| 出生地： | 苏格兰 |
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阅读伊恩·弗莱明 Ian Fleming在小说之家的作品!!! | |
其他署名：Robert Markham
类型：间谍
主要系列：詹姆斯·邦德James Bond, 1954-1966
伊恩·兰开斯特·弗莱明（Ian Lancaster Fleming）出生于苏格兰一个中上阶层家庭。他的父亲瓦伦丁·弗莱明少校（Valentine Fleming）是议会保守党议员，1916年去世。弗莱明接受的教育也是与他的家庭阶级相匹配的。他先是在伊顿公学就读，接着进入桑赫斯特皇家军事学院（Royal Military College at Sandhurst），在军校里他设计很出色，入选学校的来福枪队，与西点军校比赛。他获得少尉军衔，但是他并不乐意在机械化部队服役。于是他退伍，听从母亲的建议开始进入外交界。
弗莱明进入慕尼黑大学（University of Geneva）和日内瓦大学（University of Munich）学习德语和法语。他在外交部入职考试中获得了第七名的成绩，但是外交部的职位需求非常少，只有前五名能获得职位。1931年，弗莱明作为驻外通讯员加入路透社。他被派往莫斯科，在那里他学会了俄语，有一次任务是报道几位英国工程师因为间谍罪受审的事情。他后来描述说，在苏联的经历非常有趣，就好象一场精彩的球赛。
接下来四年，弗莱明做到路透社远东局助理总经理的职位。但是这份工作报酬并不高，1933年，他进入投资银行业以期多赚些钱。他担任股票经纪人，一直做到1939年二战爆发，接着他加入海军。
战争期间，弗莱明担任海军情报部门主管J·H·古德费伊少将（J. H. Godfrey）的私人助理。这位少将就是弗莱明后来小说中“M”的原型。
弗莱明离开军职之后又当回了记者。1945年到1959年间，他担任《星期日泰晤士报》的外国部门经理。1952年，他在牙买加与安·查特里斯（Anne Charteris）结婚，妻子是第十一代威姆斯伯爵（Earl Wemyss）的外孙女，是第二代罗瑟米尔子爵（Viscount Rothermere）的前妻和第三代奥内尔男爵（Baron O'Neill）的遗孀。到他辞职的时候，他已经是著名的詹姆斯·邦德系列的作者。从第一部书《皇家赌场》（1953）年发表以后，弗莱明以每年一本的速度创作，几乎每天写两千字。因此抽烟严重，常常一天三包烟，1961年弗莱明第一次心脏病发作。三年之后，因为心脏病而去世。
In 2008, The Times (of London) ranked Ian Fleming fourteenth on its list of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Education
Fleming was educated at three independent schools: first at Durnford School, a preparatory school on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, near to the estate of the Bond family, who could trace their ancestry back to an Elizabethan spy called John Bond and whose motto was Non Sufficit Orbis - The World Is Not Enough. He then attended two independent schools in Berkshire: first, Sunningdale School near Ascot, and then Eton College at Eton, Berkshire, and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, on the border between Berkshire and Surrey. He was Victor Ludorum at Eton for two years running, only the second person ever to accomplish this. After leaving Eton, however, he found life at Sandhurst difficult and after an early departure from the Royal Military Academy, his mother sent him to study languages on the continent. He first attended a small private school in the town of Kitzbühel, Austria, run by the Adlerian disciple Ernan Forbes Dennis and his American wife, the novelist Phyllis Bottome. This was in order to improve his German and prepare him for examinations for entry into the Foreign Office. From Kitzbühel he went to Munich University, and, finally, to the University of Geneva to improve his French; however, he was unsuccessful in his application to join the Foreign Office and worked as a sub-editor and journalist for the Reuters news service, spending part of 1933 in Moscow. He then worked as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, in Bishopsgate, London.
Life and career
Fleming was heavily involved in intelligence gathering during the Second World War, working as an officer for the British Naval Intelligence Division. Later in the war, he was principal planning officer with 30 Commando, or 30 Assault Unit and sat on the directing committee of T-Force, whose task was to recover things of value to British Intelligence from the retreating Nazis during the Allied advance through Europe.
Ian Fleming lived to see two of his novels made into what would become the beginning of a long and successful series of Bond movies. A third was under way when he died in Canterbury, England in August 1964, aged 56.
Birth and connections
Ian Fleming was born in Mayfair, a wealthy district of London. His father was Valentine Fleming, a British Member of Parliament and his mother Evelyn St. Croix Rose. Fleming's elder brother Peter became a travel writer. He also had two younger brothers, Michael and Richard Fleming (1910–77) and an illegitimate half-sister, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming. Ian was a grandson of the Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who founded the Scottish American Investment Trust and the merchant bank Robert Fleming and Co (since 2000, part of JP Morgan Chase).
Ian Fleming was a step-cousin of Christopher Lee, later Sir Christopher Lee, who went on to become a well-known British horror film actor, and his brother Peter married the stage actress Celia Johnson, later Dame Celia Johnson. Ian Fleming had nephews Rory Fleming, Matthew Fleming who played cricket for England, and a great-nephew, the composer Alan Fleming-Baird.
World War II
In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Rear Admiral John Henry Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy, recruited Fleming, then a reserve subaltern in the Black Watch, as his personal assistant. Fleming was commissioned first as a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and later as Lieutenant Commander, then Commander. His codename was 17F.
In 1940, Fleming and Rear Admiral Godfrey contacted Kenneth Mason, Professor of Geography at Oxford University, about the preparation of reports on the geography of countries involved in military operations. These reports were the precursors of the Naval Intelligence Division Geographical Handbook Series produced between 1941 and 1946.
Fleming instigated a plan named Operation Ruthless to obtain details of the Enigma codes used by the German Navy by crashing a captured German aircraft into the English Channel, where the British crew, dressed in Luftwaffe uniforms, might be rescued by a German patrol boat. The "survivors" could then kill the German crew and hijack the ship, thus obtaining the required information. Much to the annoyance of Alan Turing and Peter Twinn at Bletchley Park, the mission was never carried out. Fleming's niece Lucy Fleming, on a BBC Radio Four programme entitled "The Bond Correspondence" broadcast on 24 May 2008, stated that the reason given was that an official at the Royal Air Force pointed out that if they were to drop a downed Heinkel bomber in the English Channel, it would probably sink rather quickly.
Fleming also conceived a plan to use the British occultist Aleister Crowley to trick Rudolf Hess into attempting to contact a fake cell of anti-Churchill Englishmen in Britain, but this plan was not used because soon afterwards Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland in an attempt to broker peace behind Hitler's back. Anthony Masters, in his book The Man Who Was M: The Life of Charles Henry Maxwell Knight asserts that Fleming himself conceived the plan that lured Hess into flying to Scotland in May 1941, to negotiate Anglo–German peace with Churchill, and which resulted in Hess's capture. This claim has no other source, however.
Operation Goldeneye was also one of Fleming's conceptions, a plan to maintain communication with Gibraltar and help in its defence in the unlikely event that Spain joined the Axis Powers and assisted Germany in invasion. Fleming is also credited with the idea for Operation Mincemeat, a highly successful deception by the Allies, before the invasion of Sicily in 1943.
30 Assault Unit
In 1944, Fleming was given control of a specialist unit of commandos, known as 30 Commando, or 30 Assault Unit (30AU: not to be confused with the Auxiliary Units in which his elder brother had served). He was not their field commander but their planner. As an intelligence officer at the Naval Intelligence Division (NID), he had an idea of what information and equipment the enemy had that might be of interest to the Allies and where it was likely to be located. He detailed the "scalps" he required and his "Red Indians", as he called them, were then sent off to acquire them. The basic idea lay in the work of the German intelligence Abwehr field units, which had been recognised by the British in the early campaigns of the war and were now taken up with a vengeance by the Allies.
30 Assault Unit consisted of teams of trained commandos that specialized in targeting enemy headquarters, to secure documentation and items of equipment with an intelligence value; items that the ordinary Allied soldier, or commando, might ignore or destroy. Each team would attach itself to whatever main force could get them closest to their intended targets. They were adept in lock picking, safe cracking, unarmed combat and general techniques and skills for collecting intelligence. The unit contained some of the most enterprising men in the commandos.
In the final stages of the war, the teams were trained and equipped to fight their own way into a headquarters building and secure whatever items they required, before the enemy could remove it or destroy it before leaving. They relied upon surprise, toughness and ruthless efficiency. Prior to D-Day, most of the operations were in the Mediterranean. However, because of their successes in Sicily and Italy, 30AU (based at the Marine Hotel, Littlehampton, West Sussex) became greatly trusted by naval intelligence. Having shown the scope of its achievements and its potential to deliver even more, with the right support and direction, the unit was greatly enlarged and given the job of acquiring specific items and documents. Fleming was the man who would issue these specific objectives.
Fleming visited 30AU in the field during and after Operation Overlord, especially following an attack on Cherbourg. He was concerned that the unit had been incorrectly used as a regular commando force, rather than as an intelligence-gathering unit. This wasted the men's specialist skills, risked their safety on operations that did not justify the use of such skilled operatives and threatened the vital gathering of intelligence. Following this, the management of these units was revised.
T-Force
Following the success of 30 Assault Unit, it was decided to establish a "Target Force", which became known as T-Force. Fleming sat on the committee that selected the targets for this unit, helping to create what were known as the "Black Books" which were issued to the officers of this unit. The infantry component of T-Force was in part made up of the 5th Battalion of the King's Regiment, which supported the British 2nd Army. It was responsible for securing targets of interest to the British military. These included nuclear laboratories, gas research centres and individual rocket scientists. The unit's most notable coup was during the advance on the German port of Kiel, where it captured the research centre for German rocket engines used for missiles, fighters and high speed U Boats.
Ian Fleming was to use elements of this activity in his 1955 James Bond novel Moonraker. The story of T-Force and Fleming's connection to its work remained unknown until it was revealed in Sean Longden's book T-Force, the Race for Nazi War Secrets, 1945, published in 2009.
Writing career
Ursula Andress played the part of Honey Ryder in the first James Bond movie, Dr No.
Fleming's intelligence work in the Naval Intelligence Division provided the background for his spy novels. In 1953, his first novel was published, Casino Royale, in which the British Intelligence agent James Bond, also famously known by his code number, 007, was introduced to the world. The fictional James Bond may have been based on Sir William Stephenson and what Fleming had learned from him. Sir William Stephenson had set up Camp X, a Second World War paramilitary and commando training installation in Ontario, Canada, which Fleming may or may not have attended. Other possible influences upon Fleming's characterisation of James Bond are the naval officer Patrick Dalzel-Job and Fleming's brother Peter.
In Fleming's novel Casino Royale, James Bond appears with the beautiful heroine Vesper Lynd, who was modelled on SOE agent Krystyna Skarbek. Some ideas for his characters and the locations in which Bond operates came from his time at Boodle's. Bond's fictional spymaster, M, frequents a club, Blades, at which Bond is an occasional guest. This club was partially modelled on Boodle's. The name of Bond's arch enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, was based on a fellow member's name.
The name James Bond itself came from a famed ornithologist James Bond, the son of the Bond family who allowed Fleming the use of their estate in Jamaica to write (perhaps also by an Elizabethan Bond from Fleming's earlier years). The Bonds were wealthy manufacturers whose estate outside Philadelphia eventually became the grounds of Gwynedd Mercy College. Fleming reputedly used the name after seeing James Bond's 1936 book Birds of the West Indies.
Initially, Fleming's Bond novels were not bestsellers in North America. But when President John F. Kennedy included From Russia With Love on a list of his favourite books, sales quickly jumped.
In the late 1950s, the financial success of Fleming's James Bond series allowed him to retire to Goldeneye, his estate in Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica. The name of the house and estate where he wrote his novels has many possible sources. Ian Fleming himself cited Operation Goldeneye, a plan to hinder the Nazis should the Germans enter Spain during World War II. He also cited the 1941 novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers. The location of the property may also have been a factor: Oracabessa, from the Spanish for "golden head". There is also a Spanish tomb on the property with a carving that looks like an eye on one side. It is likely that most or all of these factors played a part in the name Fleming chose for his Jamaican home. In an interview published in Playboy magazine in December 1964, Fleming states, "I had happened to be reading Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers, and I'd been involved in an operation called Goldeneye during the war: the defence of Gibraltar, supposing that the Spaniards had decided to attack it; and I was deeply involved in the planning of countermeasures which would have been taken in that event. Anyway, I called my place Goldeneye." The estate, which was a few miles away from that of Fleming's friend Noel Coward, is now the centerpiece of a resort of the same name.
The Spy Who Loved Me, published in 1962, departed stylistically from Fleming's previous novels in the Bond series as it was written in the first person, from the perspective of the (fictional) protagonist, Vivienne Michel, whom Fleming credits as co-author. It is the story of her life, up to the moment when James Bond rescues her.
Besides writing twelve novels and nine short stories featuring James Bond, Fleming also had a hand in creating another spy series, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and he wrote the children's novel Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Fleming also wrote a guide to some of the world's most exciting cities of the 1950s, Thrilling Cities (originally a round-the-world series for The Sunday Times newspaper, London), and a study of international crime, The Diamond Smugglers. Fleming wrote an account of events during the Istanbul Pogroms, which many Greek and some Turkish scholars attributed to secret orchestrations by Britain: "The Great Riot of Istanbul" was published in The Times on 11 September 1955.
In 1961, Fleming sold the film rights to his already-published as well as future James Bond novels and short stories to Harry Saltzman, who, with Albert R "Cubby" Broccoli, co-produced the film version of Dr. No, which was released in 1962. For the cast, Fleming suggested friend and neighbour Noël Coward as the villain Dr. Julius No, and David Niven or, later, Roger Moore as James Bond. Both were rejected in favour of Sean Connery, who was both Broccoli and Saltzman's choice (Moore would later play the part of James Bond in the movies made from 1973–85). Fleming at first disapproved of Connery taking the lead role. He had also previously suggested his cousin, Christopher Lee for the part, or as Dr No. Although Lee was selected for neither role, in 1974 he portrayed the assassin Francisco Scaramanga, the villain of The Man with the Golden Gun.
Dr No was followed by From Russia with Love (1963), with twice the budget of its predecessor. This second James Bond film was to be the last that Ian Fleming saw. Having visited the set, he had come to approve of the casting and even wrote a Scottish lineage for Bond into his later works, in deference to Connery's portrayal. A close inspection of a film sequence in From Russia with Love involving the Orient Express appears to show Fleming himself alongside the track, caught on camera during his visit to the shoot in Europe. The third Bond film, Goldfinger (1964), was in production at the time of the author's death and he had again visited the set at Pinewood Studios and worked with the producers.
Dr No was far more of a success than even Saltzman or Broccoli had expected. It was an instant worldwide sensation that sparked a spy craze in film and television that lasted through the 1960s and beyond. The film series continued, as planned, with ever-increasing budgets and profits, and continues to do so into the twenty-first century, with token references to Fleming and his writing.
Later life and death
“ I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much. In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much. ”
Ian Fleming's grave and memorial at Sevenhampton.
Ian Fleming was a bibliophile and collected a library of books that had, in his opinion, "started something" and therefore were significant to the history of western civilization. He concentrated on science and technology, had a copy of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species but also owned other significant works ranging from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf to Scouting for Boys. He was a major lender to the 1963 exhibition Printing and the Mind of Man. Some six hundred books from Fleming's collection are held (2010) in the Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana.
Fleming was a member of Boodle's, the gentleman's club in St. James's Street, London, England, from 1944 until his death. He married Anne Charteris, granddaughter of the 11th Earl of Wemyss and former second wife of the second Viscount Rothermere and widow of the third Baron O'Neill, in Jamaica in 1952. The ceremony was witnessed by his friend, the playwright Noel Coward. This made Fleming a brother in law of the Scottish novelist Hugo Charteris.
In March 1960, Fleming met John F Kennedy through Marion Oates Leiter who was a mutual friend and who had invited both to dinner. Leiter had introduced Kennedy to Fleming's books during his recovery from an operation in 1955. After dinner, Fleming related his ideas on discrediting Fidel Castro; these were reported to Central Intelligence Agency chief Allen Welsh Dulles who gave them serious consideration.
In 1961 Fleming, a heavy smoker and heavy drinker, suffered a heart attack and three years later, at 56, had another heart attack on the morning of 12 August 1964 - on his son Caspar's 12th birthday - in Canterbury, Kent, England. He died and was buried in the churchyard of Sevenhampton village, near Swindon. In 1975, Ian Fleming's son Caspar committed suicide with a drug overdose and was buried with his father. Fleming's widow, Anne Geraldine Mary Fleming (born 1913), was also buried with her husband when she died in 1981.
After Fleming's death, his literary executors periodically hired other authors to continue the James Bond novels. These were Kingsley Amis (who wrote as "Robert Markham"), John Gardner, and Raymond Benson. In observance of what would have been Fleming's 100th birthday in 2008, Ian Fleming Publications commissioned Sebastian Faulks to write a new Bond novel entitled Devil May Care. This book, released in May 2008, is credited to "Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming".
In May 2010, thriller author Jeffery Deaver was chosen to write the next James Bond novel, to be published in May 2011.
Works
James Bond books
See also: James Bond novels
Nr Name Year Order of Movie release Note
1. Casino Royale 1953 21 (or 5 if the Columbia Pictures spoof is considered, or 1 if the 1954 TV-movie version is to be considered) (1)
2. Live and Let Die 1954 08
3. Moonraker 1955 11 (2)
4. Diamonds Are Forever 1956 07
5. From Russia, with Love 1957 02
6. Dr. No 1958 01
7. Goldfinger 1959 03
8. For Your Eyes Only 1960 12, 14-A View to a Kill, 22-Quantum of Solace (Title Only) (3,8)
9. Thunderball 1961 04 (4)
10. The Spy Who Loved Me 1962 10 (Title Only) (5)
11. On Her Majesty's Secret Service 1963 06
12. You Only Live Twice 1964 05
13. The Man with the Golden Gun 1965 09 (6)
14. Octopussy and The Living Daylights 1966 13 & 15 (7,8)
Notes
(1) First US paperback edition of Casino Royale was retitled You Asked for It.
(2) First US paperback edition of Moonraker was retitled Too Hot to Handle.
(3) Short story collection: (i) "From a View to a Kill," (ii) "For Your Eyes Only," (iii) "Risico," (iv) "Quantum of Solace", and (v) "The Hildebrand Rarity."
(4) Subject of a legal battle which led to the book's storyline also being credited to Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham; see the controversy over Thunderball
(5) Fleming gives co-author credit to "Vivienne Michel", the fictional heroine of the book; Fleming refused to allow a paperback edition to be published in the UK, but one was eventually published after his death. His agreement with Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman only allowed the use of the title for a movie.
(6) For years, it has been alleged that William Plomer, and/or others, completed this novel as Fleming died before a finished manuscript was created. Many Fleming biographers dispute this; see the controversy over The Man With The Golden Gun.
(7) Posthumously compiled short story collection. Originally published with two stories: (i) "Octopussy" and (ii) "The Living Daylights". The 1967 paperback edition's title was shortened to Octopussy and a third story, "The Property of a Lady", increased its page count. In the 1990s, the collection's longer, original title was restored, and with the 2002 edition, the story, "007 in New York" (originally published in some editions of Thrilling Cities (see below) was added.
(8) In 2008, a collection entitled "Quantum of Solace" was released including the contents of "For Your Eyes Only" and "Octopussy and The Living Daylights" (all stories from the 2002 edition).
Children's story
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1964)
Non-fiction
The Diamond Smugglers (1957)
Thrilling Cities (1963; the American editions contain the short story "007 in New York")
Unfinished or unpublished works
Fleming kept a scrapbook containing notes and ideas for future James Bond stories. It included fragments of possible short stories or novels featuring Bond that were never published. Excerpts from some of these can be found in The Life of Ian Fleming by John Pearson.
The author Geoffrey Jenkins worked with Fleming on a James Bond story idea between 1957 and 1964. After Fleming's death, Jenkins was commissioned by Bond publishers Glidrose Productions to turn this story, Per Fine Ounce, into a novel, but it was never published.
In 1960, Fleming was commissioned by the Kuwait Oil Company to write a book on the country and its oil industry. The typescript is entitled State of Excitement: Impressions of Kuwait but it was never published due to disapproval by the Kuwaiti Government. According to Fleming: "The Oil Company expressed approval of the book but felt it their duty to submit the typescript to members of the Kuwait Government for their approval. The Sheikhs concerned found unpalatable certain mild comments and criticisms and particularly the passages referring to the adventurous past of the country which now wishes to be 'civilised' in every respect and forget its romantic origins."
Biographies of Ian Fleming
Henry A. Zelger, Ian Fleming: The Spy Who Came in with the Gold (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1965)
Eleanor and Dennis Pelrine, Ian Fleming: Man with the Golden Pen (Toronto: Swan Publishing, 1966)
John Pearson, The Life of Ian Fleming (London: Jonathan Cape, 1966)
Richard Gant, Ian Fleming: Man with the Golden Pen (London: Mayflower-Dell, 1966) – a different work than the Pelrine book
Ivar Bryce. You Only Live Once: Memories of Ian Fleming (London: Weldenfeld and Nicolson, 1975)
Bruce A. Rosenberg and Ann Harleman Stewart, Ian Fleming (Boston: Twayne, 1989)
Donald McCormick, 17F: The Life of Ian Fleming (London: Peter Owen, 1993)
Andrew Lycett, Ian Fleming (London: Weldenfeld and Nicolson, 1995)
Conant, Jennet The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington (Simon and Schuster, 2008)
Biographical films
Goldeneye: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1989. A TV movie starring Charles Dance as Fleming. The movie focuses on Fleming's life during World War II, his love life, and the writing of James Bond.
Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming, 1990. A TV movie starring Jason Connery (son of Sean) as the writer in a dramatisation of his career in British intelligence.
Ian Fleming: Bondmaker, 2005. A TV documentary/drama by Wall to Wall first broadcast on BBC in August 2005. Laurence Olivier Theatre Award-winning British actor Ben Daniels portrays Ian Fleming.
Ian Fleming: Where Bond Began, 2008. TV documentary about the life of Ian Fleming broadcast 20 October 2008 by the BBC. Presented by former Bond girl Joanna Lumley.
David Giammarco, For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films (ECW Press, 2002)