Dan Snow's History Hit - Ian Fleming & The Birth of Bond

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

A suave secret agent and fictional character turned household name and multi-billion dollar franchise: we all know James Bond. But what about the man behind him? In this episode, from. our sibling podcast Warfare hear about the people and places that inspired Ian Fleming as he wrote the stories of 007. Professor Klaus Dodds researches geopolitics and security, ice studies and the international governance of the Antarctic and the Arctic at Royal Holloway, but he is also an expert on Fleming and Bond. Listen as he discusses the influence of Fleming’s childhood, of his experiences during the Second World War and of his family's exploits.

Hi everyone, welcome to History Hit. On the pod today we have another episode of Warfare, our sibling podcast. They're talking all about Bond over there. Prof Klaus Dodds telling us everything we need to know about Ian Fleming and the birth of Bond. This one went bonkers on their feed so I thought we'd bring it over and share it with a bigger audience. Don't forget if you want to watch documentaries, all you've got to do is go to historyhit.tv, Don't forget, if you want to watch documentaries, all you've got to do is go to historyhit.tv, the world's best history channel. Historyhit.tv, head over there, sign up, you're never going to regret it. In the meantime, everyone, here's Warfare with Prof Dodds. Enjoy. Hi Klaus, great to have you on the podcast. How are you doing today?

Good thanks. It's nice to be with you. I'm sort of currently looking out the window in my small office in my home and there's some snow falling gently to the ground, which certainly appeals to me given my other interests in colder parts of the world. Yeah, are you all snowed in or is it a nice kind of serene landscape as opposed to a difficult one? Well, given that I'm based in London, so we're sort of usually at the milder part of the UK weather experience, I suspect if I was talking to you from the north of England or Scotland, I'd probably say there's an awful lot of snow on the ground. But I would say a light dusting. You can see a little bit of snow on cars, but that's about it.

Okay, well, that's good. It can't be as cold as the place that I last encountered you. As you say, you're an expert on colder places, especially the Arctic and Arctic security. And the last time I saw you, we were in Iceland discussing Russian and Chinese activity in the Arctic. In fact, it's very apt to have you on the podcast to discuss James Bond and the Second World War, because as we sit in that

dim-lit bar in a freezing wreck of it with a professor of war studies and a national security advisor, I think I had a glimpse of you being our own academic James Bond, our own international man of mystery. Would you agree? Well, I think that's a very flattering way of portraying what I do or don't do. But then maybe I would say that if I was an international man of mystery. The one thing I will say, it was a very enjoyable afternoon come evening in Reykjavik. And of course, rounded off by a rather superb tour, I think, of HMS Westminster. So I do remember you and I sipping a few drinks, probably not vodka martinis but something very pleasant and looking out and admiring various ships that just happened to be stationed in Reykjavik harbour.

It was a very very enjoyable couple of days. Yeah I think we make it sound far more glamorous than it was. I think we toured the ship, had a few beers and some pizza and a good laugh. But this leads me to my first question, actually, Klaus, because what came first for you? Was it your interest in international security and great power politics in the Arctic? Or was it James Bond? I think to be perfectly honest with you, it was James Bond. And I think depending on who you talk to, you can often get a sense of where it all started, if indeed you are a fan. And I am both a fan and an academic writer on James Bond. So, you know, I'm in my early 50s. And I grew up with Roger Moore as James Bond. But the funny thing was that my father was a former Royal Naval officer.

He served in Fleet Air Arm. And one of the things that was quite apparent to me as a child was that my father really rather enjoyed Ian Fleming's novels of James Bond. And I think there was just a little bit of my father that thought that had he stayed in the Royal Navy, he could have had even more adventures on the high seas. So do you think that your father was interested in these stories because they were what maybe he wanted the Navy to be? Or do you think he could identify with some of the Bond experiences? Well, as my father's no longer alive,

I can probably answer this fairly straightforwardly and say that Ian for Fleming, I think, famously noted that he thought his books were really designed for hot-blooded heterosexuals who had time on their hands, I think he said, in railway stations and airports. I suspect that my father thought he would fall into that kind of category. He was somebody who travelled enormously for business reasons. Fleming wrote a book called Thrilling Cities in the late 1950s. And it's actually quite interesting that although it's dated in so many ways, if you were to come to the book now, as opposed to the early 1960s, much of the description he offers of those cities he

visited, such as, for example, Beirut, chime with me in terms of what my father told me about his own travels. So one of the interesting things that really is the hallmark of Ian Fleming is actually he's a man of many careers. He's not just the world famous novelist and creator of James Bond. So tell us a little about Ian Fleming, because he's our link back to the World War, specifically the Second World War. He was a eclectic, odd kind of guy, wasn't he? Oh, I think that really is absolutely right. I mean, I think the thing to understand about Ian Fleming was, I suppose, two things. I think, first of all, he lost his father in 1917. So his father, Valentin Fleming, was a former MP and a military officer

who died in the First World War. So Fleming, who was born in 1908, found himself effectively without a father at the age of nine. And I think that's an incredibly important part of the Fleming story, which is losing a father at a formative age. And I think that probably explains in part the importance of James Bond's relationship with M, both in the novels and in the films. I think the second element that really shapes Ian Fleming is his relationship with his brothers. And in particular, I think it's his relationship with

his eldest brother, Peter, that is incredibly important. Peter, frankly speaking, was probably a nightmare brother in the sense that he was a consistent overachiever. You know, this is the star student who goes to Eton, who goes to Oxford, he becomes an explorer at one stage, and then he goes on to serve in the Second World War with tremendous distinction as an officer who then joins the Special Operations Executive and participates in, for example, commando raids in Norway and so on and so forth. In other words, Peter has a sort of educational and wartime experience that's rather different to Ian. experience that's rather different to Ian. Ian is a bit of a duffer, you know, gets into Eton, doesn't do terribly well except in sport and athletics in particular, goes to Sandhurst, disgraces himself there, and then falls into a rather peripathetic career that really until the Second World War, there's not really much to talk in terms of distinction.

So yes, I mean, I think the Second World War, frankly speaking, was Ian Fleming's moment of redemption. How did he manage to redeem himself from, well, I must say, Klaus, a scathing bio that you've given him there? Is there any redeeming features for poor Ian Fleming during the Second World War? Well, I think to be slightly more positive towards Ian Fleming, it's important to say that he was good at languages. So one of the things that Fleming does is he learns French and German. And that in part, of course, he uses his language abilities and also his, as it happens, love of all things Swiss to inform the subsequent, if you like, backstory of James Bond, who famously, of course, has a Swiss mother. But I think the other thing to bear in mind about Ian Fleming is that despite not being a great success at school, he also proves himself to be something of a writer in the 1930s. So he's left Eton, he's left Sandhurst under a bit of a dark cloud, but he's proven himself to be good

at languages. He's joined Reuters, and he's also shown himself to be quite accomplished as a storyteller, as a journalist. So one of the things to bear in mind is that by the time Ian Fleming comes to the Second World War in 1939, he has developed some skills that I think prove to be quite useful when he falls under the employment of the Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral John Godfrey. Ah, so he's a creative kind of person, one of those who can pick up languages, can really take all of that, harness everything he knows, and turn it into something quite special. As, of course, we know from the novels. But how does this benefit naval intelligence during the Second World War? Well, two things I think Fleming proved quite useful

for. Number one, he was fluent in German. So of course, given that one of our primary adversaries was Germany, having somebody who spoke the language, as well as speaking, of course, French, which was clearly an asset as well, given the European dimension of the Second World War, there was something to be said for having this trilingual individual in naval intelligence employment. The second thing, I think, comes back to this sort of creative capability that Fleming had, allied with the fact that when he was working with Reuters, he actually went to cover a very interesting case involving six British engineers from the Vickers company who were caught up in a spy-related trial. So Fleming actually began to get insights into how other intelligence agencies, in this case the Soviet one, might work.

And so when he came to the Naval Intelligence Division, and of course one of the things to bear in mind at this point is that although Valentin Fleming, his father, had been dead for 20 years, He was a very close friend and associate of Winston Churchill. So the Flemings were a well-connected family. And so when Godfrey took him on, Godfrey gave him a very interesting brief, which was really to come up with the most outrageous and outlandish schemes that Fleming could imagine, in the hope that if any of them came off, the rewards or the dividends from such outlandishness might become quite apparent. So, in other words, Fleming was given license to speculate, and I think he certainly seized that opportunity. So, did we see any real-life gold gold fingers or doctor nose play out at the hands of Ian Fleming during the Second World War? Oh, I think Fleming had enormous fun. I mean,

I think if you were to look back on his life, and remember, he dies prematurely at the age of 56 in the early 1960s. I think he would say without question that those three years in the Naval Intelligence Division were probably the highlight of his life. He was given a code name, 17F. He famously worked in room 39 of the Admiralty Building in London. He was commissioned in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve just before the start of the Second World War. And he was promoted to lieutenant commander shortly afterwards. So by the time we got into really 1940, Ian Fleming had found himself in a remarkable position. I suppose the parallel you might make is with Donald Trump. You know, prior to Donald

Trump's election as president, you've never had a president who had neither served in Congress or some kind of political position, nor had, for example, served in the armed forces. So Fleming, in this sense, it was quite remarkable. You know, he had no real naval experience. He'd not been in the formal employment of any intelligence agency. But what he did have was travel experience, languages, and a journalistic flair for telling good stories. And he had, of course, considerable personal appeal. I mean, he was a very, very charming man. He was very popular with both men and women. And I think that one of the things that his biographers often note is he had this uncanny ability to get on with Admiral Godfrey, who by all accounts was a very,

very difficult individual. Well, Fleming's charm proved quite disarming. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about Bond. More after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer.

Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Well, he was put into some pretty important command positions, wasn't he? So that makes sense. We had David O'Keefe on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, and he told us about the role that Fleming played in the Dieppe raids, weeks ago and he told us about the role that Fleming played in the Dieppe raids and how actually Dieppe was this big distraction for a commando mission that Fleming had come up with to try and find an enigma machine so that they could decipher the codes for the new machines that had been

bought in by the German military as well. So was this the sort of thing that Fleming was involved in on a day-to-day basis? Was he always involved in high-profile missions or was it a bit more mundane for him? I think actually it was an odd role he had for those sort of three years he was formally attached under the supervision of Vice Admiral Godfrey. Because one of the things that I think really comes to the fore in all of this is there were things that, for example, Fleming dreamed about or thought might be absolutely, terrifically successful as disruptive to the German war effort. But there are also other things that he was involved with and did, for example, watch upon from afar. I mean, the thing to bear in mind is that Fleming did not see direct military

action. So a lot of what he was doing from the facilities at Room 39 was dreaming up schemes. So, for example, you know, we had a scheme called Operation Ruthless, where the idea was that a plane was going to be crash landed in the water, and the crew were going to be disguised as German aircrew. And then that might force a German U-boat submarine to emerge from the water. And then they were going to try and attack the submarine and possibly steal an Enigma. One of the famous operations that Ian Fleming was involved with was called Operation Mincemeat. And that was a sort of plan to find a corpse,

dress the corpse as if it was a Royal Marine officer, and then sort of float the body somewhere along the Spanish coastline. And Ben McIntyre wrote this fantastic book that sets out the sort of background to Operation Mincemeat and what it was trying to achieve. And I think it's important to bear in mind that one of the key things that really worried the British was that the Germans might establish a substantial foothold in Spain, but at the same time also get Franco's Spain actively involved in the German war effort. Now, some of the background to Operation Mincemeat in the end actually, actually proved to be less relevant, because, for example, Gibraltar was never threatened in the way that Churchill feared. But what you find with Fleming

is that he has this fairly consistent interest in planning operations, in thinking creatively about how you could undermine the German war effort. But at the same time, what he's also remarkably good at is liaising with key actors, key individuals and institutions. So, for example, Special Operations Executive would be one. But of course, thanks to his travels as well, he also gets to meet other people, particularly in the United States and Canada, who are also involved, such as William Donovan, the future head of the OSS that, of course, becomes

the CIA in the post-war period. He also, for example, meets Alan Dulles, who was the director of the CIA. So you get this sort of interesting mixture of outlandish planning, witnessing some of those plans being put into action, and at the same time, outside of that, meeting lots of influential and interesting people involved in intelligence. So he got some real life inspiration there then, didn't he? He was able to meet the charismatic figures from the world of Anglo-US spying, but he was also able to take maybe some gems from the missions that he was involved in. I know that he helped plan things like Operation GoldenEye, which of course will be familiar with listeners. But did any of the things that he was involved in make their way into his novels? I think one of the interesting aspects of all of this is actually,

for example, speculating about who actually inspired Ian Fleming when it came to the creation of James Bond. So if you look at the biographies and the commentaries around this particular issue, what's interesting is that most people end up concluding it was an amalgamation of people Fleming had met, you know, including, for example, former British spies such as James Clark. You know, we also had a Canadian spy master called William Stevenson, who Fleming had some contact with over so-called Camp X, which was a kind of spy school based in and around Toronto. Fleming probably also drew inspiration, of course, from his older brother Peter, who was involved in commando raids.

And, of course, Fleming's own wartime experience probably helped to feed his sort of fantastical James Bond figure. But the other thing that, of course, that does feature in the James Bond novels is, of course, Fleming's very real experiences of working with the intelligence services. And of course, the other thing to bear in mind is he was also involved in various commando units. One of them was the 30 Assault Unit. There was another one called T-Force. So he had so much material to work with. And some of that would have been about real life experiences. But some of it also would have been, for example, the things that he encountered on his travels. So if you remember Casino Royale,

that he encountered on his travels. So if you remember Casino Royale, there's a key element of the novel is the idea that this bigwig German is spending money at the casino in Portugal. And of course, one of the things that Fleming did indeed experience was many casinos. And he was extremely interested in the idea that the Germans could be undermined, not only through acquiring their intelligence devices, but also they might be bankrupted, humiliated, and that their morale might be affected by, for example, propaganda broadcasting. So there's an awful lot of things that feed into the Ian Fleming novels that draw on his extensive wartime experience. And remember again, that trial that he attended as a journalist in the early 1930s also helped to feed his interest in Soviet intelligence, particularly, of course, SMERSH. So when all of our listeners go out to watch No Time to Die, whenever it is released, hopefully at some point this year, they can look back and see all the multi-layered ways in which

not only are Bond's characteristics taken from the Second World War, but also some of the scenarios are as well. Absolutely. I mean, I think when you watch a James Bond film, and of course, you know, the transition from novel to film is an interesting story in its own right. So the listeners who are really, really familiar with the James Bond novels will be quick to point out that some of the films are more faithful to the novels, and some, frankly speaking, are not. I mean, You Only Live Twice, which was released in the 1960s, is a very different kind of film to the novel of the same title. For Russia With Love, I think is Fleming's best novel, is fairly close in terms of the transition to film. But the other thing to bear in mind that

Fleming also was lucky. And I think despite all the sadness in his life, despite his premature death, he also occasionally had some strokes of luck. And the two that I draw attention to, one was when he famously moved to Jamaica and created his house, appropriately named Goldeneye. And that's where he wrote all his novels. He had a very famous visitor in 1956, and that was Anthony Eden and his wife Clarissa. And Eden was in very poor health and came to Goldeneye to recuperate. Well, having Eden come to Goldeneye was a very welcome boost to Fleming's popularity and stardom, if you wish. But the biggest boost, famously, he received

was when John F. Kennedy nominated from Russia with Love as one of his all-time favourite novels. So by the time Doctor No was released as a film in 1962, Fleming was an exceptionally well-known novelist whose books were selling really exceptionally well. And you wouldn't have necessarily predicted that when Casino Royale came out a decade earlier. That's absolutely fascinating because, of course, JFK was another man who had lived early on in the shadow of his very, very heroic brother. Joe Kennedy Jr. was the one who eclipsed him. I mean, he was the one set to be, hopefully, according to his father,

the next president of the United States. And he was a war hero who had gone out and, of course, tragically died whilst testing early drone technologies to try and take out V-weapon sites in France. So maybe Kennedy, a bit like Ian Fleming, they both saw their brother in James Bond. I think there's something in that, because I suspect that if you know something of the Fleming story, but also the sort of the challenges of growing up in a family where there are four brothers, where you've lost your father prematurely, when there is one star brother, when another one, for example, has also died in conflict. It is exceptionally difficult to make your mark in the world.

But, you know, there are other areas where Kennedy and Fleming may have bonded. For one thing, both of them liked women, and I think were very well-known womanisers. I suspect both of them also bonded over drinking. But I also think that Fleming's outlandish imagination probably also caught the presidential ear as well. I mean, one of the lovely stories that's sometimes told about the Fleming-Kennedy encounter is the speculation about how might one get rid of Castro. So, of course, you know, according to one story at least, Fleming is asked this question.

And so he says, well, one thing you could do is fly over the island of Cuba and drop lots of leaflets saying that, you know, Castro is impotent. Or maybe you could have explosive cigars. Or given that Castro likes to dive, maybe we might secretly plant a seashell filled with explosive that Castro, when he went to touch it, it would blow up upon said touch. So I think there was also a sort of fantastical element to both Fleming and Kennedy that probably they found something similar in one another. And maybe that's why they enjoyed those conversations. That is amazing. And did they ever actually meet and converse and share ideas?

Yes, I mean, they absolutely did meet. And again, it's Fleming's networking that an author is that he continues to have those high level interactions, even after, for example, the war has ended and Fleming has left wartime service. So one of the things that travel enables him to do is he keeps on meeting North American counterparts, either in the US or Canada or during the middle of the Second World War in Jamaica. And that's part of the reason why Fleming ends up in Jamaica. You know, he visited the island in the Second World War and fell in love with it. So his whole life and his whole legacy is shaped by the Second World War and fell in love with it. So his whole life and his whole legacy is shaped by the Second World War. Klaus, thank you so much for taking us on such a detailed history into not only Ian

Fleming's life, but also the origins of James Bond and these fascinating connections to the Second World War and then deep into the Cold War and how his imagination continued to run wild. Where can people read more about your work on James Bond? Well, thank you, James. I mean, I think probably the best overview is actually a co-authored work that I finished with my Canadian collaborator, Dr. Lisa Fennell. And Lisa's based at the University of Oklahoma. And we wrote a book called Geographies, Genders and Geopolitics of James Bond that was published four years ago, where we actually explore the geopolitics of Ian Fleming's James Bond, from the Cold War novels like Casino Royale, all the way up to the most current James Bond films,

where clearly they're dealing with a very kind of different underlying geopolitics. And some of the work we did, just to give readers a sense of the scholarship that you can do on James Bond, involved looking at, for example, the archival records of the screenplays that give some really invaluable clues to how the novel was translated into a screenplay and subsequently a film production. And I also personally had the pleasure of interviewing Sir Ken Adam, who was the great set designer for many of the James Bond films. And Sir Ken very kindly entertained me in his really extraordinarily lovely house in Knightsbridge, literally a few moments walk away from Harrods. And, you know, he was just wonderfully forthcoming

in terms of the pleasures of taking the novels of James Bond onto the widescreen. That's amazing. Thank you so much, Klaus. If you're interested in geopolitics and James Bond, well, that's the place that you need to go. And Klaus, you are always welcome. Thank you so much. Thanks, James. It's a real pleasure. over. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thank you for listening to this episode of Warfare podcast from History Hit. There are plenty of episodes of Warfare and wonderful new material to come if you head to wherever you get your pods and subscribe to Warfare.