Ian Fleming

Ian Lancaster Fleming was born on May 28, 1908, in Mayfair, London, into a wealthy, well-connected family. His father, Valentine Fleming, was a member of Parliament; his older brother, Peter Fleming, would become a well-known travel writer. Ian went through Eton and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, which he left in 1927 without a commission. He then studied for a while in Munich and Geneva, picking up languages and moving around Europe.

In October 1931 he joined Reuters as a journalist. It was good training: lean copy, fast reporting and a taste for faraway places. In May 1939, with war coming, he was recruited as personal assistant to Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Britain's Director of Naval Intelligence, under the codename 17F. There he helped plan Operation Goldeneye, an intelligence setup in case Spain joined the war, and in 1942 he took charge of 30 Assault Unit, a commando group built to seize enemy documents and equipment. He ran it from a distance and did not fight with it.

After the war Fleming became foreign manager of the Kemsley newspaper group, owner of The Sunday Times. He spent his winter breaks in Jamaica at Goldeneye, the house he had built in 1945. That is where, between January 15 and February 16, 1952, he wrote Casino Royale, the first James Bond book, about a British secret service agent with a licence to kill. In March of that year he married Ann Charteris, and their son, Caspar, was born in August.

Casino Royale came out in April 1953, and Fleming settled into a Bond book a year. Then came Live and Let Die, Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever, From Russia, with Love, Dr. No, Goldfinger and more. He drew heavily on his own life: the inner workings of intelligence, a love of cars, food, gambling and travel, and an almost obsessive eye for brands and detail. In 1961 Life magazine reported that From Russia, with Love was one of President John F. Kennedy's ten favorite books, and American sales took off.

The jump to film came through Eon Productions, run by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli. The first movie, Dr. No, opened in 1962 with Sean Connery in the role, and it grew into one of the longest-running franchises in film. Fleming saw only the start of it. A heavy smoker and drinker, he had a heart attack in 1961 and another in August 1964.

Ian Fleming died on August 12, 1964, in Canterbury, at 56, on his son's 12th birthday. A few books came out afterward: The Man with the Golden Gun in 1965 and the collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights in 1966. He also left a children's book, Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, about a magical car, published two months after his death and later made into a film. The Bond novels and two story collections are the source for nearly every film in the series to this day.