The name is Bond…James Bond

 


James Bond celebrates his 70th anniversary this year, as the first novel Casino Royale was published in 1953. This May, the latest novel, the 42nd “On His Majesty’s Secret Service” written by Charlie Higson was published. 

The synopsis is:

4th May, two days before the Coronation of Charles III, Bond, is sent at the last minute to thwart an attempt to disrupt the Coronation by the wealthy, eccentric and self-styled Athelstan of Wessex, who is on a deadly mission of his own to teach the United Kingdom a lesson. Can Bond stop these plans and defeat his privately hired team of mercenaries?…………. If you want to find out what happens you must buy/borrow the book.

So, this article will be looking at the connections between Bond and Swansea.

Ian Fleming (far left), wrote 14 James Bond novels, the first being, Casino Royale, and the Octopussy/The Living Daylights, posthumously published, June 1966.

    Ian Fleming was born in 1908, the son of Valentine Fleming and Evelyn Rose. His father was a MP for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. We will come back to his mother, a little later. Fleming, during the Second World War, worked with the Naval Intelligence Division, and was involved with Operation Goldeneye, which was shelved during 1943. Ian used the name (Goldeneye) for his Jamaican house, where he penned most of the James Bond books. Fleming also wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1964.

The James Bond series was based around an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), and was given the code name 007; these stories were based on Fleming’s wartime experiences. In 1952, Fleming married Ann Charteris, who had to divorce her first husband Esmond Harmsworth because of the affair with Fleming. In August 1964, whilst attending lunch with his friends at the Royal St George’s Golf Club, in Kent, Fleming died from heart attack.

Two weeks prior to his death his mother Evelyn (above centre) had died. Following the death of her husband, Valentine with whom she had four sons, she inherited his estate and became very wealthy on the condition that she didn’t remarry. Evelyn eventually became the mistress of Augustus John, they had a daughter, cellist Amaryllis Fleming (above right). Fleming’s nickname for his mother was M, and he used his relationship with her to model the fictional head of Secret   Intelligence Service, M.

Following Ian Fleming’s death, Kingsley Amis (left) writing as Robert Markham was commissioned to write the next James Bond novel Colonel Sun, in 1968. Elements from the book have been used in some of the later James Bond films.

Amis was a lecturer at University College of Swansea, teaching English from 1949 to 1961. In 1954 whilst here in Swansea, he wrote Lucky Jim. Following the centenary ‘celebrations’, of 2020, the university unveiled several blue plaques around the campus which commemorated notable people of the university’s history, one of those on the Taliesin building, the former English department, was for Kingsley Amis. The plaque also mentions that he won the Booker Prize in 1986 for The Old Devils.

Mr Bond, we’ve been expecting you. So, who was James Bond? Bond, or to give him his full name James Charles Bond (left), came from Pontypridd. At the time of the Second World War, Bond, a metal worker, served as an intelligence officer with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), and he served under a certain Ian Fleming. Bond, died in 1995, and is buried in one of the Gorseinon cemeteries.

Copyright - The Bay Magazine, July 2023

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