Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming was born in Mayfair, London on May 28, 1908, to Valentine Fleming, a Member of British Parliament, and his wife Evelyn St. Croix Fleming. Ian was educated at Eton College and Sandhurst military academy. Later, his mother sent him to Kitzbuhel, Austria to study languages, then to Munich University to improve his German and prepare him for the Foreign Office exams, and finally to the university of Geneva in Switzerland to improve his French. Fleming was unsuccessful at the attempt to join the Foreign Office and subsequently worked as a sub-editor and journalist for the Reuters news service and later as a stockbroker.

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Fleming was recruited as a personal assistant by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) of the Royal Navy. Fleming travelled to Whitby, Ontario to train at Camp X, a top secret training school for Allied forces, and eventually reached the rank of Commander.

As the DNI's personal assistant, Fleming's intelligence work was the background and experience for writing spy novels. The first James Bond novel was Casino Royale, published in 1953. The James Bond books became wildly successful and part of 1950s popular culture even before being filmed, permitting Fleming to retire comfortably to his home in Jamaica, a small cottage he called Goldeneye. Besides writing the twelve novels and nine short stories featuring James Bond, secret agent 007, Ian Fleming also is known for writing the children's novel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Early on the morning of August 12, 1964, Ian Fleming died of a heart attack in Canterbury, Kent, at age 56. He is interred in the churchyard cemetery in the village of Sevenhampton, near Swindon, next to his wife Ann Geraldine Mary Fleming (1913-1981) and their only son, Caspar Robert Fleming.

Reportedly, on May 5, 1995, Pierce Brosnan, the fifth official James Bond actor, bought the gold-plated typewriter on which Ian Fleming wrote some of his James Bond novels in Jamaica for a reported $94,000.