History Creator / IanFleming

Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British author who radically altered SpyFiction when he started writing.

During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, he served in an intelligence planning role with the Royal Navy, planning some very successful and some very odd covert operations (one, involving getting [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Rudolf Hess]] to come to Britain via an occultist, was cancelled when Hess flew to Britain on an unauthorized peace mission anyway via his manic hallucinations in 1941[[note]]Even stranger, Ian's brother, Peter Fleming, wrote a novel, ''The Flying Visit'', a year earlier where he imagined UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler doing that exact stunt![[/note]]). Fleming also planned an operation called Operation Goldeneye aiming at securing UsefulNotes/{{Gibraltar}}. "Goldeneye" would become the later name of his house in UsefulNotes/{{Jamaica}} [[note]]and [[Film/GoldenEye a movie in the franchise he created]][[/note]] (the name was lifted from the book ''Reflections in a Golden Eye'', which he loved and which was later made in a film with Creator/MarlonBrando and Creator/ElizabethTaylor).

* Edward Baker-Duly played him in ''Series/ASpyAmongFriends'', in which he's shown for one scene in a UsefulNotes/WorldWarII flashback -- experimenting with a diving suit which can be worn with a (perfectly dry) dinner jacket underneath.

* Creator/CharlesDance played him in the 1989 TV movie ''Goldeneye''. That movie also had Creator/ChristophWaltz play a German spy, he would go on to play Bond's ArchEnemy Blofeld in ''Film/{{Spectre}}'' and ''Film/NoTimeToDie''. Amusingly, Dance had been a henchman in ''Film/ForYourEyesOnly'' eight years previously.

He died in 1964 of a heart attack, the result of a 70-cigarette a day smoking habit and a love of liquor bordering on the full-blown alcoholic (he was known to down twelve vodka martini in an evening, each stronger that the one before). He died before fully completing the novel ''Literature/TheManWithTheGoldenGun'', depending on whom you ask.[[note]] Some people say he did complete it, but never got to revise it. Others say that he didn't and Kingsley Amis finished it for him. Amis, for his part, denied finishing ''Golden Gun''.[[/note]]

[[caption-width-right:300:''"Never say 'no' to adventures. Always say 'yes', otherwise you'll lead a very dull life."'']]

He also missed the release of ''Film/{{Goldfinger}}'', the movie which fully launched the Film/JamesBond craze worldwide; ''Film/DrNo'' had only met a lukewarm response, while the following ''Film/FromRussiaWithLove'' was just successful enough to spawn a sequel.

Who precisely inspired Bond is a matter of debate. Fleming almost certainly included idealized aspects of himself. Somewhat of a self-loathing insecure fellow, he also included several 'bad' aspects of himself in his memorable over-the-top [[DiabolicalMastermind Bond Villains]], especially (it's inferred) the perceived sadism toward {{Bond Girl}}s (which, aptly, are tyrannized by the 'bad' Fleming -the villain- and cruelly humiliated/abused, before being rescued by the 'good' Fleming, i.e. James Bond). However, his wartime experience and contacts certainly provided a lot of ripe material for his stories — several sources suggest his cousin and SOE mate Sir Creator/ChristopherLee as another possible prototype while others suggest Churchill's {{Spymaster}} William Stephenson, codename: Intrepid, as another.

* Creator/CharlesDance played him in the 1989 TV movie ''Goldeneye''. Amusingly, he had a henchman role in ''Film/ForYourEyesOnly'' before. That movie also had Creator/ChristophWaltz play a German spy, he would go on to play Bond's ArchEnemy Blofeld in ''Film/{{Spectre}}'' and ''Film/NoTimeToDie''.

* Creator/CharlesDance played him in the 1989 TV movie ''Goldeneye''. Amusingly, he had a henchman role in ''Film/ForYourEyesOnly'' before.

Creator/CharlesDance played him in the 1989 TV movie ''Goldeneye'', [[CastingGag Jason Connery]] (son of Creator/SeanConnery) played a HistoricalBadassUpgrade Fleming in the 1990 action movie ''Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming'', and Creator/DominicCooper portrayed him in ''Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond'', a 2014 fictionalised {{biopic}} MiniSeries.

During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, he served in an intelligence planning role with the Royal Navy, planning some very successful and some very odd covert operations (one, involving getting [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Rudolf Hess]] to come to Britain via an occultist, was cancelled when Hess flew to Britain on an unauthorized peace mission anyway via his manic hallucinations in 1941[[note]]Even stranger, Ian's brother, Peter Fleming, wrote a novel, ''The Flying Visit'', a year earlier where he imagined UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler doing that exact stunt![[/note]]). He planned an operation called Operation Goldeneye aiming at securing UsefulNotes/{{Gibraltar}}. "Goldeneye" would become the later name of his house [[note]]and [[Film/GoldenEye a movie in the franchise he created]][[/note]] (the name was lifted from the book ''Reflections in a Golden Eye'', which he loved and which was later made in a film with Creator/MarlonBrando and Creator/ElizabethTaylor).

It used to be believed that Fleming never went on active service undercover, and some attributed his Bond stories to being the product of frustrated fantasy, Bond living the secret agent's life that Fleming had had stolen from him. (Fleming was not unfit for field work; the fact was he was too highly-placed and knew too many secrets to risk capture, since he was employed as an intelligence analyst and controller/coordinator of field agents.). However it is now known that he did in fact actually go on at least [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8913384/Ian-Flemings-Commandos-The-Story-of-30-Assault-Unit-in-WWII-by-Nicholas-Rankin-review.html one mission]] to occupied France in 1940, and actively served alongside Creator/JonPertwee. It is also believed that he masterminded an unsuccessful "pinch mission" in 1942 for a German Engima coding machine and related material using the infamous Dieppe Raid as cover. He also stayed in Portugal for a while during the War, since it was a [[WorldWarII/TheNeutralNations neutral nation]] and there were great needs for information from both the Allies and the Axis' spies.

During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, he served in an intelligence planning role with the Royal Navy, planning some very successful and some very odd covert operations (one, involving getting [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Rudolf Hess]] to come to Britain via an occultist, was cancelled when Hess flew to Britain on an unauthorized peace mission anyway via his manic hallucinations in 1941[[note]]Even stranger, Ian's brother, Peter Fleming, wrote a novel, ''The Flying Visit'', a year earlier where he imagined UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler doing that exact stunt![[/note]]). He planned an operation called Operation Goldeneye, the later name of his house [[note]]and [[Film/GoldenEye a movie in the franchise he created]][[/note]] (the name was lifted from the book ''Reflections in a Golden Eye'', which he loved and which was later made in a film with Creator/MarlonBrando and Creator/ElizabethTaylor).

He also missed ''Film/{{Goldfinger}}'', the movie which fully launched the James Bond craze worldwide; ''Film/DrNo'' had only met a lukewarm response, while the following ''Film/FromRussiaWithLove'' was just successful enough to spawn a sequel.

Creator/CharlesDance played him in the 1989 TV movie ''Goldeneye'', [[CastingGag Jason Connery]] (son of Creator/SeanConnery) played Fleming in the 1990 action movie ''Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming'', and Creator/DominicCooper portrayed him in ''Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond'', a 2014 fictionalised {{biopic}} MiniSeries.

[[CastingGag Jason Connery]] (son of Creator/SeanConnery) played Fleming in the 1990 action movie ''Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming'', and Creator/DominicCooper portrayed him in ''Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond'', a 2014 fictionalised {{biopic}} MiniSeries.

Creator/DominicCooper portrayed Fleming in ''Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond'', a 2014 fictionalised {{biopic}} MiniSeries.

Who precisely inspired Bond is a matter of debate. Fleming almost certainly included idealized aspects of himself. Somewhat of a self-loathing insecure fellow, he also included several 'bad' aspects of himself in his memorable over-the-top [[DiabolicalMastermind Bond Villains]], especially (it's inferred) the perceived sadism toward {{Bond Girl}}s (which, aptly, are tyrannized by the 'bad' Fleming -the villain- and cruelly humiliated/abused, before being rescued by the 'good' Fleming, i.e. James Bond). However, his wartime experience and contacts certainly provided a lot of ripe material for his stories — several sources suggest his cousin and SOE mate Sir Creator/ChristopherLee as another possible prototype.

During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, he served in an intelligence planning role with the Royal Navy, planning some very successful and some very odd covert operations (one, involving getting [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Rudolf Hess]] to come to Britain via an occultist, was cancelled when Hess flew to Britain on an unauthorized peace mission anyway via his manic hallucinations in 1941[[note]]Even stranger, Ian's brother, Peter Fleming, wrote a novel, ''The Flying Visit'', a year earlier where he imagined UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler doing that exact stunt![/note]]). He planned an operation called Operation Goldeneye, the later name of his house [[note]]and [[Film/GoldenEye a movie in the franchise he created]][[/note]] (the name was lifted from the book ''Reflections in a Golden Eye'', which he loved and which was later made in a film with Creator/MarlonBrando and Creator/ElizabethTaylor).

During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, he served in an intelligence planning role with the Royal Navy, planning some very successful and some very odd covert operations (one, involving getting [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Rudolf Hess]] to come to Britain via an occultist, was cancelled when Hess defected to Britain anyway via his manic hallucinations). He planned an operation called Operation Goldeneye, the later name of his house [[note]]and [[Film/GoldenEye a movie in the franchise he created]][[/note]] (the name was lifted from the book ''Reflections in a Golden Eye'', which he loved and which was later made in a film with Creator/MarlonBrando and Creator/ElizabethTaylor).

Creator/DominicCooper portrayed Fleming in a fictionalised {{biopic}} MiniSeries in 2014, ''Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond''.

During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, he served in an intelligence planning role with the Royal Navy, planning some very successful and some very odd covert operations (one, involving getting [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Rudolf Hess]] to come to Britain via an occultist, was cancelled when Hess defected to Britain anyway via his manic hallucinations). He planned an operation called Operation Goldeneye, the later name of his house [[note]]and [[Film/GoldenEye a movie in the franchise he created]][[/note]] (the name was lifted from the book ''Reflections in a Golden Eye'', which he loved and which was later made in a film with Marlon Brando and Liz Taylor).

Fleming wrote 12 ''Bond'' novels and 9 short stories, one of the latter being the source of the title for ''Film/QuantumOfSolace''. {{He also|Did}} wrote ''Film/ChittyChittyBangBang'', a book about diamond smuggling and a travel guide called ''Thrilling Cities'' (which included one of the Bond short stories). [[ShownTheirWork The level of research is clear in his Bond novels]]. People mainly familiar with the films (which are defined by TheSixties) may be surprised at the level of TheFifties present in the books, the decade in which most of them were written, which covers things like technology level, social attitudes and a more straightforwardly hostile view of the Soviet Union - the films retconned most stories with Soviet villains, forming the UrExample of the RenegadeRussian trope or having them manipulated by Blofeld's apolitical SPECTRE.

Born in 1908, Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author who radically altered SpyFiction when he started writing.

Fleming wrote 12 ''Bond'' novels and 9 short stories, one of the latter being the source of the title for ''Film/QuantumOfSolace''. {{He also |Did}}wrote ''Film/ChittyChittyBangBang'', a book about diamond smuggling and a travel guide called ''Thrilling Cities'' (which included one of the Bond short stories). [[ShownTheirWork The level of research is clear in his Bond novels]]. People mainly familiar with the films (which are defined by TheSixties) may be surprised at the level of TheFifties present in the books, the decade in which most of them were written, which covers things like technology level, social attitudes and a more straightforwardly hostile view of the Soviet Union - the films retconned most stories with Soviet villains, forming the UrExample of the RenegadeRussian trope or having them manipulated by Blofeld's apolitical SPECTRE.

Fleming wrote 12 ''Bond'' novels and 9 short stories, one of the latter being the source of the title for ''Film/QuantumOfSolace''. {{He also|Did}}wrote ''Film/ChittyChittyBangBang'', a book about diamond smuggling and a travel guide called ''Thrilling Cities'' (which included one of the Bond short stories). [[ShownTheirWork The level of research is clear in his Bond novels]]. People mainly familiar with the films (which are defined by TheSixties) may be surprised at the level of TheFifties present in the books, the decade in which most of them were written, which covers things like technology level, social attitudes and a more straightforwardly hostile view of the Soviet Union - the films retconned most stories with Soviet villains, forming the UrExample of the RenegadeRussian trope or having them manipulated by Blofeld's apolitical SPECTRE.