The Real James Bond: Ian Fleming’s Commandos Reviewed

Nov 19, 2011 The Book Beast

A new book relates the remarkable story of Ian Fleming’s daring commando group during World War Two and how they inspired the story of the greatest spy ever: James Bond. Michael Korda finds his own family story in its midst

Left - Ian Fleming, Horst Tappe / Hulton Archive-Getty Images

I only met Ian Fleming once, at a party given by my father’s friend the director Carol Reed, at his house at 211 King’s Road, Chelsea, the garden of which he shared with Peter Ustinov. The party, given in honor of the American actor Sonny Tufts of all people, was star-studded and noisy, the noise level increased by the fact that one whole wall of the Reeds’ drawing room consisted of a floor to ceiling aviary full of angrily squawking, chattering and screeching exotic birds, cockatoos and parrots, outraged at this invasion of their privacy. This was well before Ian Fleming became a household name as the author of the James Bond books, probably in 1951, shortly after I had joined the Royal Air Force, and I was conspicuous only by my youth and my uniform. I was undergoing training at the time for radio (or, as we call it in the U. K., “wireless”) intelligence work involving a knowledge of Russian, about which I was forbidden to speak. The press of famous people shouting “Dahling!” at each other at the top of their voice forced us together briefly by accident, and I introduced myself shyly. He raised an eyebrow at the presumption of an Aircraftman Second Class introducing himself, and mumbled his name. The only part of it I heard was “Fleming,” and I was thrilled. Peter Fleming was a famous English traveler, explorer and adventurer, whose non-fiction books were hugely successful. My father owned signed copies of all of them—he and Peter Fleming had become acquainted over some detail of set design at the Korda film studio in Shepperton—and I had read each of them with breathless adolescent excitement. He was immensely glamorous, a tall, handsome old Etonian who won a First at Oxford and married the beautiful actress Celia Johnson (Brief Encounter), one of those Englishmen who had traveled everywhere, however dangerous and remote, and wrote about it all in neat, epigrammatic prose: “São Palo is like Reading, only much further away.” He and T. E. Lawrence were then my favorite writers and role models (it was because of Lawrence that I had joined the R. A. F. in the first place), and much as I aspired (in vain) to emulate Lawrence of Arabia, I also longed to travel in Peter Fleming’s footsteps over the Hindu Kush, or up the Amazon in pursuit of the legendary Colonel Fawcett. “I loved Brazilian Adventure,” I said. “I read it three times.”

He looked at me coldly, and blew a cloud of cigarette smoke from his nostrils towards me (I was still trying to do that without sneezing or coughing). His cigarette, I could tell, was something special, not a brand you could buy from the corner tobacconist. “Did you now?” he asked, in an unmistakable, clipped Old Etonian accent. Without being in any way “gay,” au contraire, one could see how attractive he must be to women, he reminded me a bit of a tougher version Noel Coward: the cool, fishy, challenging stare, the elegant way of smoking a cigarette, held nonchalantly between the index finger and forefinger of the right hand, the sleek hair, the faultless clothes, the sense he gave of being not so much upper-class as beyond class. “That,” he said, “was written by my older brother. I am Ian Fleming. I would not have guessed that my brother’s books were so popular among other ranks in the air force.” With that, he turned on his heel and left me to stare at the bird life.

“Other ranks” was of course a put-down, the British equivalent of “enlisted men” in the U. S., and whatever else he was Ian Fleming was definitely of the officer class. “Air force” was also a put-down since the correct way to refer to my service was “the R. A. F.” but then Ian Fleming had been a Commander in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during the war, and the Royal Navy is “The Senior Service,” whose members look down with undisguised contempt on those who wear khaki or R. A. F. blue. Ian Fleming, as I soon learned, had been famous in the war as a member of secret naval intelligence, had been a founder of the Commandoes, was involved in everything from code-breaking to gun-running, and knew virtually everybody who was worth knowing in society, politics, journalism and academia, and was said to be profoundly jealous of his brother Peter’s literary success. I had “dropped,” as we used to say in the R. A. F. in those days, “a tremendous clanger.”
Michael Korda's full piece at The Book Beast.