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Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917.
- Valentine Fleming
Major Valentine Fleming, DSO (17 February 1882 – 20 May...
- Ian Fleming (Disambiguation)
Ian Fleming (1908–1964) was a British author, creator of...
- Moonraker
Moonraker is the third novel by the British author Ian...
- Casino Royale
Casino Royale is the first novel by the British author Ian...
- Blanche Blackwell
Relationship with Ian Fleming. During her life, Blackwell...
- Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John OM RA (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961)...
- Sevenhampton, Wiltshire
Ian Fleming's grave and monument at Sevenhampton....
- Thunderball
Thunderball is the ninth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond...
- Diamonds Are Forever
Diamonds Are Forever is the fourth novel by the British...
- Robert Fleming & Co
Robert Fleming & Co., known as Flemings, was an asset...
- Valentine Fleming
Jun 27, 2024 · Ian Fleming (born May 28, 1908, London, England—died August 12, 1964, Canterbury, Kent) was a suspense-fiction novelist whose character James Bond, the stylish, high-living British secret service agent 007, became one of the most successful and widely imitated heroes of 20th-century popular fiction. The son of a Conservative MP and the ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Ian Fleming. During World War II, Ian Fleming had mentioned to friends that he wanted to write a spy novel, but it was not until 17 February 1952 that he began to write his first novel, Casino Royale.
TitleDateLength (first Edition)Plot13 April 1953213 ppJames Bond is sent to play against and ...5 April 1954234 ppBond is sent to the United States to ...5 April 1955256 ppBond joins M at Blades to stop a member, ...26 March 1956257 ppBond follows a diamond smuggling ring to ...Learn about the life and works of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, the world-famous secret agent. Explore his biography, books, films, and legacy on his official website.
- Plot
- Background
- Development
- Style
- Themes
- Publication and Reception
- Adaptations
- External Links
M, the Head of the British Secret Service, assigns James Bond, 007, to play against and bankrupt Le Chiffre, the paymaster for a SMERSH-controlled trade union, in a high-stakes baccarat game at the Royale-les-Eaux casino in northern France. As part of Bond's cover as a rich Jamaican playboy, M also assigns as his companion Vesper Lynd, personal ass...
Ian Fleming, born in 1908, was a son of Valentine Fleming, a wealthy banker and MP who died in action on the Western Front in May 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he was recruited by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence, to becom...
Plot inspirations
Casino Royale was inspired by certain incidents that took place during Fleming's wartime career at the Naval Intelligence Division (NID), or by events of which he was aware. On a trip to Portugal, en route to the United States, Fleming and the NID Director, Admiral Godfrey, went to the Estoril Casino. Because of Portugal's neutral status, Estoril's population had been swelled by spies and agents from the warring regimes. Fleming claimed that while there he was cleaned out by a "chief German a...
Characters
The lead character of Casino Royale is James Bond, an agent of the Secret Service. Fleming initially named the character James Secretan before he appropriated the name of James Bond, author of the ornithology guide, Birds of the West Indies. Fleming explained to the ornithologist's wife "that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born".He further explained that "When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond t...
Fleming later said of his work, "while thrillers may not be Literature with a capital L, it is possible to write what I can best describe as 'thrillers designed to be read as literature'". He used well-known brand names and everyday details to produce a sense of realism, which the author Kingsley Amis called "the Fleming effect".[b] Amis describes ...
Casino Royale was written after, and was heavily influenced by, the Second World War; Britain was still an imperial power, and the Western and Eastern blocs were engaged in the Cold War. The journalist William Cook observes that with the decline in power of the British Empire, "Bond pandered to Britain's inflated and increasingly insecure self-imag...
Publication history
Casino Royale was first released on 13 April 1953 in the UK as a hardback edition by publishers Jonathan Cape, with a cover devised by Fleming. Cape printed 4,728 copies of Casino Royale, which sold out in less than a month; a second print run the same month also sold out, as did a third run of more than 8,000 books published in May 1954. The sales figures were strong enough for Cape to offer Fleming a three-book deal. In April 1955 Pan Booksissued a paperback version and sold 41,000 copies i...
Critical reception
Hugh I'Anson Fausset, writing in The Manchester Guardian, thought that Casino Royale was "a first-rate thriller ... with a breathtaking plot". Although he considered the book to be "schoolboy stuff", he felt the novel was "galvanised into life by the hard brilliance of the telling". Alan Ross, writing in The Times Literary Supplement wrote that Casino Royale was "an extremely engaging affair", and that "the especial charm ... is the high poetry with which he invests the green baize lagoons of...
In 1954 CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 to adapt Casino Royale into a one-hour television adventure as part of its Climax! series.[c] The episode aired live on 21 October 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as secret agent "Card Sense" James 'Jimmy' Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre. A brief tutorial on baccarat is given at the beginning of the show by the ...
Ian Fleming.com Official website of Ian Fleming PublicationsCasino Royale at Faded Page(Canada)- Van Jensen, Dennis Calero, Ian Fleming
- 1953
The James Bond series focuses on the titular character, a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections.
Commander James Bond CMG RNVR is a character created by the British journalist and novelist Ian Fleming in 1953. He is the protagonist of the James Bond series of novels, films, comics and video games. Fleming wrote twelve Bond novels and two short story collections.
