In Bondage

ONE day in 1952, a 43-year-old former diplomat, banker, stockbroker and journalist sat down at his desk in Goldeneye, his house in Jamaica, and started typing on the battered portable typewriter on his desk. A month later he'd completed the manuscript for his first novel, Casino Royale. James Bond was born.

Today, author Ian Fleming and his creation are inseparable. The old Etonian's stories of the world's most famous secret agent have sold more than 100 million books worldwide.

He described these thrillers as "fairy tales for grown-ups". He also said that everything he wrote had a precedent in truth, but was it really a direct reflection of the lives and loves of Fleming himself?

The issue is confused. Goodness knows, his life contained more than enough material for dozens of novels. And his work in naval intelligence during the Second World War gave him a behind-the-scenes insight into the spy game.

Then again, he also called his books a product of an adolescent imagination. In real life he'd tried, with various degrees of success, to be an Army officer, diplomat, banker and stockbroker.

Whether he was the prototype for Bond or just good at spinning a yarn is open for debate. One minute he was talking of Bond books as his autobiography, the next claiming it as "the author's pillow fantasy".

Andrew Lycett, in his biography of Fleming, suggests that he was "a chameleon-like showman who presented the side of his character he thought people wanted to see". If they identified him with Bond, who was he to complain?

The fascination with Fleming's life continues with books and an exhibition marking the centenary of his birth today. New hardback editions of all 14 original Bond novels are appearing under a special Penguin 007 imprint; Sebastian Faulks has written a new Bond book, Devil May Care; and the fourth in Charlie Higson's Young Bond series, Hurricane Gold, is published for younger readers.

Royal Mail stamps in his honour, issued in January, sold out faster than those of the Beatles in 2007. And more than 20,00 people have visited the exhibition, For Your Eyes Only - Ian Fleming And James Bond, at the Imperial War Museum in London since the opening last month.

All that and the complete collection of Fleming's short stories is being reissued in paperback under the title of the latest Bond movie, Quantum Of Solace, opening in cinemas in October.

The Fleming/Bond brand is flourishing, although the author himself had only a short time to enjoy success. He died in 1964, aged 56, a dozen years after Casino Royale was published.

The novels were successful but the films made the 007 a global brand. It's estimated that over half the world's population has seen a Bond film, which means this secret agent's secret is out.

Fleming said he began writing "chiefly for pleasure, and then money". His background didn't mark him out as an author. His father was killed on the Western Front in 1917, with his ambitious and headstrong mother exerting a strong influence over his growing up.

He went from Eton into the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. His good looks, private income and military uniform made him a hit with women although he had a reputation for being aloof. He had, it was reported, two main topics of conversation - himself and sex.

He worked at Reuters news agency, tried his hand at merchant banking and became a stockbroker before, in 1939, being recruited as personal assistant to the director of naval intelligence.

After the war, he joined the Sunday Times as a newspaper executive, managing overseas coverage.

His love life was active and complicated, none more so than his relationship with Ann Rothermere, whom he eventually married.

His other habits included nicotine, showing the same eye for detail that Bond demonstrated in his shaken-not-stirred Martinis. Fleming smoked custom-made Morland cigarettes blended from three Turkish tobaccos. By his late 30s, he was getting through 70 cigarettes and a bottle of gin a day. The massive heart attack he suffered during the weekly Sunday Times conference in 1961 might have been predicted.

He wrote all his books at Goldeneye, the house he had built on a plot of land purchased in Jamaica.

He could sit looking out at the Caribbean as he plotted the latest Bond extravaganza.

It's said that his impending marriage to Ann Rothmere in March 1952 was the inspiration for him to start writing the first Bond adventure. Taking several incidents from his wartime years in naval intelligence, he wove them into a story that shocked some with a torture scene in which a naked Bond is beaten.

He had a set routine for writing the books, tapping out 1,000 words in the morning, stopping for cocktails and lunch on the terrace, followed by a further 1,000 words in the late afternoon.

It doesn't sound much like hard work. Even the name for his hero was within arm's reach.

Supposedly, he took it from the author of A Field Guide To The Birds Of The West Indies on his bookshelf. People and locations from his past were plundered for his plots. Obsessions such as gambling, golf and gold (he had a gold typewriter made) found their way into the stories.

Bond, he once said, was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types he met during the war. Bond was the man he'd have liked to have been but couldn't because "he's got more guts than me, he's also considerably more handsome".

Even his first sexual experience featured. The seduction of the heroine of The Spy Who Loved Me on the floor of the Royalty cinema in Windsor was, Fleming revealed, the very location where he first made love to a woman.

His books were famously criticised for their salaciousness and violence, but he also wrote a children's story, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, that has proved as long-lasting as Bond, thanks to the film and current stage production.

Fleming realised he was in Bondage with 007. He did consider killing him off but never quite found the courage to do so. Unlike his creation, he didn't have a licence to kill.

* Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks (Penguin, £18.99) and Hurricane Gold by Charlie Higson (Puffin, £6.99) are published today.

* Andrew Lycett's biography, Ian Fleming, is available in paperback (Phoenix, £10.99).