Ian Fleming

Origins and family

Ian Lancaster Fleming was born on 28 May 1908 at 27 Green Street, in the wealthy London district of Mayfair. His mother, Evelyn Rose, was a socialite; his father, Valentine Fleming, was Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910. He was a grandson of the Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who founded the Scottish American Investment Trust and the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a family fortune rooted in the City of London.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Valentine joined the C Squadron of the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars and rose to the rank of major. He was killed by German shelling on the Western Front on 20 May 1917. Winston Churchill wrote an obituary that appeared in The Times, and his death was commemorated on the Glenelg War Memorial, the family having owned property at Arnisdale. Ian grew up fatherless, in material comfort but shaped by that loss.

His brothers included Peter, the eldest, a travel writer who married the actress Celia Johnson; Richard, who served with Scottish regiments in the war; and Michael, who died of wounds in 1940 after being captured in Normandy. Ian also had a maternal half-sister, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming, born of his mother's long affair with the painter Augustus John, which began in 1923.

Education

In 1914 he attended Durnford School, a preparatory school on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, where he endured poor food, harsh physical discipline and bullying. In 1921 he entered Eton College. He was not an academic high achiever, but he excelled at athletics and held the title of Victor Ludorum in 1925 and again in 1927. He also edited the school magazine, The Wyvern.

His lifestyle at Eton brought him into conflict with his housemaster, E. V. Slater, who disapproved of his attitude, his hair oil, his car and his relations with women. His mother withdrew him a term early to prepare for entry to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He spent less than a year there and left in 1927 without a commission, after contracting gonorrhoea.

Evelyn then steered him towards the Foreign Office, sending him to the Tennerhof, a small private school in Kitzbühel, Austria, run by Ernan Forbes Dennis, a former British spy and follower of Alfred Adler, and his wife, the novelist Phyllis Bottome. He then studied briefly at the universities of Munich and Geneva. In Geneva he began an engagement to Monique Panchaud de Bottens, which ended after his mother voiced her rejection of the match.

Early jobs

In 1931 he failed the Foreign Office examination but, through his mother's pressure on Sir Roderick Jones, head of Reuters, obtained a post as sub-editor and journalist with the agency. In April 1933 he was in Moscow covering the show trial of six engineers from Metropolitan-Vickers. He sought an interview with Stalin and, although he did not get one, was astonished to receive a personally signed note of apology from the Soviet leader. He later called this