Here is an interview I did with CommanderBond.net, now available on mi6-hq.com.
26th October 2005
This book took about a year from start to finish. My reasons for writing it involved a fair amount of serendipity. I had previously written a book about Colditz and I had worked on other projects about intelligence and spies, particularly during the Second World War and after. The editor of my Colditz book had heard that the Fleming Estate was thinking of opening up the archive, and asked me to think about how I might turn it into a book. So I wrote them a proposal and luckily for me they liked the approach and let me in.
I did start with the books, which I read in order. I had seen most of the movies at one time or other but could not remember reading much original Fleming, and it was an unexpected pleasure as they are so different. The level of detail was really dictated by what was there in the archive, and how much I realized I did not know. There are over 150 box files of Ian's stuff, everything from cinema tickets to passports, menus, flight plans- you name it. As I am not a paid up Bondologist I decided only to use what I found interesting- which was my premise from the start.
Well it seems to me that most Bondologists concentrate on the films. If you want to know about Fleming’s original literary creation, how it came about, how he wrote it, why he wrote it, why some books are better than others, what people thought of them at the time... and you want to know more about Fleming himself, then this will interest you. I have also tried to contextualise the whole thing as well, so Bond can be seen as a man in his time. Also there are lots of pretty pictures from the archive that no one has seen before, bits of stories no one has heard of, letters about Bond that have never seen the light of day.
That took a while. There is a lot of Thrilling Cities material which is great, and I was effectively going around the world again via all the ephemera Ian Fleming collected on his trip. Not that I minded as he was a great travelling companion.
From Russia with Love is very interesting, because there is some unusual original research in it. But they are all good, because Fleming could not help writing about himself.
I did have some input, because I knew the most visual parts of archive, and where the most interesting letters were. Also, I kept coming back to the books, and trying to remind myself who said what to whom in each, and which events inspired them. To help myself I wrote summaries of the books and inspirations, critics etc, and Gordon Wise my editor agreed that this would be very useful for the general reader as well. So that’s how they came about. It was the same with the lists of drinks, names, places journeys etc. Gordon was keen for these to be like box features. He also came up with the size, as he thought people should be able to read it while sitting up in bed. Not too big and heavy. I think he's right — a good rule of thumb for larger books.
Everything in the Fleming Archive, which was kept in a strong room in the vaults of Fleming’s bank in London. The people who look after it were very useful. And Ian's two nieces, who shared their memories of him and put me in touch with a few other people. Also, I spent a long time in various libraries, the PRO, etc, giving myself a crash course in everything from 1950s cooking, 1930s engine design, cheating at cards, Soviet agents with licence to kill, and techniques of skin diving — to name but a few. There was a lot to find out.
They opened the door and let me in. It would be impossible to do this without them.
The floor of my shed where I work. It was covered with photocopies-It looked like ten people had decided to play patience using A3 sized cards all at the same time.
There is a possible project in the pipeline. But we will have to wait and see…