Ian Lancaster Fleming (May 28, 1908 – August 12, 1964) was an English author and journalist, best remembered for writing the James Bond series of novels as well as the children’s story, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Fleming was born in Mayfair, London, to Valentine Fleming, a Member of Parliament, and his wife Evelyn Beatrice Ste Croix Fleming née Rose. Ian was the younger brother of travel writer Peter Fleming and the older brother of Michael and Richard Fleming. One of the sons of Richard (1910-77) is the novelist James Fleming (born 1944). Ian Fleming also had an illegitimate half-sister, cellist Amaryllis Fleming. He was the grandson of Scottish financier Robert Fleming, founder of the Scottish American Investment Trust and of merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co (since 2000 part of Chase Manhattan).

Fleming was educated at Eton College and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He won the Victor Ludorum at Eton two years running, something that had been achieved only once earlier. After an early departure from Sandhurst, his mother sent him to study languages on the continent, first at Kitzbühel, Austria, at a small private establishment run by the Adlerian disciples, Ernan Forbes Dennis and his American wife, novelist Phyllis Bottome, to improve his German and prepare him for the Foreign Office exams, then to Munich University, and, finally, to improve his French at the University of Geneva. He was unsuccessful in joining the Foreign Office, and subsequently worked first as a sub-editor and journalist for Reuters, including time in 1933 in Moscow, and later as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, in Bishopsgate.

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) of the Royal Navy, recruited Fleming (then a reserve subaltern in the Black Watch) as his personal assistant. Commissioned as a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve lieutenant, he was subsequently promoted to Lieutenant Commander, then Commander.

In Naval Intelligence, Fleming conceived and was author of Operation Ruthless, a plan – not executed – for capturing the German naval version of the Wehrmacht’s Enigma communications encoder. He also conceived an attempt to use British occultist Aleister Crowley to trick Rudolph Hess into attempting to contact a faux cell of anti-Churchill Englishmen in Britain, but this plan was not used as Rudolph Hess had flown to Scotland in an attempt to broker peace behind Hitler’s back. Anthony Masters’s book The Man Who Was M: The Life of Charles Henry Maxwell Knight asserts Fleming conceived the plan that lured Hess into flying to Scotland in May 1941 to negotiate Anglo–German peace with Churchill, and his consequent capture: this claim has no other source. Fleming also formulated Operation Goldeneye, a plan to maintain communication with Gibraltar as well as a plan of defence if Spain had joined the Axis Powers and along with Germany had invaded it.

In June 1941, General William Donovan requested that Fleming write a memorandum describing the structure and functions of a secret service organisation; for that, Fleming was rewarded with a .38 Police Positive Colt revolver pistol inscribed, “For Special Services.” Parts of this memorandum were later used in the official charter for the OSS, which was dissolved after World War II in 1945; the OSS’s successor, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was proposed and created two years later.

Fleming died of a heart attack in Canterbury, Kent, on August 12, 1964. He was buried in the churchyard cemetery of Sevenhampton village, near Swindon. His widow, Anne Geraldine Mary Fleming, and their only son, Caspar Robert Fleming, were later buried next to him.

Fleming, in 1942, formed an Auxiliary Unit known as 30AU or 30 Assault Unit which he nicknamed his own “Red Indians”; it was specifically trained in lock-picking, safe-cracking, forms of unarmed combat, and other techniques and skills for collecting intelligence. He meticulously planned all their raids, along side Patrick Dalzel-Job (inspirations for James Bond) going so far as to memorise aerial photographs so that their missions could be planned in detail; although very successful, 30AU was greatly enlarged and direct control was taken from Fleming on D-Day. Although he still had a lot to say about planning, especially after the Cherbourg attack where he felt that the unit had been used as frontline force rather than an intelligence gathering unit and from then on tactics were revised.

As the DNI’s personal assistant, Fleming’s intelligence career was the background and experience for the James Bond novels. The first published was Casino Royale in 1953. Its anti-heroine, Vesper Lynd, is believed to have been inspired by real-life SOE agent Christine Granville; likewise, various inspirations have been suggested for the hero, James Bond.

Besides writing 12 novels and nine short stories featuring James Bond, Fleming also wrote the children’s novel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The James Bond books were very successful and became a part of 1950s popular culture, even before they were adapted to cinema. This enabled Fleming to retire comfortably to his cottage in Jamaica, Goldeneye, where he wrote all the Bond novels. In 1961, Fleming sold the film rights to his extant and future James Bond novels and short stories to Harry Saltzman, who, with Albert R Broccoli, co-produced a film version of Dr No (1962).

Fleming died of a heart attack in Canterbury, Kent, on August 12, 1964. He was buried in the churchyard cemetery of Sevenhampton village, near Swindon. His widow, Anne Geraldine Mary Fleming (1913–1981), and their only son, Caspar Robert Fleming (1952–1975), were later buried next to him. His heart attack resulted from his lifestyle of daily heavy drinking and heavy smoking (70 cigarettes and a bottle of gin in addition to the stressful Thunderball lawsuits in the early 1960s, where film producer Kevin McClory sued Fleming for adapting a screenplay cowritten by McClory and Jack Whittingham.

Bond novels by Ian Fleming:

1. Casino Royale (1953)
2. Live and Let Die (1954)
3. Moonraker (1955)
4. Diamonds Are Forever (1956)
5. From Russia with Love (1957)
6. Dr No (1958)
7. Goldfinger (1959)
8. For Your Eyes Only (1960)
9. Thunderball (1961)
10. The Spy Who Loved Me (1962)
11. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963)
12. You Only Live Twice (1964)
13. The Man with the Golden Gun (1965)
14. Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966)

See also:

• Bond novels: Ian Fleming
• Bond novels: Post-Ian Fleming
• Ian Fleming Publications