Ian Fleming (Ian Lancaster Fleming) Biography

British thriller writer and journalist, educated at Eton and Sandhurst. He worked as a journalist, serving in Moscow, and during the Second World War worked for British Naval Intelligence. These experiences provided the background for his hugely successful series of James Bond novels, beginning with Casino Royale (1953) and including Live and Let Die (1954), Diamonds Are Forever (1956), and On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963). Fleming's popularity was in part due to the wealth of detail in his novels, in accounts both of the world of espionage and also of exotic lifestyles, locations, and characters, all evoked with wit and expertise. The novels have a degree of self-mockery, which was carried much further in a series of James Bond films, such as Dr No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), and Goldfinger (1964); owing very little to the novels on which they are based, they also omit the occasional philosophical passages that showed Bond to have had a fatalistic philosophy, a crude but dedicated sense of duty and patriotism, and a view of women and sex that is both exploitative and chauvinistic. Fleming wrote several other books, including Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964), for children, which was also filmed. In his introduction to the anthology The Seven Deadly Sins (1962), Fleming revealed some of his personal philosophy. After his death others imitated the Bond style and formula, including Kingsley Amis in Colonel Sun (1968).