thunderball and Kevin McClory is an interesting one. If you are a Bond fan, look it up.

Bond would finally appear on the big screen as Fleming inked a deal with Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman for Dr. No.

Fleming died in 1964, his health finally giving out. At first, Fleming hadn’t cared for Sean Connery, but that changed after Fleming got to know him. The Bond films would deviate more and more from the books, and Bond himself would hardly mirror Fleming’s character in later films. No matter, because Bond, like Fleming, wasn’t drawn in the details, or even the facts. It’s the image that people have, that’s what they remember.

Unless you are a diehard Fleming fan, this book is not what you’re looking for. Oh, it’s a tremendously researched book, and well-written, it’s just for a select audience.