10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know about Ian Fleming’s James Bond

Few literary characters are as famous as James Bond—but much of what we think we know about the character stems from the film adaptations, not the original novels by Ian Fleming. Bond’s creator only penned 12 novels and two short story collections featuring the man with the license to kill, and there have been 24 Bond films, not to mention dozens of novels written by others after Fleming’s death. One reason for Bond’s enduring popularity is simple: Fleming imbued the character with a depth and range of detail few characters can match. Here are 10 things you probably didn’t know about Fleming’s James Bond.

James Bond was the dullest name Fleming could think of
Fleming was quite a character himself, and served as a spy during World War II. When he first conceived of the James Bond character, he didn’t see the suave, lady-killing 007 we think of today. He saw a “blunt instrument” who absorbed punishment and kept going. As a result, he sought the “dullest” name possible, to convey both Bond’s ability to work undercover and his role as a human weapon. James Bond happened to be the author of a bird-watching book on Fleming’s shelf, and he thought the name was perfect—dull and succinct.

Ian Fleming wrote Bond an obituary
Not every author gets to kill off their character and then resurrect them, but that’s what Fleming did in You Only Live Twice. He even crafted an obituary that offered the only glimpse of the character’s formative years—details that are still being mined for use in the current films. In the obit, we learned that Bond was orphaned at age 11, that he was recruited into the Royal Navy (and from there, we presume, into MI6), and the Bond family motto was “The World is Not Enough.”

There was a real “M”
Mansfield Smith-Cumming was the first Director of the agency that would become MI6. He had the habit of signing official memos with a stylized letter “C,” and over the years people associated the “C” with the word “Chief.” As a result his successors continued the practice. Fleming took this and other aspects from Cumming and used them in his conception of the character of “M.”

Fleming wrote using a gold-plated typewriter
After Fleming finished the first draft of Casino Royale (at a steady 2,000 words a day pace), he ordered a gold-plated typewriter from the Royal Typewriter Company as a personal reward. He was well aware of the self-indulgent nature of it, saying to a friend that he might need “sheets of vellum … studded with diamonds” on which to type.

Fleming wrote Casino Royale in two months
Speaking of Casino Royale, Fleming wrote it in under two months, beginning in February 1952 and finishing the first draft in March. He cheated a little, though; while his writing process allowed him to complete first drafts quickly, it’s strongly suspected he left a lot of detail out of those initial drafts and added in a lot of the “flesh” in subsequent revisions.

Many Bond Villains were based on Fleming’s personal enemies
Fleming could hold a grudge, as evidenced by the fact that many of the famous Bond villains were based on people he knew. The antagonist in The Man with the Golden Gun, Scaramanga, was named after a fellow student at Eton that Fleming used to get into fights with. Goldfinger was named after a real-life architect whose work Fleming deplored.

John F. Kennedy made the legend
James Bond was always a strong seller, but prior to From Russia, With Love Fleming’s sales in the U.S. were steady but unspectacular. That changed in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy listed the novel as one of his top 10 favorite books. Sales in the U.S. exploded as a direct result, and the James Bond phenomenon officially launched.

There was almost a TV series
Prior to the legendary film series (still ongoing, with or without Daniel Craig), Fleming worked to launch a TV series based on James Bond. The series never came together, and Fleming took the scripts he’d written for it and turned them into the short stories that appeared in For Your Eyes Only.

Critics hated Dr. No
The first five Bond novels—Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever, and From Russia, with Love—were critical hits, but the sixth, Dr. No was the beginning of a critical backlash. Critics suddenly perceived in the Bond novels sexism, snobbishness, and distasteful violence. Fleming took the criticism hard, and many people feel his work on the Bond novels was never quite the same after the lashing Dr. No took.

Fleming wanted to rewrite the final Bond novel
Suffering from heart disease, Fleming wrote the first draft of his final novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, in 1964 at his Jamaican estate, GoldenEye. He sent it to his copy editor with a note suggesting it needed to be rewritten, and had to be convinced that it was publishable as it was. Fleming clearly intended to revise it heavily, but passed away five months later, before he could get back to work on it. Most critics feel the book lacks the depth of detail and description the other Bond novels reveled in.