The Life of Ian Fleming

The Life of Ian Fleming

by John Pearson

published by McGraw-Hill  (1966)

Hardcover

5 1/2 x 8.65 inches, 367 pages

Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer who is best known for his James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.

While working for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units, 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. His wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail and depth of the James Bond novels.

Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1952. It was a success, with three print runs being commissioned to cope with the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two collections of short-stories followed between 1953 and 1966. The novels revolved around James Bond, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond was also known by his code number, 007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Reserve. The Bond stories rank among the best-selling series of fictional books of all time, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and two works of non-fiction. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming 14th on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Fleming was married to Ann Charteris, who was divorced from the second Viscount Rothermere owing to her affair with the author. Fleming and Charteris had a son, Caspar. Fleming was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life and succumbed to heart disease in 1964 at the age of 56. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously; other writers have since produced Bond novels. Fleming's creation has appeared in film twenty-six times, portrayed by seven actors.

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Was Ian Fleming James Bond? Many think so. Certainly the super-hero and his creator had similarities - an aristocratic background, sophisticated tastes, a fatal appeal to women, and an intimate knowledge of the of international spy rings. Still Fleming disclaimed any relation to "that cardboard body" he so felicitously invented. And while he might, as readers of John Pearson's breath-taking biography of Fleming will soon find out. For most of what James Bond could do Fleming did better. Unlike Bond, the author inspired great love as well as lust; unlike Bond he was brilliant, sensitive, and highly talented. And finally, unlike Bond, Fleming shunned violence as a solution to human conflicts. In this fascinating book, which is a profound psychological study, Pearson separates the creator from the created. He masterfully unravels the essential Fleming from the golden cocoon of illusion he wove around himself. He reveals that while Fleming incorporated his own adventures in James Bond's - his car accident

in Munich becomes Scaramanga's lethal railway in The Man with the Golden Gunn - Flemming also uses his creation to fulfill his own daydreams, and to alleviate his very real - and quite baseless - sense of failure. The most startling example of this bizarre transformation is the character "M," icy and omniscient head of British Secret Service. Pearson, in one of the truly great feats of biographical research, identifies the real - and surprising - counterpart to this character. Fact, fiction; illusion, reality; confidence, insecurity; love, repulsion - these mirror images that pursued Fleming/Bond all his life will haunt the reader of this audacious biography, surely one of the most remarkable portraits of "a hero of our times." Pearson, became acquainted with Fleming while working with him on The Sunday Times. To gather material for this book he traveled more than 100,000 miles, interviewed almost 150 people, and made an extensive study of Fleming's private paper.

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The biography of the man who created James Bond, one of the world's most famous and popular fictional characters. Fleming remained an enigmatic figure who disclaimed comparisons with his creation, but John Pearson - with access to Fleming's private papers - draws many parallels between the two. Pearson worked with Fleming for several years on "The Sunday Times". His prizewinning first novel "Gone To Timbuctoo" was published in 1963, followed by "Bluebird and the Deda Lake", the story of Donald Campbell's 1964 land speed record.

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John George Pearson (born 5 October 1930 in Epsom, Surrey) is an English novelist and an author of biographies, notably of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, and of the Kray twins.

Pearson was educated at King's College School, Wimbledon, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he gained a double first in history. He then worked for The Economist, BBC Television and The Sunday Times. He was Ian Fleming's assistant at the Sunday Times and went on to write the first biography of Fleming, The Life of Ian Fleming, published in 1966.

Pearson was commissioned by Donald Campbell to chronicle his successful attempt on the Land Speed Record in 1964 in Bluebird CN7, resulting in the book Bluebird and the Dead Lake.

Pearson has also written "true crime" biographies, such as The Profession of Violence, an account of the rise and fall of the Kray twins, who had hired him to write their biography in 1967. Over the next several years the brothers, who by now were in jail, wrote frequently to Pearson. He wrote two further books about the Krays: The Cult of Violence: The Untold Story of the Krays and Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins. In 2010 Pearson put up for auction more than 160 previously unseen letters and photographs from the Kray twins. The items sold for £20,780.

Another of Pearson's books, The Gamblers, is an account of the group of gamblers who made up what was known as the Clermont Set, including John Aspinall, James Goldsmith and Lord Lucan. Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the book in 2006. The Gamblers was made into a two-part TV drama, Lucan, starring Rory Kinnear and Christopher Eccleston, broadcast on ITV1 in December 2013.

Pearson's book Facades was the first full-scale biography of the Sitwell siblings Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell. It was published in 1978.

Pearson has also written five novels. Storm Jameson praised his first novel, Gone to Timbuctoo, as "an unusually good first novel, an exciting story, and a splendid setting in French West Africa. The writing is sharp and witty." Malcolm Muggeridge said, "This is an exceptionally brilliant first novel - exciting, wryly funny and perceptive."

For his next three novels, Pearson did tie-in fictional biographies. Pearson also became the third official author of the James Bond series, writing in 1973 James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, a first-person biography of the fictional agent James Bond. However, Pearson declined an offer to write further Bond novels. Pearson then did fictional tie-in works about Upstairs, Downstairs (The Bellamys of Eaton Place) and Biggles.

Pearson has three children from his first marriage. He married his current wife, Lynette Dundas, on 17 December 1980.

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It is now 50 years since the premiere of Dr No, the very first Bond film, with Sean Connery introducting 007 as the glamorous secret agent who would become the single most profitable movie character in the history of cinema. But James Bond was invented by one man, Ian Fleming, a wartime intelligence officer and Sunday Times newspaper man who lived to see only the very beginning of the Bond cult.

John Pearson's famous biography remains the definitive account of how only Ian Fleming could have dreamed up James Bond, for he led a life as colourful as anything in his fiction, which in turn became a covert autobiography. Charming, debonair and a ruthless womaniser, globetrotting from wartime Algiers to beachside Jamaica, Fleming was as elusive and opaque as his imaginary creation.

In his new introduction, John Pearson examines the extent to which Fleming's character informs even the most recent movie portrayals of his hero, and how Bond himself has achieved immortality beyond his creator's wildest dreams.