We meet again, Mr Bond

Had he lived, 007's creator, Ian Fleming, would have been 100 years old this year.

A number of new books have been timed to the centenary and London's Imperial War Museum is staging an exhibition, For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond, which explores the numerous connections between Bond and the author's real-life experiences, particularly those that occurred during his service with British Naval Intelligence in the Second World War.

The exhibit continues through March next year.

Literary alter ego

Handsome, charming, witty and sophisticated, cultivated but unpretentious, Fleming imbued his literary alter ego with many of his own sybaritic tastes, including an abiding pleasure in the company of beautiful women.

There were certain departures — Bond's extreme fondness for scrambled eggs, for example, while his creator relished the haute cuisine of France.

They shared, however, a prodigious appetite for distilled spirits and cigarettes, of which Fleming smoked about 80 a day.

The combination is generally blamed for his early death in 1964 at the age of 56, attributed variously to heart failure and complications of pleurisy brought about by an ill-advised round of golf (another passion) in foul English weather.

All Bond books — 12 novels and two collections of short stories — were written over 12 years — beginning when Fleming was 44 — and all were composed during his annual three-month sojourn at his beloved retreat on the Jamaican coast, Goldeneye.

The leisurely life

There, each day, the author rose early, went for a swim in the cove below his home, then went to work on a portable Remington typewriter for three hours.

Lunch was served on the terrace with a spectacular view, followed by an hour more of work and the completion of each day's quota: 2,000 words.

The rest of the day and evening were spent in the glittering company of friends — Noel Coward, first among them, but also W. Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Eden and the who's who of British literature and politics then.

As one biographer put it, Ian Lancaster Fleming, the second of four brothers, was born into one of those privileged British families to whom “all roads seemed open'', though they never quite were.

Fleming attended Eton and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst but was dismissed from both for indiscretions with young women.

His mother sent him to the continent to learn French and German in hopes he could pass the Foreign Office exams, which he failed.

Fleming took up a career with Reuters, which included a stint in Moscow, which left him with a profound revulsion for communism.

He subsequently worked as a stockbroker and made a handsome enough income to cut a fashionable figure in the upper reaches of London society.

In the meantime, he also built what ultimately became an internationally famous personal library devoted to first editions of books that revolutionised the scientific and intellectual landscape.

Espionage's cover

By 1938, he had returned to journalism — though probably as a cover for his new vocation, espionage. Just before the war, he enlisted as a subaltern in the Black Watch but was quickly recruited as personal assistant to Admiral John Godfrey, the Royal Navy's director of intelligence.

Fleming had what the British liked to call “a very good war'' and ultimately rose to the rank of commander.

Early on, he engineered the escape of Albania's King Zog from Occupied France. He took over supervision of a commando unit, whose dashing field commander — Patrick Dalzel-Job — was a major inspiration for James Bond.

After the war, Fleming returned to journalism, built his famous house in Jamaica, which he had discovered during the conflict, and resumed his life — and his affairs — in society.

One left his longtime lover, Lady Ann Rothermere, pregnant. He wrote his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, while in Jamaica, waiting for her divorce from her viscount husband to become final.

Fleming had flirted with literature and writing while at Eton and, afterwards, widely read leading British and continental literary magazines.

It's unsurprising, therefore, that the novel he produced, like its successors, slipped into a serious — though entertaining — genre that the British invented early in the 20th century.

What we now call espionage or spy fiction begins with three great English novels — Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901), Erskine Childers's The Riddle of the Sands (1903) and Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907).

All three authors were profoundly concerned with questions of identity and their concerns would predominate in a field of literature whose greatest practitioners — Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, John le Carré, Maugham, Len Deighton and others — would all be British.

Their subject would be identity and loyalty in a century in which the demands of ideology obscurely challenged — and subverted — older, more traditional bonds.

Bond is untroubled by all that ambiguity but confronts questions of identity in distinctly mid-century, postwar fashion.

He's an unselfconscious patriot but deeply conflicted by the nature of his work, its demands and the necessity of defining himself though his work.

Very much in the mode of his time, he also defines identity as style — one that made its way into the consumer economy as a penchant for short-sleeved shirts, dry martinis and Rolex watches.

Coming to Fleming's utterly masterful Bond novels fresh after many years, one is surprised to find just how tough-minded and extraordinarily well-written they are.

Dual images

Fleming was a taut and propulsive stylist with a deep gift for characterisation.

Perhaps because we see Bond through the scrim of affable, slightly preposterous films with inevitable political and sexual happy endings, it's easy to forget that the Bond of Fleming's books was, in many cases, an unlovely character, often described as “cruel'', his relations with women often aggressive and exploitative.

That brings us to the latest in the series of Bond novels sanctioned by the Fleming estate.

(The first, Colonel Sun, was written by Kingsley Amis under the pseudonym Robert Markham.) Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks is the 22nd such book and, though written competently enough, belongs more to the cinematic Bond tradition than to the one Ian Fleming tapped out on his Remington.

No comparison

In this case, Bond is summoned back from a sabbatical in Italy to swinging London during the 1960s.

The story revolves around an Eastern Bloc plot to flood the West with heroin and most of the action occurs in France.

It's all likely enough in an undemanding sort of way but compares with the real thing in about the way a sour apple martini compares with the proper cocktail — shaken, not stirred.

Take the opening paragraph of Faulks's book: “It was a wet evening in Paris. On the slate roofs of the big boulevards and on the small mansards of the Latin quarter, the rain kept up a ceaseless patter.

"Outside the Crillon and the George V, the doormen were whistling taxis out of the darkness, then running with umbrellas to hold over the fur-clad guests as they climbed in. The huge open space of the place de la Concorde was glimmering black and silver in the downpour.''

And here's the opening to Casino Royale: “The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.

"Then the soul erosion produced by high gambling — a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension — becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.''

One of those is postcard exposition; the other is an MRI of the spirit.

Something missing

But what one misses in the work of the Fleming impersonators is the unsentimental confidence of a writer willing to describe his one and only protagonist — and alter ego — as Fleming does with Bond in this passage: “His last action was to slip his right hand under the pillow until it rested under the butt of the 38 Colt Police Positive with the sawn barrel.

"Then he slept and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal and cold.''

I'll take mine shaken, not stirred, and hold the fruit liqueurs.

Readers' comments: Devil May Care lacks the Fleming zing

The author could have done more justice to this book had he not had his freedom to write curbed by the publisher — because he had the responsibility of upholding the legacy of Ian Fleming to mark a tribute to the writer's centenary.

This book has everything (drugs, crime, guns, mystery, eye candy) Bond adventures have but lacks the Fleming zing. The characterisation of Gorner and Scarlett along with the story, woven around these two characters, showcases Sebastian Faulks's control on the spy novel.

I will never forget Bond's line — “I know the rules and the number one is ‘no deals''' — in Die Another Day, which reveals a lot of Bond's character. Bond movies Live and Let Die and The Spy Who Loved Me will be revered across genres and ages for ever.

— Subhasis Mukherjee (above), UAE

I enjoyed the book thoroughly and thought large sections of it had a lot of Fleming's tone but the book wasn't quite as authentic as the real Bond. Very good, though.

— Gary, UK

I thought it was very nice — a good read to help you relax after a long day at work. It was very scary at times but also had good action and humour.

— Hassan, UAE

Any reader expecting a story in line with the latest James Bond movies will be disappointed with this book. However, anyone familiar with Fleming's style of writing will see this book for what it really is; a classic bond novel, complete with the Bond girl (with a twist), a villain and an easy-to-follow though predictable storyline.

— James King

It is not that difficult to re-create a Bond novel. You just need to follow the ingredients used by Ian Fleming.

This is especially true of the lead female character, as there seems to be a noticeable pattern to her roles.

For example, Bond either spends the night with her and she dies the day after so he has to seek revenge, or she turns against him and uses him for ulterior motives, after which she either dies or regrets her decision in the end, and they make up.

— Nathan (above), UAE