The Man with the Golden Typewriter (49 page)

The Works of Ian Fleming

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)
¹

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)

Octopussy and the Living Daylights
(1966)
²

The Diamond Smugglers
(1957)

Thrilling Cities
(1963)

Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang
(1964–5)
³

 

The James Bond Films

Of necessity, this volume concentrates on Fleming's literary output. Yet, for many people their first acquaintance with James Bond may come from a cinema rather than a bookshop. Here, therefore, is a list of the films, with their release dates. Most of them have been produced by Eon, the partnership created by Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, but as befits Fleming's tangled arrangements in this sphere, there are a couple of anomalies. The list is complete at the time of publication, November 2015.

Dr. No
(1962)

From Russia with Love
(1963)

Goldfinger
(1964)

Thunderball
(1965)

You Only Live Twice
(1967)

On Her Majesty's Secret Service
(1969)

Diamonds are Forever
(1971)

Live and Let Die
(1973)

The Man with the Golden Gun
(1974)

The Spy Who Loved Me
(1977)

Moonraker
(1979)

For Your Eyes Only
(1981)

Octopussy
(1983)

A View to a Kill
(1985)

The Living Daylights
(1987)

Licence to Kill
(1989)

GoldenEye
(1995)

Tomorrow Never Dies
(1997)

The World Is Not Enough
(1999)

Die Another Day
(2002)

Casino Royale
(2006)

Quantum of Solace
(2008)

Skyfall
(2012)

Spectre
(2015)

Also:

Casino Royale
(1967)

Never Say Never Again
(1983)

 

Acknowledgements

Many books have been written about Ian Fleming and this latest addition to the canon would have been a lot harder without the spade work of those who have gone before. In this respect I owe a debt of gratitude to Ian's two major biographers, John Pearson and Andrew Lycett (who battled valiantly to retrieve lost computer files), and to Ian's bibliographer, Jon Gilbert. Special mention, too, must be made of The Ian Fleming Estate who not only sanctioned the book but who own the copyright to Ian's letters and have been more than generous with their assistance throughout.

Thanks are also due to the following: The Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington, for access to its collection of Ian Fleming correspondence; the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, New York, for copies of Ernest Cuneo's letters and memoirs; Ian Fleming Publications, London, for permission to use the occasional James Bond extract and for much else besides; the Jonathan Cape Archive at the University of Reading (Special Collections) and the Random House Archive, Rushden, which together hold the bulk of Ian Fleming's publishing correspondence; and the Beinecke Library, Yale University.

Letters by Noel Coward are reproduced courtesy of Alan Brodie Literary Agency; those by Aubrey Forshaw courtesy of Pan Macmillan; Somerset Maugham by permission of United Agents on behalf of the Royal Literary Fund; Raymond Chandler courtesy of the Raymond Chandler Estate via Ed Victor Ltd; and with thanks to the estates of Geoffrey Boothroyd, Ernest Cuneo and Herman W. Liebert. The copyright in letters by Jonathan Cape, David Cape, Daniel George, Michael Howard, Wren Howard and William Plomer is held by Penguin Random House, of which Jonathan Cape is now an imprint.

Letters have been contributed most kindly by Jon Gilbert of Adrian Harrington Rare Books and The Ian Fleming Bibliographical Archive (Villiers); John Goodwin (The Oxford University James Bond Club); James Trepanier (Frewin); and Mark Davies (D. N. Davies). And, as so often in matters Fleming, many thanks to Mike VanBlaricum, John Cork and Brad Frank for their contributions and advice.

A special thanks to those individuals who have helped with the research. At Bloomington: David Frasier, Cherry Williams and particularly Erika Jenns for her transcriptions. In London: Corinne Turner, Jo Lane and Phoebe Taylor. In New York: William Baehr and Virginia Lewick. In Reading: Danni Corfield. In Rushden: Charlotte Heppell. And at Yale University, Michael Rush.

Occasional extracts have been used from Michael Howard's history of Jonathan Cape and Mark Amory's edited letters of Ann Fleming. In the absence of source notes here is a concise but informative bibliography.

Amory, M. (ed) –
The Letters of Ann Fleming.
Collins Harvill, London, 1985.

Gilbert, J. –
Ian Fleming: The Bibliography.
Queen Anne Press, London, 2012.

Howard, M. –
Jonathan Cape, Publisher.
Jonathan Cape, London, 1971.

Lycett, A. –
Ian Fleming.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1995.

Pearson, J. –
The Life of Ian Fleming.
Jonathan Cape, London, 1966.

Finally, on matters of publication, Gordon Wise of Curtis Brown helped this book into the hands of Bill Swainson at Bloomsbury. Bill has been the most assiduous of editors: he has scoured the text with kind precision and any errors or omissions are entirely my own. In its final stages Anna Simpson gave the manuscript her stalwart attention and Alexandra Pringle brought the whole thing together.

Notes

Introduction

¹
John Pearson's
The Life of Ian Fleming
(1965) and Andrew Lycett's
Ian Fleming
(1995).

²
Ann's two children from her first marriage to Lord O'Neill were Raymond (b. 1933), who inherited both the title and the family seat in Northern Ireland, and Fionn (b. 1936), who took her husband's name on her marriage to John Morgan in 1961.

³
Peter (1907–71) was an acclaimed travel writer, Richard (1911–77) a prominent banker, Michael (1913–40) a successful businessman until his death at Dunkirk, and Amaryllis (1925–99) one of the nation's foremost cellists.

⁴
Although the scoop failed he did receive an apology signed by the dictator himself.

⁵
John F. C. ‘Ivar' Bryce (1906–85), who married the American heiress Jo Hartford, had first met Fleming in 1917 on a beach holiday. They remained inseparable companions and would become involved in a variety of uncertain enterprises.

⁶
Née Charteris, Ann was the widow of Lord O'Neill, who had been killed in the Second World War.

⁷
A list of the works of Ian Fleming with dates of original publication can be found
here
.

1  Casino Royale

¹
Actually it was 1952.

²
Waugh was not impressed when it came out later that year. ‘Ian Fleming's idiot printing firm', as he described it, had made ‘a great balls-up of a little book of mine.'

³
Robert Harling (1910–2008), author, publisher and typographer. He had worked for the Admiralty during the Second World War and had been a member of Fleming's ‘Red Indian' commando unit, 30AU, in the closing stages of the war. He later joined Fleming at the
Sunday Times
, as typographical adviser. Among his many typographical innovations was the font ‘Tea Chest', which would become a hallmark of the Bond dust jackets.

⁴
William Plomer (1903–73), author, editor, poet and librettist. Born in South Africa, he travelled to Japan and beyond before settling in the drab environs of post-war London. He pronounced his name ‘Ploomer'.

⁵
Cape's only previous foray into thrillerdom had been James M. Cain's
The Postman Always Rings Twice
(1934).

⁶
A wartime intelligence operative and Fleming's one-time girlfriend, she now worked for the Kemsley Group in America.

⁷
William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (1879–1964), business tycoon, politician, press magnate and owner of the
Daily Express
which, for a while, had the largest circulation of any newspaper in the world.

⁸
He did, however, employ Naomi Burton of Curtis Brown agents on the East Coast of America who successfully placed
Casino Royale
with Macmillan in New York.

⁹
For tax reasons, and perhaps with a canny eye to the future, Fleming transferred the copyright in his work to a company called Glidrose.

¹⁰
Paul Gallico (1897–1976), novelist and sportswriter. One of Fleming's many journalistic contacts, he had won international fame for his novella
The Snow Goose
(1941).

¹¹
The font came to Fleming's notice thanks to his friend Robert Harling who had used it for the Queen Anne Press colophon.

¹²
Leonard Russell (1906–74), Literary Editor of the
Sunday Times
. Married to journalist and author Dilys Powell.

¹³
‘Swanee' Swanson was Fleming's West Coast agent in the US.

¹⁴
The London home to which he and Ann had recently moved.

¹⁵
Fleming's second Bond novel, which he had delivered that spring.

¹⁶
Macmillan would publish all the Bond novels until Fleming moved to Viking in 1959.

¹⁷
Sir William Stephenson (1897–1989), Canadian soldier, aviator, businessman, inventor and spymaster. Colloquially, ‘Little Bill' as against ‘Big Bill' Donovan, head of the US Secret Service. He had first met Fleming while head of British Intelligence in North America and their friendship continued after the war. Fleming liked to say that whereas Bond was a romanticised version of a spy, Stephenson was the real thing.

2  Live and Let Die

¹
Peter Quennell (1905–93), biographer and man of letters.

²
It would not, however, always be a matter of jeopardy. Fleming's female characters were often a match for his hero.

³
Reginald Evelyn Peter Southouse Cheyney (1896–1951), British crime writer. His hard-boiled American-style novels were enormously popular in their day. In 1946 alone he sold more than 1,500,000 copies worldwide.

⁴
The book in question was
Eastern Approaches
by Fitzroy Maclean (1911–96), author, soldier and politician. A friend of Fleming, who served as a commando during the Second World War and later wrote knowledgeably about espionage, Maclean has since entered the list of characters upon whom Bond is supposed to have been based.

⁵
Fleming's working title,
The Undertaker's Wind
(named after the Jamaican term for a strong evening breeze), was eventually consigned to a chapter head. He tried several alternatives before settling on
Live and Let Die
.

⁶
Malcolm Muir (1885–1979), editor and president of
Newsweek
magazine.

⁷
Fleur Cowles (1908–2009), writer and editor. An oft-married and colourful presence on the US publishing scene.
Look
magazine was owned by her third husband whom she divorced in 1955.

⁸
George Malcolm Thompson (1899–1996), Beaverbrook's personal secretary and critic for the
Evening Standard
. He described
Live and Let Die
as ‘tense, ice-cold, sophisticated; Peter Cheyney for the carriage trade'.

⁹
Leo Perutz (1882–1957), Austrian mathematician and novelist. Fleming was probably referring to his
Between Nine and Nine
(1918), a tale of romance and intrigue set in Imperial Vienna, which was translated to widespread acclaim in the 1920s and possibly influenced Fleming's first short story, ‘A Poor Man Escapes'.

¹⁰
Richard Usborne (1910–2006), journalist and author who had served with SOE during the war. As befitted the eccentric recruitment policy of British Intelligence he spent the last forty-five years of his life studying the works of P. G. Wodehouse.

3  Moonraker

¹
Alexander Korda (1893–1956), a leading figure in the British film industry.

²
Alan Searle (1904–85), Maugham's secretary and companion.

³
The proposed serialisation of Maugham's short stories.

⁴
Alexander Frere (1892–1984), Maugham's editor at William Heinemann.

⁵
Bond's secretary, but in real life the aristocratic society figure Loelia Ponsonby (1902–93). Fleming often appropriated his friends' names for characters in his books.