The secret life of the man who created James Bond

BY NICHOLAS RANKIN

Faber & Faber, 397pp; £20

Review by

Douglas Osler

This book will appeal to those interested in the history of the Second World War as well as to fans of James Bond. For some, the combination of the two will be irresistible. If you thought that James Bond was a creature entirely in Ian Fleming’s imagination, Nicholas Rankin shows that the origins of many of his characters and escapades were based on real experiences in Naval Intelligence .

Whereas the image of James Bond is suave and awesomely professsional, as Rankin explains, the wartime reality was of bumbling amateurism and incompetence. Acceptance of Fleming’s proposal to have a commando unit tasked to steal German secrets and expertise – what became the 30 Assault Unit – was an acknowledgment that the enemy was far ahead in their planning.

The recruitment of Fleming to create the unit was itself a demonstration of the way amateurism was prized at headquarters. His boss, Admiral John Godfrey, the director of Naval Intelligence, believed that “somewhere in or near London can be found the great authority on any subject – the problem is to find him”. Fleming, scion of the Scottish financier who founded Fleming’s Bank, had no knowledge of warfare or the technology of decrypting codes or anything else that was relevant, but he was a junior partner in a firm of London stockbrokers with the right background and connections. The deal was sealed over lunch at the Carlton Grill.

No doubt Godfrey thought his lasting legacy would be his contribution to the war effort but it was to be as M in the Bond novels, the Admiral with the ‘keen sailor’s face, with the clear, sharp sailor’s eyes”. He encouraged Fleming to set up the first foray of the new unit at Dieppe in 1942. It was a disaster, although Fleming was not allowed to actually take part, just plan it. The Germans again showed how far ahead they were in intelligence gathering, technological know-how and supply. Far from seizing the secrets of the German headquarters, Fleming’s unit was decimated.

Maybe it was random setbacks mixed with occasional successes that led Fleming to see warfare as a kind of gambling table. In Casino Royale, Bond realises that he must not brood on defeat and “set his mind to sweeping away all traces of the sense of complete defeat which had swamped him”. In Goldfinger too, Bond does not dwell on his mistakes but takes the view that “if it happened, it happened” which is fine in a book but less acceptable when lives are lost in war.

Rankin does not mess about on that one. He leaves the reader in no doubt about the loss of life that derived from incompetence on the British side. It is a refreshingly honest account. The author links his historical account of the war to his background on Bond very cleverly, reminding us that Churchill declared the war to be a conflict “of technical apparatus, of science, mechanics”. What he didn’t reveal was that the British side of that battle could only be won by stealing from the enemy and it was Fleming’s unit that led the way in theft.

Eventual victory, of course, was not down just to Fleming’s unit, although they did provide invaluable information to other branches of the military and to Bletchley Park as the war went on.

The Americans helped too! When Bond is cleaned out at the gaming tables in Paris, he is rescued by the arrival of an envelope with banknotes and a message that it was Marshall Aid from the USA. It came from the “CIA chap at Fontainebleau” called Felix Leiter, otherwise Happy Leader. This was Fleming’s tribute to the American role in the allies’ success. He also commemorated Hitler’s suicide using a Walther PPK pistol by making that semi-automatic the gun used by Bond

In 1942 his work took Fleming to the British West Indies for a naval conference. He stayed at a hotel in Jamaica and then on a friend’s plantation. That was when he decided what he would do after the war. He would live in Jamaica, swim in the sea and write books. His friend found him a place to buy and he wrote all his James Bond books there between1952 and 1964. His lifestyle mirrored that of Major Smythe in Octopussy, Fleming’s posthumous novel.

Post-war, he was considered to be melancholy and wary of experiencing some of the real things of life. One of his friends said he “loved the world of the imagination more than he loved reality”. Maybe that was what the war did to him.

Nicholas Rankin has intertwined very cleverly a new and unvarnished account of the Second World War with the light heartedness of James Bond’s style but he never romanticises the war. This is a good read for war buffs and a fascinating background to the Bond stories.