Ian Fleming.

### Lycett Andrew

JAMES Bond holds an indisputable place in the pantheon of mythical archetypes, along with Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Jeeves, and Charlie Chan. Indeed, so familiar has he become that it's hard to convey the impact that Ian Fleming's books originally had; an impact reinforced, if not quite authentically, by the first two or three movies -- before they degenerated into mechanized farce. What now seems routine was startling then.

Some hint may be gathered from the thought-provoking fact that, when Goldfinger hijacked a transatlantic Boeing, this struck readers as an astonishing coup de the"tre, because, at least as far as anyone could recall, no civilian airliner had ever been hijacked. When Bond tracked the villain's car, using a "homer" device, the idea so intrigued Allen Dulles, then head of the CIA, that he asked Fleming where he'd got it. "From a book called How to Be a Detective that I picked up for ten cents at Penn Station," Fleming replied.

Innocent days! and yet how knowing and sophisticated the books appeared; not so much because of the sex and violence (mild anyway by today's standards) against which the critics inveighed once James Bond's popularity had made the books a tempting target, but largely because of the third charge in their indictment --"snobbery," by which they meant what readers loved, that Ian Fleming was almost the first fiction writer to break away from the silly convention of using made-up names for hotels and shops, commodities and items of apparel. He liked quality and craftsmanship and was interested in how things worked; so Bond was equipped with the best in every field. The effect was to put a high gloss on the narrative -- another thing that highbrows dislike.

"Snobbery" was always the wrong word. Bond didn't even possess a tailcoat and it was M, not he, who belonged to Blade's Club; and crusty old M was certainly no snob either. Fleming's own tastes were not particularly rarefied, in companionship or in lifestyle. He drank whisky, ate oeuf en cocotte, dressed (I thought) rather oddly -- neatly, perhaps dramatically, rather than well. He played bridge and golf competently but never (I'm told) brilliantly. He moved in more or less upper-class, slightly louche circles, because that was the class to which he belonged. He resigned from White's Club, saying that the members "gassed too much," and joined Boodle's instead, equally top-drawer but somewhat less raffish. He liked to tease his friends by using their names for characters in the books, and he liked using the books, as their fame grew, to give a small boost to craftsmen of whom he approved.

The first two in the series, Casino Royale and Live and Let Die, were published to little more than mildly good notices from regular reviewers. With the third, Moonraker, they started to take off, and the next, From Russia with Love, was helped by a dazzling new asset -- the rose-and-pistol jacket design by a brilliant trompe l'oeil artist named Richard Chopping, whom Fleming personally commissioned and paid. Never was fifty guineas better spent. By the time of Fleming's death, thirty million copies of his books had been sold worldwide.

The whole phenomenon was relatively brief. Ian Fleming died only 11 years after the publication of Casino Royale. He had suffered an earlier heart attack, at which point I wrote his obituary for the London Times: he was kind enough to say, afterward, that he was glad it was I who was "to wield the black-feathered pen." The outline of his life was common knowledge. He had been born into an established merchant-banking family. His brother, Peter, in early days much the more famous, was a distinguished travel writer. He went to Eton, didn't take to banking or stockbroking, in 1933 covered a notorious Moscow spy trial for Reuter, served as a naval intelligence officer during World War II, and after the war became foreign manager for the Sunday Times. At the age of 44 he married his mistress of many years, Ann, the socially and sexually exciting wife of Lord Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail. According to his own account, it was to distract himself from this traumatic event that he sat down in Goldeneye, his house in Jamaica, and began writing his first novel. "Hammering out pornography," Ann called it, with her usual epistolary exaggeration and disdain for his work. He claimed to be merely updating Bulldog Drummond. Neither description was quite true, but both are characteristic.

In London the Flemings were surrounded by a smart, gossipy, socialliterary circle. Or, at least, Ann was. Ian didn't enjoy her salons. They had a son, Caspar, whose life somehow went wrong; he was just 12 when his father died and was to commit suicide at age 23.

Two years after Fleming's death, a Sunday Times colleague, John Pearson, wrote a perfectly adequate but not very revealing biography. Now, thirty years later, comes this new biography by Andrew Lycett, cleanly written and most scrupulously researched. In the course of writing it the author changed his focus. He had intended a book that would link Fleming's wartime experiences with the novels, presenting him indeed as a kind of prototype Bond. However, Lycett came to realize that the personal story --Fleming's complex, moody personality, the adulterous romance which soured as a marriage, the social background, the spectacular success, and the growing discontent -- was far more intriguing.

Lycett is, in fact, weakest on the books; he scarcely tries to fit them into the context of the thriller genre. The personal story he illumines with much new detail, and describes what Pearson was not allowed to mention, Ian's late-flowering consolatory relationship with a lady in Jamaica.

There have been two made-for-television bio-pics of Ian Fleming's life, the second -- dealing only with the early years and starring Jason Connery, son of Sean, playing him very much as a proto-Bond -- quite hilariously bad. I watched them fascinated, incredulous as one is almost bound to be when actors represent people one knew in the flesh. Of course, it's an unfair test. The actors can never look or sound quite right. When Dan Massey played No -- l Coward in Star! the lines were written (though uncredited) by Coward himself: but they still seemed unconvincing.

The problem becomes more subtle when raised by an excellent biography, such as this is. Lycett never knew Fleming. If the picture to emerge is not quite consonant with what friends remember, who's right? The biographer almost certainly knows much more about the subject's life than they do: and yet they possess one vital advantage which he lacks. What was image, what was reality, which the ghost, which the man? Probably all that can really be asked is that the biographer should convey to readers something, vivid and accurate, of the impression that his subject made on contemporaries. By this test, Lycett succeeds pretty well; as he does in the other prime requirement -- that the book should be readable.

The story comes out perhaps a little more melancholy than it need have been. Fleming was, after all, excellent company most of the time; a man's man who was also a ladies' man. And he enjoyed his achievement. He enjoyed the business (and very big business it was) of selling James Bond.

Ah well, they're all gone now. Ian, the romantic fantasist with a bitter core; Annie, with her man-eating charm and her coterie of bitchy friends; even poor Caspar, who should have had so much and had so little. But the books remain, a long step forward from most of the thrillers that preceded them and far better than most of the imitations that have followed. The quality we found in them was not an illusion. The set-pieces really were stunning -- the baccarat game in Casino Royale, Dr. No's tunnel of death, Rosa Klebb's poisoned shoes, the bob-sleigh chase in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the climax of Diamonds Are Forever aboard the Queen Elizabeth. I've been reading some of them, and now want to read all of them, again.