Ian Fleming is a name that we all associate with James Bond, that rakish secret agent with the questionable morals and unending resources. But there was far more to him than just his handsome literary protagonist. Here are just a few Ian Fleming facts that might surprise you.
Whilst at Sandhurst, Fleming caught an STI from a prostitute, and was withdrawn from the college and sent to a finishing school in Austria.
Fleming is believed to have named his secret agent after the author of the Field Guide to the Birds of the West Indies, which was written in 1947 by one James Bond.
From an early age, Fleming was an avid book collector amassing a large collection of first editions.
Fleming amassed a large collection of erotica at Goldeneye that he liked to show off to visitors of either sex.
He liked to beat his wife Ann which she thoroughly enjoyed even writing in 1948 “It’s very lonely not to be beaten and shouted at every five minutes, I must be perverse and masochistic to want you to whip me and contradict me, particularly as you are always wrong about everything.”
Fleming was cuttingly vicious in his views on tasteless dressers, bad manners and homosexuals, even though he was good friends with Noel Coward and William Plomer who were both unashamedly and proudly gay.
Fleming appears as a minor fictional character in William Boyd’s 2002 novel Any Human Heart.
The Police hit Every Breath You Take, was penned by Sting whilst sitting at the same desk at which Fleming wrote his Bond Novels.
Buy On Her Majesty’s Secret Service US
Buy On Her Majesty’s Secret Service UK
The last book that Ian Fleming wrote was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which he wrote for his son, Caspar.
Fleming despairing of the pressure being put on him to produce more Bond novels threatened to kill off 007, telling a friend: “I used to believe, sufficiently, in Bonds and Blondes and Bombs. Now the keys creak as I type and I fear the zest may have gone … I shall definitely kill off Bond in my next book.”
Fleming’s iconic secret agent James Bond has stood the test of time and is as popular today as it was when first published and we hope these little snippets of information about the author have left you very definitely shaken and not stirred.
Birmingham Poet, Benjamin Zephaniah dies, aged 65
Top Authors Join Legal Battle Against OpenAI for Mass Copyright Infringement
Literary Icon, Cormac McCarthy has died
The Literary World Mourns Martin Amis
But who did he base Bond on?