Ian Fleming Biography
Fast Facts
Ian Lancaster Fleming was born in Mayfair London, England in 1908.
He served with British Naval Intelligence during World War 2 first as Lieutenant, then as Commander.
He achieved worldwide fame and fortune as the creator of 12 sophisticated spy novels, including Casino Royale (1953), From Russia with Love (1957), Dr No (1958), Goldfinger (1959), Thunderball (1961), and The Man with the Golden Gun (1965).
He is also the author of the children's book "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang".
Fell in love with the tropical island, Jamaica, during a visit and eventually made his home there.
He died from a weak heart that eventually gave out at the young age of 56. (1964)
He is interred next to his wife Anne Fleming (1931-81) and their only child Caspar Robert (1952-75) in the village of Sevenhampton, England near the Welsh border.
Ian Fleming Biography
"Fleming had the charm and self-confidence to pick his friends, compartmentalize them, and the self-reliance to never depend on them."
John Cork
Ian Fleming was born into a wealthy English family that was well-respected by their countrymen because of their commitment to serving their country in politics and in the military. His father died in the Great War and thus became a hero in many people's minds including young Ian, who was still a young boy when this came to pass. His older brother, Peter, excelled at Eton and went on to become a famous travel writer.
Measuring up to the standards set before him by his father and brother didn't sit well with Ian, instead he yearned for the opportunity to create his own identity and his own fortune. He was educated at Eton and then at Sandhurst Military Academy, but again at those institutions he was passed off simply as 'Valentine Fleming's son, or Peter's younger brother'...it wasn't until he decided to continue his studies in Europe in the small Austrian town of Kitzbuhel that he was afforded the opportunity to become his own man, so to speak.
Here he studied languages and also later he went to Munich University in Bavaria, Germany. In Austria, his fellow students didn't know him at all and so couldn't pigeon-hole him...they came to know Ian Fleming on his own terms "a rakish, handsome, cultured Etonian with a rapier wit and a certain cool lack of shyness with women"*
After graduating he still wasn't sure what he wanted to focus on career-wise. He worked as a journalist for Reuters in Moscow until he realized how little journalists were paid for their efforts, but while he was in this field he made some important connections with people in the Foreign Office. He maintained these friendships even though he moved into another direction and went to work in the banking world following in his grandfather's lead.
He worked as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman in Bishopsgate, but he grew bored with this scene as well and by 1939 he was ready to move on...it was at this time, when thanks to his connections with the Foreign Office, he got the opportunity to take an assignment for the Times to report on a trade mission in the Soviet Union. Then, in May of 1939, on the eve of WW2 he accepted the position of personal assistant to Admiral John Godfrey, who was the Director of Naval Intelligence.
It was in this field where he was able to use his talents fully...he "schemed, plotted and carried out dangerous missions...(he) tossed out a myriad of off-beat ideas on how to confuse, survey and enrage the Germans...(he) plotted intelligence operations, many of which were absurd and many which proved ingenious".* Of course it was his work here that gave him the background and experience he would need later when writing his fabulous spy novels.
During the last year of the war Fleming visited Jamaica on military business and decided that he would work to make this tropical paradise his home. He set about making this goal happen and did it with style. He designed and built a home in Jamaica he called Goldeneye which "like his writing would prove to be simple, direct, filled with panache, but never elegant or opulent"* (he had no hot water plumbing or air conditioning installed.)
At 44 years of age, his lover who was married to another man, became pregnant with Fleming's child and he decided to own up to his responsibility and get married. It was while he was in Jamaica waiting for Anne to finalize her divorce that he began writing his famous novels, the first being Casino Royale(1953). Other stories followed which were built around the exploits of his amoral hero James Bond (007). Later these stories were transformed into a series of highly successful films and the James Bond legacy integrated itself into American culture just as surely as is mom's apple pie and baseball.
He was an uncompromising man of character and successfully lived the life he wanted for himself, regardless of family or career pressures; "he wrote the books he wanted to read and traveled the world with style and authority"*....unfortunately his full life came to a sudden end when at the young age of 56 he died from complications due to heart disease.
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*John Cork, The Ian Fleming Foundation
I would like to acknowledge John Cork and The Ian Fleming Foundation from whom the above information was gathered.
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Ian Fleming DVD
A&E's Ian Fleming Biography DVD
See how the author's remarkable life is echoed in the deeds and manners of his most famed creation.