Ian Fleming's early literary appearances

Some of the works containing appearances by Ian Fleming

When he came to write the James Bond books, Ian Fleming frequently named his characters after his friends and acquaintances, and sometimes even gave the people he knew walk-on parts. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963), for example, Irma Bunt points out to Bond the presence, in Piz Gloria's restaurant, of Lady Daphne Straight, an old girlfriend of Fleming's, and her husband Whitney, as well as Ursula Andress, fresh from her appearance in the film of Dr No (1962). Ian Fleming was not alone in this habit, and, even before the birth of Bond, had had the same treatment, appearing as a character in fiction and other literary works.

Ian Fleming's first literary cameo was in Public Faces, a 1932 novel by Harold Nicholson. The story, set a few years in the future, follows the tribulations of government ministers and their staff as they deal with a developing crisis and the threat of world war. (The nature of the crisis is somewhat different from the circumstances of the Second World War, but, with the story taking place in 1939, the novel was in many ways prophetic.) Ian Fleming appears towards the end of the novel as himself - a journalist at Reuters ("What's his name? Hemming? Oh, yes, I know, young Fleming") - and has a small, if unseen, role in ensuring world peace.

Alaric Jacob, a colleague of Ian Fleming's at Reuters, gave Fleming his second walk-on part. Scenes from a Bourgeois Life, published in 1949, is Jacob's part-fictionalised autobiography and a polemic on post-war Britain (he bemoans the growth of the suburbs and the rise of the nouveau riche, among other things). His account of his time at Reuters, or Telenews, as it is called in the book, includes a portrait of Fleming, who, in the book is goes by the name of Hugo Dropmore. In his recently published Ian Fleming: the Notes, John Pearson comments on the quotability of Jacob's character study. He's not wrong: it's full of zingers: 

"Hugo Dropmore was a cross between Mr Darcy and the hero of a book by Stephen McKenna" (a novelist whose characters tended to come from upper-class circles); 

"He looked like a young actor who has never toured, but started right in the West End"; 

"He seemed to know something about everything; but if a subject arose on which he was not informed, he would own it at once, and it no longer seemed to matter;" 

"His good taste was such that you never observed what he was up to until it was too late." 

I could go on. These have more than the ring of truth, but I can't imagine Ian Fleming being particularly displeased with the characterisation. The choice of pseudonym is interesting. Dropmore Press was the name of a small publishing house owned by newspaper baron James Kemsley. Ian Fleming was involved with Dropmore from 1949. I don't know whether or not Alaric Jacob based the name Hugo Dropmore on this, but the coincidence is striking.

Over the years, Ian Fleming developed a deep friendship with writer Noël Coward. Fleming had leased a beachside home at St Margaret's Bay in Kent from Coward, and the playwright was an early guest at Fleming's Jamaican home, Goldeneye, famously labelling it 'Goldeneye, Nose and Throat' on account of its resemblance to a hospital (ironically, a leading brand of eye medicine in Jamaica at the time was Golden Eye Lotion). The two became neighbours of sorts when Coward himself came to live in Jamaica. As Fleming discovered, the only problem with being friends with a playwright is that one can end up as a character in a play. This is precisely what happened to Fleming - twice.

Volcano, written in 1957, is a play set in the fictional South Sea island of Samolo, standing in for Jamaica. It focuses on six individuals, whose relationships are tested by marriage breakdowns and infidelities during the eruption of the local volcano. Early on, we discover that Adela Shelley, a widow and resident of the island, had had an affair with Guy Littleton, who has flown in from London with his wife Melissa. Coward based Adela on Blanche Blackwell, a neighbour of Coward's in Jamaica, while Guy and Melissa were a thinly disguised Ian and Ann Fleming. The play, while set far away from Jamaica, painted a picture that Ian and others would have recognised, fictionalising the real-life affair between Blanche and Ian and giving voice to the sort of feelings that Ann had expressed about Blanche, Ian and Jamaica itself. 

Goldeneye is also alluded to in the play. Guy and Melissa are staying at 'Le Tellier's beach house'. Melissa tells Adela: 

"Guy loves it because of the lagoon and the reef; he spends most of the day under water spearing those unfortunate fish...Mr Le Tellier must be a rather Spartan type, the furniture is so unforgiving. He built the house by himself, didn't he?"

Perhaps fortunately for Ian and Ann, the play was never publicly performed until 2000, although it did have a rehearsed reading in 1989, with Judi Dench in the role of Adela and her husband, Michael Williams, in the role of Guy. The play was performed again in 2012, with Judi's daughter Finty taking a role.  

Reading the play, I was reminded of 'Quantum of Solace', Ian Fleming's short story, published in 1960, which deals with the breakdown of a relationship. Though the tale was inspired most directly by 'His Excellency', a short story by Somerset Maugham, its themes could easily have been drawn from Coward's play. 

Noël Coward returned to the subject of love and lust in Samolo in his 1960 novel Pomp and Circumstance, a comical tale set against the backdrop of an impending royal visit. Ian Fleming once again proved inspirational, spawning a character called Bunny Colville, whose roving eye leads to all sorts of complications among Samolan high society. Bunny's tropical house, incidentally, has the hallmarks of Goldeneye: an uncomfortable house that overlooks a coral beach (accessed via concrete steps), a large living room, and the general appearance of an austere and over-masculine barrack. 

Since his death, Ian Fleming has made further appearances in novels, for instance in William Boyd's Any Human Heart. But it is worth returning to his earliest appearances - written by people who knew him best. 

References:

Coward, N, 1960 Pomp and Circumstance, Heinemann

Coward, N, 2018 Collected Plays: Nine (introduced by Barry Day), Bloomsbury

Jacob, A, 1949 Scenes from a Bourgeois Life, Secker and Warburg

Lycett, A, 1995 Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond, Turner

Nicolson, H, 1944 Public Faces, Penguin

Find Your Fate and the GoldenEye connection

There's a fascinating article by Philip Poggiali in issue 36 of MI6 Confidential about the series of James Bond-themed 'Find Your Fate' books, which were published in 1985 to coincide with the release of A View to a Kill. In the books, the reader assumes the role of James Bond and chooses options along various narrative threads to save the world from the dastardly plans of an evil genius.

As I was reading the article, I was struck by a coincidence between one of the books and GoldenEye, released in 1995. I tweeted about it back in October last year, but I thought I'd post about it here as well.

In Programmed for Danger, by Jean M Favors, the reader once again becomes James Bond to search for the Z-Disc, a revolutionary energy device that's been stolen from Zorin's base in the French Riviera.

The cover, drawn by Cliff Spohn, of Programmed for Danger by Jean M Favors

The cover of the book, by Cliff Spohn, gives a hint of the adventures within, with scenes of the southern French landscape, the circuitry of the Z-Disc, and depictions of Roger Moore's Bond that appear to be based on images from earlier films; the image of the beshirted Bond could come from the scene in Mr Big's poppy field in Live and Let Die. 

In the best Bond tradition, there's a car chase: a speeding Aston Martin and a Ferrari in hot pursuit is shown in the corner of the cover image. If this seems a familiar, it's because a speeding Aston Martin and a Ferrari in hot pursuit also feature in GoldenEye. The vehicle models are different – the Aston on the front cover seems to be the V8 Vantage that Bond would drive two years later in The Living Daylights – but the scene is otherwise closely replicated in the 1995 film. We can even find a scene in the film with the cars at almost the same relative position as shown on the cover. What's more, the car chases in both the book (as far as I can tell) and the film are set in the French Riviera.
 

Spot the difference: Programmed for Danger and GoldenEye

Coincidence or somehow prescient? It's pure coincidence, of course, but it's fun to think that the production team, when drafting GoldenEye, were flicking through the 'Find Your Fate' books for inspiration!

To read more about the 'Find Your Fate' series, see issue 36 of MI6 Confidential, which is available to buy here.

Mightier than the sword: the trick pen in the Bond films and beyond

The humble pen makes an ideal gadget for the spy. It's small, it can be discreetly concealed in the pocket, but arouses no suspicion when taken out, and can be modified to house all sorts of devices. It's no wonder the pen-based gadget has been seen a few times in the James Bond films.

In Moonraker (1979), we learn that a deadly-tipped pen, which Bond finds on Holly Goodhead's hotel dressing table, is standard CIA issue. In Octopussy (1983), a fountain pen made by Mont Blanc is multi-functional, containing a highly concentrated mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid ('wonderful for poison pen letters') and an earpiece to a listening device. Coincidentally, Never Say Never Again, the rival Bond film released in the same year, also includes a fountain pen among its gadgets; that one is able to release an explosive charge.

The explosive pen was reinvented for GoldenEye (1995) and used to great dramatic and comic effect. The film featured a Parker Jotter ballpoint, which contains a class-four grenade that is armed with three clicks of end button and disarmed with three more. (I've never looked at a ballpoint pen in quite the same way since, and on idly clicking the end of one, often wonder whether it's about to go off.)
 

Q demonstrates the 'pen grenade' in GoldenEye

Curiously, a very similar device featured in Wild Geese II, released ten years earlier. In that film, Michael (played by John Terry, who would become Felix Leiter in The Living Daylights), a member of the organisation that has hired mercenaries to spring Rudolf Hess from prison, is given an explosive ballpoint pen. Like GoldenEye's pen, it's armed by clicking the end, though has a longer fuse (40 seconds, as opposed to four seconds).
 

Mercenary John Haddad demonstrates the 'pen grenade' in Wild Geese II

These gadgets may seem fantastic, but there's a long tradition of adapting pens for secret use in the real world of espionage. The Second World War saw teams of boffins create an ingenious array of gadgets from ordinary objects. Charles Fraser-Smith, often claimed to be the inspiration for the character of Q (which seems fanciful, given that there was no such character in the Bond books), was responsible, among many other devices, for a fountain pen that could conceal documents.
 

One of Charles Fraser-Smith's gadgets

The use of trick pens continued into the Cold War. In an interview with Ian Fleming published in 1965, Bernard Hutton, an expert on Soviet espionage, revealed how Soviet spies used dynamite-filled fountain pens for the purpose of assassination.

The gadget-filled pen is so well established in espionage lore that today the idea might seem hackneyed. This may explain Q's comment to Bond in Skyfall (2012): 'Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don't really go in for that any more.'

And the idea of trick pens has been subverted in other films. During the tank sequence in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Professor Henry Jones (Sean Connery) shakes off a German soldier – who then stumbles and knocks himself out – by squirting ink from his fountain pen into the soldier's face. More recently, in The Bourne Identity (2002), Jason Bourne uses a biro as a stabbing weapon.

In a way dismissing the notion of the sort of gadgets seen in the Bond films, both cases demonstrate that the ordinary can become extraordinary; you don't need to fill a pen with explosives to turn it into a deadly weapon.

Some classic James Bond helicopter scenes in Lego

There were some very thoughtful and exciting gifts waiting for me under the tree this Christmas, including Lego figures of James Bond and Skyfall's Raoul Silva, and a Lego helicopter to go with them. The presents got me thinking about some of the many scenes in the Bond films that featured helicopters, and, following my earlier attempts to build Bond vehicles, how I could recreate them in Lego.
 

James Bond and Raoul Silva as Lego figures

The helicopter set that I had been given was a gunship from the Ultra Agents range. It wasn't too dissimilar from the Tiger helicopter from GoldenEye, so I turned to that film first. The helicopter is a two-seater, so I simply put Bond in the front seat of the cockpit and a female figure in the back seat to represent Natalya Simonova and recreate the scene where both have been captured and bound to the cockpit seats. Here Natalya has just woken Bond up.
 

Inside the Tiger helicopter in GoldenEye

The pre-titles sequence of For Your Eyes Only is up there with the best of the opening sequences. Bond is picked up in a Universal Exports helicopter, which is then remotely hijacked by a Blofeld-like figure (now officially acknowledged to be Blofeld). With the pilot out of action, Bond clambers outside the aircraft, opens the pilot's door, climbs back inside, takes control and deals with Blofeld (declining the offer of a delicatessen in stainless steel). My Lego collection isn't that extensive, but I managed to find enough pieces to build something that resembled the helicopter. I had Bond dangle outside and used an image of Beckton Gas Works, where the scene was filmed, as background.
 

Spot the difference. The opening sequence of For Your Eyes Only

I was keen to recreate the scene in From Russia With Love where Bond is being pursued by a helicopter in the Scottish highlands standing in for Turkey, but the design of the helicopter was too much of a challenge for my limited resources. Instead, I looked to On Her Majesty's Secret Service (appropriately enough, being a Christmas film) and the helicopter attack on Piz Gloria.

As I was watching the sequence again, looking for a good action moment involving Bond and a helicopter, I realised that Bond isn't particularly visible during the arrival of the helicopters at Piz Gloria. The sequence focuses on the approach of the helicopters, long-distance shots of Draco's men jumping out, and Tracy's fight with Blofeld's goons, but Bond isn't seen in close-up until he's out of the helicopter and sliding towards the main building. That hasn't stopped me, however, from showing Bond more clearly jumping out of the helicopter – in Lego, at least.
 

The helicopter assault on Piz Gloria

The helicopter itself was fairly easily rendered in Lego, and I was especially lucky to have a brick with a Red Cross sticker. I found an image of Piz Gloria to use as the background. Bond is wearing Silva's white jacket, which I thought it went better with the snow-covered slopes.

I don't pretend that my models are particularly accurate, but I've certainly had fun making them. There are plenty more helicopter moments in the Bond films, so watch this space for more of them recreated in Lego!

The curious case of GoldenEye

There is one curious legacy of the film GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan's debut Bond film released 20 years ago, and that is the adoption of the title's form, with its distinctive mid-word upper case 'E' (an example of CamelCase or medial capitals), by those writing the name of Ian Fleming's Jamaican home. Look at the website of the Goldeneye Resort, of which Fleming's home is now only one part, and you'll notice that its name is given as GoldenEye. What's more, this form has been occasionally used since 1995 in the pages of the Daily Gleaner, Jamaica's foremost newspaper.

For example, a piece published on 4th August 2010 stated that 'GoldenEye provides simple, contemporary Jamaican style luxury'. On 14th June, the Gleaner reported on the first Bizot Party at 'GoldenEye Hotel Resort’s Bizot Bar', where signature cocktails such as The GoldenEye Punch were being served. And the edition of 29th November 2013 reported on 'the opportunity to buy into GoldenEye' with a shares being offered in lagoon units.

It has to be said that the CamelCase form of the name isn't particularly common in the Gleaner, and that 'Goldeneye' is preferred. This hasn't always been the case, however. In the 1950s and 1960s, when Ian Fleming was resident at the property, Goldeneye was usually rendered in the Gleaner as Golden Eye (for example in the editions of 2nd March 1951, 31st March 1959 and 15th May 1961). In contrast, the use of the form Goldeneye was rare during the same period.

Ian Fleming, as suggested by his correspondence to his wife Ann and others, gave the name of his winter retreat as Goldeneye. While Fleming was not especially consistent with names (he wrote to and about Ann or Anne, and about his son Caspar or Kaspar or Kasper), he does appear to have been consistent with Goldeneye, probably because it was the name of a wartime operation with which he had been involved.

Why the Gleaner preferred Golden Eye is uncertain, although it suggests that reporters were unfamiliar with how Fleming wrote the name, and that they were prompted by analogy with, say, Golden Eye, the name of eye treatment widely available in the island, and The Golden Eye (1948), a popular film featuring Charlie Chan.

The spelling of Goldeneye has evolved and diverged and encompassed competing forms. During Fleming's lifetime, Goldeneye competed with the variant Golden Eye, but Golden Eye has declined to become virtually extinct (it is absent from recent Gleaners). Goldeneye has since become the dominant form, but GoldenEye, the variant that emerged in 1995, has offered further competition. Its use is largely restricted to the matters relating to the film, but the huge success and popularity of the film, and its use in official publicity for the Goldeneye Resort, has allowed the variant or meme to spread beyond its cinematic context, a trend that is likely to continue.

Jamaica's other Goldeneye

As GoldenEye, the film that introduced Pierce Brosnan as Bond and relaunched the series to great acclaim (and relief) after a six-year enforced hiatus, turns twenty years old, the latest edition of MI6 Confidential celebrates the film's anniversary with an interview with director Martin Campbell, an examination of the essential ingredients of the film, a look at the film's most memorable stunts, and much more.

I'm proud to have contributed to the issue myself: a small article examining the legacy of Goldeneye, Ian Fleming's winter home in Jamaica, where he wrote all the Bond books. While I was researching the article, I made some interesting discoveries about some of Jamaica's other, lesser known Goldeneyes. The article wasn't quite the place to say much about them, so by way of an addendum, here they are.

If one were to ask Jamaicans in the late 1940s, when Ian Fleming built his house, what 'Goldeneye' meant to them, many would have replied that it was something to treat minor ailments of the eyes. The Daily Gleaner was full of adverts for 'Golden Eye' treatments. Sinclair's Drug Department on King Street in Kingston sold the lotion for two shillings per bottle. The lotion was a little more expensive at Williams Drug Store on West Queen Street, selling for 2/6, but it was cheaper that Optrex (3/6), and was alternatively available in ointment form, which was cheaper at one shilling per tube. Meanwhile, Dunker & Company on Harbour Street were offering 'huge savings', selling a dozen tubes of the ointment for eight shillings.
 

An advert in the Gleaner for medicines, including Golden Eye

This was good news for farmers. In an article published in April 1958 in the Farmers Weekly section of the Gleaner, 'Surgeon' recommended the application of Golden Eye lotion for the treatment of 'pink eye', a type of eye infection in cattle.

There was yet another Goldeneye known in Jamaica. In 1950, cinema-goers flocked to the Gaiety cinema, among other venues, and 'country theatres' around Jamaica to see Roland Winters star as Charlie Chan investigating the mystery of why an unprofitable gold mine is suddenly making lots of money. The film, released in 1948, was called The Golden Eye. 

The Golden Eye (1948) on the bill of the Gaiety Cinema

As a footnote, there is a curious link of sorts between the house and the eye treatment. Fleming's house was well known for its stark design and paucity of mod-cons. Friend and neighbour Noël Coward famously referred to the house as 'Goldeneye, nose and throat'. This is a play, of course, on ear, nose and throat departments in British hospitals, but it's possible that Coward had Golden Eye lotion, a product that would have been familiar to Jamaican residents at the time, in his mind too. 

How Ann Fleming was kept awake by Three Blind Mice

In a letter to Clarissa Avon (Countess of Avon), written at Goldeneye on 16th February 1964, Ann Fleming wrote, “A new garage at end of garden has a juke box which plays from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m., especially a loud syncopated version of 'Three Blind Mice'”. A few days later, on the 22nd February, Ann wrote to Evelyn Waugh, mentioning the music.

“A new 'gas station' at garden gate possessed of infernal machine called 'sound system'. It relays calypso from 9 p.m. To 3 a.m. Special favourite being a syncopated version of 'Three Blind Mice'.”

The references to 'Three Blind Mice' are interesting, given that a calypso version of the nursery rhyme featured in the soundtrack of Dr No, released in 1962. The song, actually titled 'Kingston Calypso', was composed by Monty Norman and performed by the Jamaican band, Byron Lee and the Dragonaires. In the film, the music accompanies the three blind beggars – in fact assassins sent by Dr No – on their way to kill Strangways. Was this the song that disturbed Ann Fleming so much?


 
It's possible. The soundtrack album was a chart hit, and Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, thanks in part to the success of Dr No, were billed as 'Jamaica's no. 1 band', and doubtless their music was heard across the island.

Advert from the Gleaner

On the other hand, if Ann Fleming had been hearing the Dr No album, it would seem curious that she doesn't mention it or reflect on the irony of being kept awake by the music of a film based on her husband's novel (although any lack of recognition is understandable, given that she failed to find the film gripping during a preview in 1962). Moreover, 'Kingston Calypso' was never released as a single or included on any of the band's albums that had been released by early 1964, and so opportunities for recordings of the track to be heard in isolation were limited (unless the version that Ann heard was a cover).

A more likely candidate is 'Three Blind Mice' by Prince Buster (Cecil Bustamente Campbell), who was a pioneer of ska music in Jamaica in the early 1960s. His version of 'Three Blind Mice', which appeared on the B-side of the single 'Spider and Fly' in 1963, is a ska track and much more in keeping with the syncopated sound heard by Ann Fleming.


 
Ska and Dr No seem a world apart, but Ann Fleming's letters reveal something of a connection. Monty Norman's 'Kingston Calypso', inspired by the film's more or less faithful portrayal of the three blind beggars in Ian Fleming's novel, was among the first of a number of Jamaican versions of 'Three Blind Mice', and helped to give the nursery rhyme a particular place in Jamaican culture.

Reference:

Amory, M, 1985 The letters of Ann Fleming, Collins Harvill

Was an Octopussy stunt performed in GoldenEye?

By today's standards, the scene in the pre-titles sequence of GoldenEye where James Bond rides his motorbike off the cliff, discards the bike, freefalls towards a pilot-less plane in nose-dive, catches to it, hauls himself into the plane and the cockpit, and wrestles with the controls before lifting the nose and flying away to safety, looks a little ropey. As the special effects supervisor, Chris Corbould, says: 'The shot where he comes in from the doorway is on wires…it's probably not our finest moment' (Empire, June 2012). Well, I can think of worse (Bond glacier surfing in glorious CGI in Die Another Day?), but in any case, the scene is as exciting now as it was when I first saw the film in 1995. At least the scene was shot with real people, real props and, yes, real wires.

I remember that there was much incredulity expressed about the science of the stunt, but it is reassuring to know that the stunt was theoretically possible. In June's Empire magazine, Martin Campbell confirms that the production team considered performing the stunt in reality, and Chris Corbould suggests that the plane, a Pilatis Porter, could be slowed sufficiently to allow a skydiver to catch up to it and clamber on board.

Indeed, an early version of the stunt appears to have been performed during preparations of the aerial scenes in Octopussy. George MacDonald Fraser, who co-wrote the Octopussy screenplay, describes in his memoir, The Light's on at Signpost (Harper Collins, 2002), a stunt which was performed by the stuntmen B J Worth and Rande Deluca, who doubled for Roger Moore and Kebir Bedi in the aerial scenes. In retrospect, the stunt could have been a prototype of the GoldenEye sequence. B J Worth flew a light plane, out of which Rande Deluca jumped. Worth then took the plane into a nose-dive, caught up to Deluca, then manoeuvred the plane to allow Deluca to haul himself back inside.

The stunt doesn't match the GoldenEye sequence exactly, and it is unclear if the stunt was in fact related to the Octopussy preparations. However, GoldenEye's skydiving was performed by B J Worth, and it is possible that he provided elements of the stunt that he had successfully carried out around the time of Octopussy to the sequence which closely resembled it.