Ian Fleming Dies: James Bond's Creator Leaves Lasting Spy Legacy

Ian Fleming served in British Naval Intelligence during World War II and spent those years inventing operations, some of which worked and some of which did not. Operation Goldeneye monitored Spain's potential entry into the war. Operation Mincemeat planted false invasion plans on a corpse floated off the Spanish coast. The ones that did not work could have been James Bond plots, and eventually they were. He started writing the Bond novels in 1952 at Goldeneye, his Jamaica estate, partly to distract himself from his impending marriage to Ann Charteris. He wrote one novel a year, every January, before returning to London and his work at the Sunday Times. He did not think much of them as literature. He thought they were entertaining. He was right about the second part. Casino Royale, the first Bond novel, sold modestly but attracted the attention of readers who appreciated its blend of Cold War espionage and luxury lifestyle. By the time From Russia with Love appeared in 1957, President Kennedy had listed it among his favorite books, and the franchise had reached escape velocity. The film adaptations, beginning with Dr. No in 1962, became the longest-running and most commercially successful film series in history, generating over seven billion dollars across twenty-five official films. Fleming wrote twelve Bond novels and two short story collections before dying of a heart attack on August 12, 1964, at fifty-six. He smoked seventy cigarettes a day and drank heavily, a lifestyle his doctors had warned him about for years. Bond outlived his creator by over six decades and shows no signs of retirement.