The Man with the Golden Typewriter (50 page)

⁶
The idea was used in
From Russia with Love
.

⁷
Maugham was awarded the Companion of Honour that year. He had, however, been hoping for the more prestigious Order of Merit.

⁸
F. Tennyson Jesse (1888–1958), English crime writer. Her book
Moonraker
was first published in 1927.

⁹
Here and elsewhere, Fleming was ahead of his time in the art of what is known today as product placement – though in his case it was for verisimilitude's sake rather than gain.

4  Notes from America

¹
Ernest Cuneo (1905–88), lawyer, newspaperman and intelligence operative. He supplied Fleming with the introductions he needed for the New York scenes in
Live and Let Die
and was later rewarded with a cameo role as Ernie Cureo, the cab driver who assisted Bond in
Diamonds are Forever
.

²
Noel Barber (1909–88), novelist and foreign correspondent.

³
The memoirs of outgoing US President Truman.

⁴
John Neville Wheeler, NANA's founder.

⁵
The Overseas News Agency, a wartime propaganda machine founded by British Intelligence, now trying to make its way in peacetime.

⁶
Cicely Isabel Fairfield (1892–1983), novelist, journalist and feminist who wrote under the pseudonym Rebecca West. Revolted equally by Fascism and Communism, she took a staunch anti-authoritarian stance.

⁷
Cuneo was working on a biography of Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York City, which would be published in 1955 as
Life with Fiorello.

⁸
Scott's, then located on Coventry Street, was Fleming's favourite London restaurant.

⁹
Bill Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook's nephew, whom Fleming had introduced as one of two possible investors in NANA.

¹⁰
While it is true that Fleming was an assiduous note-taker, Cuneo's estimate may be a touch exaggerated.

¹¹
The Spy Who Loved Me
.

¹²
Fleming was currently engaged in a court battle with Kevin McClory over copyright in his latest book,
Thunderball
.

5  Diamonds are Forever

¹
Fleming would later adopt the word SPECTRE for a criminal organisation that appeared in several of his books

²
In 1957 Sillitoe assisted Fleming with his non-fiction book
The Diamond Smugglers
.

³
It was to be the only time a Bond story was adapted for television.

⁴
Claudette Colbert (1903–96), French-born actress and Hollywood leading lady.

⁵
Following a deal with Pan Books the first Bond paperbacks had emerged that year

⁶
HMS Ulysses
by Alistair MacLean

⁷
The option was not exercised and expired the following year.

⁸
Adolf Hallman (1893–1968) had designed covers for several Scandinavian publications of Bond.

⁹
Script editor at the Rank Organisation, who were still interested in the film rights to
Moonraker
.

¹⁰
Where flights between the UK and America stopped to refuel.

6  From Russia with Love

¹
Hugo Charteris (1922–70), Ann's novelist brother. He and Fleming did not always see eye to eye.

²
For his part, the Conservative MP John Jacob Astor recalled that Fleming ‘sat on the forward right-hand side of the first class and was wearing a light Burberry (and looked like a Graham Greene character who was clearly a secret agent)'.

³
Barbara (‘Babe') Paley (1915–78), American socialite, married to the philanthropist William S. Paley (1901–90), the founder of CBS.

⁴
Rosamond Lehmann (1901–90), British novelist. On an earlier visit to Goldeneye there had been a small altercation when Fleming left a dead squid in her bedroom.

⁵
Cole Lesley (1911–80), Coward's secretary and later biographer.

⁶
Pearl White (1889–1938), US stage and film actress who specialised in serials.

⁷
Though he would later appoint a UK agent

⁸
To which Fleming had earlier aspired to rise.

⁹
Nicholai Khoklov, a Soviet defector, had recently survived an attempt by Russian agents to assassinate him with thallium – a colourless, odourless, radioactive element known as ‘the poisoner's poison'

7  Conversations with the Armourer

¹
Fleming did, in fact, equip a female assassin with a bow and arrow in his 1960 collection of short stories
For Your Eyes Only
.

²
Richard Chopping (1917–2008), famous for his realistic style, would later illustrate numerous Bond jackets

³
Fleming's friend in the police force was Deputy Commissioner Sir Ronald Howe, who featured as Sir Ronald Vallance in
Moonraker
.

⁴
Boothroyd pointed out that he had in fact been photographed holding a Ruger.

8  Dr No

¹
Blanche Blackwell (b. 1912), a member of one of Jamaica's prominent trading families, became a close confidante of Fleming towards the end of his life

²
Coward tactfully forbore to stage it. Titled
Volcano
, the play was finally performed in 2013.

³
In his book Fleming described their conversation as being ‘punctuated by what sounded like small-calibre revolver shots.'

⁴
Rima the Jungle Girl, heroine of a novel by W. H. Hudson,
Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest
(1904).

⁵
Fleming had included a slightly risqué song in his original manuscript.

⁶
A leaflet advertising
The Book Collector
.

⁷
Fleming was referring to his celebrity golf tournament, which he described in an article titled ‘Nightmare among the Mighty'.

⁸
William Plomer's memoir,
At Home
, was published by Cape in 1958.

⁹
Norman Lewis (1908–2003), journalist, author and travel writer.

¹⁰
Desmond Flower (1907–97), bibliophile and publisher. As director of Cassell & Co. he had secured a major coup with the acquisition of Winston Churchill's six-volume history of the Second World War.

¹¹
A monthly literary magazine.

¹²
Morris Cargill (1914–2000), lawyer, businessman, politician, writer and, from 1953 until his death, columnist for the Jamaican
Gleaner
. In 1965 he published a book,
Ian Fleming's Jamaica
, with an introduction by Fleming.

¹³
Caspar's other godparents were Cecil Beaton, Clarissa Eden, Peter Fleming and Ian's golfing friend Duff Dunbar.

¹⁴
Cape's house journal.

¹⁵
The Avanti had only been introduced in America that April, making it quite likely that Fleming was the first person in Britain to own a model. His customised version, which he owned until his death in 1964, boasted black leather upholstery and crimson-numbered dials on the dashboard. Its numberplate was 8 EYR.

9  Goldfinger

¹
Sir Gerard D'Erlanger was chairman of BOAC, whose planes served Jamaica.

²
They had just moved from White Cliffs to The Old Palace, in Bekesbourne, Kent, which was not as grand as it sounded and where Ann was particularly unhappy.

³
Ann's coterie included several Oxford academics

⁴
Fleming was counting on some funds when his mother died. In the end she predeceased him in 1964 by 16 days, by which time the matter had become irrelevant.

⁵
A live radio interview with Fleming and Raymond Chandler.

⁶
  ‘Quantum of Solace', a short story Fleming had written on return from the Seychelles was first published by the
Sunday Times.

⁷
Sir Ian Gilmour (1926–2007), later a Member of Parliament but from 1954–59 owner and editor of the
Spectator
magazine for which Fleming was motoring correspondent

⁸
Fleming did indeed use motor racing in an episode for an abortive Bond TV series. His outline was adapted in 2015 by Anthony Horowitz for the novel
Trigger Mortis
.

10  For Your Eyes Only

¹
Based on a true story related to Fleming by Blanche Blackwell

²
  See ‘Conversations with the Armourer'

³
A reference to
Whack-O!,
a TV series that ran in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and involved a cane-swishing teacher administering corporal punishment to any pupil within reach.

11  The Chandler Letters

¹
Who owned the freehold to Victoria Square

²
Chandler had also sent a near-indecipherable scrawl about
Live and Let Die
.

12  Thunderball

¹
The matter did not end there. Court cases continued after Fleming's death and the dispute was not fully resolved until 2012

²
Albert R. Broccoli (1909–96), Harry Saltzman (1915–94).

³
‘The Hildeband Rarity' had appeared in
Playboy
earlier in the year.

⁴
To which Michael Howard appended the caustic note: ‘both shops? – MH'.

⁵
Marlow replied, ‘A children's book! Oh, those poor kids – you'll frighten them to death with James Bond Jr.'

⁶
Marlow had failed to secure Marilyn Monroe for one of her deals.

⁷
Paul Danquah (b. 1925), actor and lawyer, starred in several films during the 1960s and became the first black presenter of a children's programme on British TV in 1966. Despite Fleming's intervention he did not get the part.

⁸
Chris Blackwell (b. 1937) had founded Island Records in 1959. Fleming's intervention was a boost to his career. In short order Blackwell became a major record producer and later introduced Bob Marley to the world.

⁹
Terence Young (1915–94) directed three of the first Bond films.

¹⁰
David Niven (1910–83), Oscar-winning actor who subsequently appeared as a high-class crook in
The Pink Panther
(1963) and later starred as James Bond in a 1967 film adaptation of
Casino Royale.

¹¹
Raymond Hawkey (1930–2010), inspirational designer employed by Pan who was given free rein to produce covers for the entire Bond opus.

¹²
  Fleming had earlier that year relinquished rights to a TV proposal featuring his creation, ‘Napoleon Solo'. The character would later become a mainstay of
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
series.

13  The Spy Who Loved Me

¹
His half-sister Amaryllis was by now a highly regarded cellist. When Fleming was at the height of his fame she gleefully recounted how somebody, on being introduced to him at a party, had no idea who he was and wanted to know if he was related to her.

²
Fleming had hoped Greene would write an introduction to an American omnibus,
Gilt Edged Bonds
. Greene demurred at the last moment, by which time Fleming's publishers had already produced publicity material.

³
  Cape's new marketing director.

⁴
  Courtaulds, one of Britain's largest textile companies, manufactured a range of synthetic clothing. By means unknown, they managed to use James Bond to promote their products. Fleming was not happy.

⁵
A BBC TV series of probing and often psychologically revealing interviews.

⁶
Where Fleming had been interviewed by Geoffrey Boothroyd.

⁷
Hugo Pitman, an old friend, was connected to the stockbrokers Rowe and Pitman, for whom Fleming had worked in the 1930s.

⁸
Brighton's shingle beach.

⁹
Rex Stout (1876–1975), prolific American thriller writer, creator of Nero Wolfe.

¹⁰
A book of ciphers first published in 1909.