Ian Fleming

A jacket worn by Ian Fleming while observing a raid on Dieppe while servind in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War was sold at auction for £13,750 yesterday.  The jacket had been expected to raise between £5,000 and £7,000 when auctioned by Bonhams and was lately owned by Lord Ivar Mountbatten, who had inherited [...]

Before the Vesper, there was the Americano; this is the first cocktail that James Bond ever orders. He does this at the bar of the Hermitage Hotel whilst he waits for Mathis and Vesper Lynd. When they arrive, Bond orders Mathis a Fine à l’eau and a Bacardi for Vesper.

Ben Macintyre wrote an article originally published in The Times (now inaccessible due to a paywall) and republished by the Ottawa Citizen in which he argues that Ian Fleming’s father, Valentine Fleming,who died in the First World War, provided the prototype for James Bond. According to the article Fleming once said: “I couldn’t possibly be [...]

One thing clear from reading about the life of Ian Fleming is that while he found it difficult to apply himself to his career during peacetime, his role as personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence during the Second World War brought out the best in him. It was during this time that Commander [...]

Ian Fleming’s Commandos: The Story of 30 Assault Unit in WWII by Nicholas Rankin is available from all good booksellers today, including Amazon. The book provides an interesting history into the commando unit set up by Ian Fleming to recover all manner of Nazi secrets such as code settings, secret documents and new technology being [...]

On Monday 5th August 1963, Ian Fleming was the guest on Roy Plomley’s Desert Island Disks, a long-running show on BBC radio that was first broadcast on 29 January 1942 and still runs today. The premise of the programme is simple; each week a famous guest (“castaway”) chooses eight pieces of music, as well as [...]

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was written by Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond books, for his son Caspar. Inspired by a series of racing cars built by Count Louis Zborowski in the 1920s powered by aero engines, the story features an inventor – Commander Caractacus Pott – who renovates an old car, which starts [...]

Thrilling Cities comprises of a series of articles written by Ian Fleming on two trips in 1959 and 1960 for the Sunday Times and published in book form in 1963. The articles were written with the aim of helping the reader find the type of excitement absent from more traditional travel writing, written from the [...]

The Diamond Smugglers is an investigation by Ian Fleming of diamond smuggling operations out of South Africa. Originally written as a series of articles in the Sunday Times, the book expanded upon the original material and was first published in 1957.

All Ian Fleming’s short stories are collected on one volume, entitled Quantum of Solace. For the first time the stories from For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy & The Living Daylights are found within the covers of a single volume. You can order it from the outlets below: Amazon UK Amazon US