'Sean Connery is a real charmer – fairly unknown but a good actor with the right looks and physique': Unseen Ian Fleming letters reveals what drove him to write his first Bond
This cache of Ian Fleming’s correspondence – published in a brilliant new book – reveals how a gun-crazy fan became his most trusted adviser and why sex and violence played an important role in his protagonist's life
'It is true that sex plays an important part in James Bond’s life and that his profession requires him to be more or less constantly involved in violent action': Ian Fleming wrote to the Manchester Guardian in 1958
THE TRIGGER-HAPPY PEN PAL
In 1956 a gun specialist in Glasgow, Geoffrey Boothroyd, who had been reading the Bond books, wrote to Ian Fleming to recommend an upgrade in 007’s armoury...
From Geoffrey Boothroyd, Glasgow, May 23, 1956
I have, by now, got rather fond of Mr James Bond. I like most of the things about him, with the exception of his rather deplorable taste in firearms. In particular I dislike a man who comes into contact with all sorts of formidable people using a .25 Beretta. This sort of gun is really a lady’s gun, and not a really nice lady at that. If Mr Bond has to use a light gun he would be better off with a .22 rimfire, and the lead bullet would cause more shocking effect than the jacketed type of the .25. May I suggest that Mr Bond is armed with a revolver? If Mr Bond gets himself an S&W .38 Special Centennial Airweight [Smith & Wesson, one of the biggest gun manufacturers in the US] he will have a real man-stopper weighing only 13oz…
From Ian Fleming, May 31, 1956
You have entirely convinced me, and I propose, perhaps not in the next volume of James Bond’s memoirs but in the subsequent one, to change his weapons in accordance with your instructions… As a matter of interest, how do you come to know so much about these things?
When the first Bond film, Dr No, was filmed in Jamaica, Fleming found a job for his mistress Blanche Blackwell’s (pictured above) son Chris, who went on to record Bob Marley and U2 for his Island Records label
From Geoffrey Boothroyd, June 1, 1956
If I am to be considered for the post of Bond’s ballistic man I should give you my terms of reference. Age 31, English, unmarried. Employed by ICI Ltd as Technical Rep in Scotland. Member of the following Rifle Clubs: NRA, Gt Britain, English Twenty Club, National Rifle Association of America, non-resident member, St Rollox Rifle Club, West of Scotland Rifle Club, Muzzle Loading Association of Gt Britain. I shoot with shotgun and rifle, target, clay pigeon, deer, but, to my deep regret, no big game. (I cherish a dream that one day a large tiger or lion will escape from the zoo or a travelling circus and I can bag it in Argyle St, or Princes St, Edinburgh.)
Bond has a good point when he mentions accuracy. It’s no good shooting at a man with the biggest gun one can hold – if you miss him. The thing about the larger calibres is, however, that when you hit someone with a man-stopping bullet they are out of the game and won’t lie on the floor still popping off at you.
I think you will find that silencers are more often found in fiction than in real life. I can’t see how one would fit a silencer to a Beretta unless a special barrel were made for it, as the silencer has to be screwed on to the barrel projecting in front of the slide on the Beretta.
This business of using guns in houses or hotels is a very strange one. So few people are familiar with what a gun sounds like that I would have very little hesitation in firing one in any well-constructed building… I have fired .455 blanks at home on several occasions even in the middle of the night without any enquiries being made. The last time was at Christmas when I blew out the candles on the Christmas cake with a pistol and blanks.
From Ian Fleming, July 12, 1956
The jacket of my present book… will consist of a revolver crossed with a rose and it should be a very handsome affair. I have looked in vain for a Beretta .25. If I fail to find one, would you care to have your own Smith & Wesson made forever famous?
Boothroyd subsequently sent his Smith & Wesson .38 pistol to Fleming for his book jacket designer to borrow – and then ten days later wrote with news of an unwelcome development...
From Geoffrey Boothroyd, September 18, 1956
I have just had a visit from our local CID... The reason for this uncalled-for interest in my collection is due to a very misguided character who slew two ladies and a girl on the outskirts of Glasgow on Sunday night using a .38 pistol… I told the two CID chaps that the pistol was in London in your possession… it is possible that the wheels of the Law may (a) call upon you to make sure that the pistol is where I said it was, and (b) ask you if you have a Firearms Certificate… It is a funny world, the most unlikely events cause repercussions all over the place and our gunman friend would have to choose this time to go shooting people and he would have to use a .38. Incidentally, no one heard the sound of the shots, which goes to prove my point about firing off guns.
From Ian Fleming, October 1, 1956
...The telephone rang and there was Chief Inspector Blake of Scotland Yard very full of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ and ‘on the 16th instants’. Fortunately I was able to give him the number of my revolver licence which also covers a .38 Colt Police Positive, and I explained at length that you were very much an innocent party to what was, in any case, quite within the law, and he retired satisfied.
In 1962, on Fleming’s recommendation, Boothroyd was hired as firearms consultant on the first Bond film, Dr No.
Fans of the Bond books wrote to Fleming on points of esoteric factual inaccuracy, to request salacious plot elements, and even to express surprise at finding his hero named after their ornithologist husband
SEX AND THE SINGLE SPY
In 1958 Fleming wrote a letter to the Manchester Guardian in response to an article which had condemned the novels as ‘symptomatic of a decline in taste’.
From Ian Fleming, April 5, 1958
Sir, I am most grateful for the scholarly examination of my James Bond stories in your leader columns on Monday but… I hope you will forgive a squeak from the butterfly before any more big wheels roll down upon it.
It is true that sex plays an important part in James Bond’s life and that his profession requires him to be more or less constantly involved in violent action. It is also true that, as in any real spy-life, when the villain gets hold of Bond, Bond is made to suffer painfully.
What other punishment for failure would be appropriate – that Bond should receive an extra heavy demand note from the Inland Revenue, or that he should be reduced in his Civil Service rank from principal officer to acting principal?
But, as you, sir, put it, ‘What is more sinister is the cult of luxury for its own sake – and the kind of luxury held up for the reader’s emulation. The idea that anyone should smoke a brand of cigarette not because they enjoy them but because they are “exclusive” (that is, because they cost more) is pernicious and it is implicit in all Mr Fleming’s glib descriptions of food, drink and clothes.’
I accept the rebuke, but more on the score of vulgarity… To create an illusion of depth I had to fit Bond out with some theatrical props and… I did equip him with a distinctive gun and, though they are a security hazard, with distinctive cigarettes. This latter touch of display unfortunately went to my head. I proceeded to invent a cocktail for Bond (which I sampled several months later and found unpalatable)… The gimmickry grew like bindweed and now, while it still amuses me, it has become an unfortunate trademark.
Perhaps Bond’s blatant heterosexuality is a subconscious protest against the current fashion for sexual confusion. Perhaps the violence springs from a psychosomatic rejection of Welfare wigs, teeth, and spectacles, and Bond’s luxury meals are simply saying ‘no’ to toad-in-the-hole and tele-bickies. Who can say? … Who, for the matter of that, cares?
HE'S LOST THE PLOT!
Fans of the Bond books wrote to Fleming on points of esoteric factual inaccuracy, to request salacious plot elements, and even to express surprise at finding his hero named after their ornithologist husband – and Fleming would often reply....
From Ian Fleming, April 9, 1956
To Geoffrey M Cuckson, Nottingham, who had admitted a ‘weakness for girls in bondage’, and suggested that ‘Tiffany (or her equivalent) bound in a frogman’s suit would be really something!’
I will certainly see what I can do to find you a girl in a frogman’s suit.
From Ian Fleming, May 29, 1956
To John G Ryan, commercial division manager, Shannon Airport, Ireland. Mr Ryan had complained that in Diamonds Are Forever, Fleming had referred to ‘the junk in the airport shop, the ‘Irish Horn Rosaries’, the ‘Bog Oak Irish Harp’ and the ‘Brass Leprechauns’ all at $1.50 and the ghastly ‘Irish Musical Cottage’ at $4.00.
I am greatly impressed that Shannon should have taken cognisance of my light-hearted thriller. I often come through Shannon, and it will certainly be a great pleasure to meet you on my next visit and apologise in person for my happy-go-lucky references to the goods on offer in your shops. Perhaps by then all the Bog Oak Irish Harps and Brass Leprechauns will have been bought up by the GIs!
Fleming had the same publisher, Jonathan Cape, for all his James Bond novels, corresponding mostly with his editorial mentor, William Plomer, from his waterfront house in Jamaica, Goldeneye
PLEASE, PLEASE FORGIVE ME
To Mrs James Bond, Pasadena, USA, June 20, 1961
Your husband has every reason to sue me in every possible position and for practically every kind of libel in the book, for I will now confess the damnable truth.
I have a small house which I built in Oracabessa in Jamaica just after the war and, some ten years ago a confirmed bachelor on the eve of marriage, I decided to take my mind off the dreadful prospect by writing a thriller.
I was determined that my secret agent should be as anonymous a personality as possible, even his name should be the very reverse of the kind of ‘Peregrine Carruthers’, whom one meets in this type of fiction.
At that time one of my bibles was, and still is, ‘Birds Of The West Indies’ by James Bond, and it struck me that this name, brief, unromantic and yet very masculine, was just what I needed and so James Bond II was born, and started off on the career that, I must confess, has been meteoric, culminating with his choice by your President as his favourite thriller hero…
In return I can only offer your James Bond unlimited use of the name Ian Fleming for any purposes he may think fit. Perhaps one day he will discover some particularly horrible species of bird which he would like to christen in an insulting fashion…
WHAT, NO CLEAVAGE ON THE COVER?
Ian Fleming had the same publisher, Jonathan Cape, for all his James Bond novels, corresponding mostly with his editorial mentor, William Plomer, from his waterfront house in Jamaica, Goldeneye, where he wrote them during the English winter.
From Ian Fleming, Feb 14, 1956
Forgive this tropic scrawl. I am sitting in the shade gazing out across the Caribbean & it is heroic that I am writing at all. But I must congratulate you on the jacket [for ‘Diamonds Are Forever’] … I feel a soupçon of cleavage would have helped, but I know your politics on that – & there must be a credit line with ‘Diamond clip by Cartier’... Have done 52,000 of the next. Can’t tell what it’s like, but it goes fast & has been fun. Bit too much body hair & blood perhaps… Must stop. There’s a lobster to be speared & then as the sun sets & the fireflies come out a man called DARKO KERIM is going to shoot a man called TRILENCU with a SNIPERSCOPE.
From William Plomer, June 18, 1957
I’ve greatly enjoyed Dr No – and so will, I hope, millions of other readers… I think my favourite moment is when Dr No taps his contact-lenses with his steel claws. (I’ve been practising with my biro on my spectacles but it doesn’t ring true.)
EVERY SECOND COUNTS, SAYS COWARD
The playwright, composer, actor and singer Noël Coward was a neighbour of Fleming’s in Jamaica.
From Noël Coward, Firefly Hill, Port Maria, Jamaica, May 6, 1958
Dearest Beast,
I have read Dr No from cover to cover and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it… I am willing to accept the centipede, the tarantulas, the land crabs, the giant squid (except on that beastly table at Goldeneye)… but what I will neither accept nor forgive is the highly inaccurate statement that when it is 11am in Jamaica, it is 6am in dear old England. This dear boy, not to put too fine a point on it, is a f****** lie… and it is carelessness of this kind that makes my eyes steel slits of blue. I was also slightly shocked by the lascivious announcement that Honeychile’s bottom was like a boy’s! I know we are all becoming progressively more broadminded nowadays but really old chap what could you have been thinking of?
'The man they have chosen for Bond, Sean Connery, is a real charmer – fairly unknown but a good actor with the right looks and physique...' wrote Fleming
THAT CONNERY'S A REAL CHARMER
When the first Bond film, Dr No, was filmed in Jamaica, Fleming found a job for his mistress Blanche Blackwell’s son Chris, who went on to record Bob Marley and U2 for his Island Records label.
From Ian Fleming, October 25, 1961
The Company has written to Christopher giving him most of the dope and asking him to be their local contact and production assistant on Dr No… The suggested location is the Morant Lighthouse area with those swamps behind and the beach you and I know. They also want to do all their musical score for the picture in Jamaica, and this should be a real chance for Christopher to seek out talent and lease them his recording studio... The man they have chosen for Bond, Sean Connery, is a real charmer – fairly unknown but a good actor with the right looks and physique...
‘The Man With The Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming’s James Bond Letters’, edited by Fergus Fleming, is published on October 8 by Bloomsbury, priced £25.
Offer price £20 (20 per cent discount), until October 11. Pre-order at mailbookshop.co.uk; p&p is free on orders over £12
