The Man with the Golden Typewriter (7 page)

25th August, 1954

Dear Madam,

Thank you very much for your letter of August 17th and I am sorry that owing to my absence abroad I did not reply earlier.

It is indeed a curious coincidence that I should have chosen the same title as your late husband but it did in fact simply come to me out of the blue one day when I was driving down the Dover Road.

Regarding your late husband's novel, I really think your best course would be to send it to a literary agent such as Curtis Brown Ltd who are good people and would advise you as to whether a publisher would be interested.

In return Mrs Polley said the Dover Road was a most romantic place to think of a title. ‘Her husband's
Live and Let Die
had been written for the Australian actress Marie Lohr, but the war had intervened. Syd, she continued, had a genius for arriving at titles – ‘Firelight', ‘Bridleway', ‘Something Must Be Done', ‘The Story Speaks', ‘Portrait Of A Lady' and ‘Quiet Please'. Should Fleming ever be at a loss he was welcome to use any of them.

TO LORD BEAVERBROOK, Flat 95, Arlington House, London W.1.

Beaverbrook was a man whom Fleming admired. During the Second World War he had served as Minister of Supply and his newspapers were noted for their daring and ingenuity. (In tribute, Fleming made the
Express
one of the few papers that Bond read on a regular basis.) When he enquired about serialisation rights, Fleming was enthusiastic. Nothing came of it, but the
Express
later ran a series of James Bond cartoon strips that would achieve iconic status.

31st August, 1954

Ann's told me of your very kind message about LIVE AND LET DIE and I was certainly surprised and delighted by Malcolm Thompson's review,
⁸
which I am sure did the sales some good.

He is by far the best fiction reviewer and I wish we could steal him from you for the “Sunday Times”.

As a matter of fact, before publication the “Evening Standard”, according to Jonathan Cape's, were dickering with the idea of serializing LIVE AND LET DIE but I dare say it was decided that small adds [sic] made even better reading.

However, just in case any of your papers might be interested, the third book, which Cape's say is the best of the three, is now with Curtis Brown and EVERYBODY'S put in a first bid for it. In America the “Saturday Evening Post” were interested but came to the conclusion that it
was too dramatic! – a disadvantage which I imagine would not dismay your editors.

Anyway there it is and for countless reasons I would much prefer that it was sent to the Express Group, if you have any use for fiction these days.

Ann sends her love. She is just off to Northern Ireland for a few days to roast an ox in aid of her son's twenty-first birthday.

TO IAN MCKENZIE, “Nahariya”, 33 Silsoe Street, Hamilton, New South Wales

Ian McKenzie was a lawyer practising in the Australian coal town of Newcastle. He had only written one fan letter before, to an actor in the touring Stratford Company – ‘because so much good work goes unpraised' – and now felt he should write a second. He and his friends had admired
Casino Royale
and
Live and Let Die
and were looking forward to the next. Fleming's reply gave an intriguing glimpse into his wartime service and hinted at a Bond adventure that, alas, never came to fruition. As often, when referring to Bond's armaments, Fleming meant Beretta the gun, rather than Biretta the ecclesiastical headgear.

2nd September, 1954

It really was extremely kind of you to have written such a charming letter.

I only once wrote such a letter – to an Austrian novelist Leo Perutz
⁹
 – and I remember what an effort it was.

But when you come to write your first book, even if it's upon an abstruse point of law, you will know what a warm glow it causes to hear from a reader.

My third book is just being printed and will appear next April. The publishers are pleased with it and I hope it will also satisfy you and your friends.

I have wonderful memories of Australia as a result of having served briefly at our Pacific Fleet Headquarters in the “Daily Half Mile” in Sydney, and I hope one day I shall come back and bring James Bond and his Biretta with me in search of trouble and just that one, final, fatal Australian blonde.

TO WILLIAM HICKEY, ESQ., “Daily Express”, Fleet Street, E.C.4.

William Hickey was a Regency memoirist whose name had been appropriated by the
Daily Express
for its gossip column. In December 1954 ‘Hickey' ran a piece that concerned a Dublin grocer's remarks about
Live and Let Die.
Fleming, who wasn't above writing lightweight chatty columns himself, hastened to advise.

2nd December, 1954

SO FRESH!

Your Dublin grocer reads thrillers.

On Lexington Avenue, New York, there is a restaurant called “Gloryfried Ham-N-Eggs” which boasts that “The Eggs we serve Tomorrow are still on the Farm”.

This restaurant features briefly in a Secret Service thriller of mine entitled LIVE AND LET DIE, but I “improved” their slogan into “The Eggs we serve Tomorrow are still in the Hens”.

On Monday I was in New York and my American publishers told me that, for the American edition, they were reverting to the original slogan in order to avoid letters of correction from New Yorkers. So I was all the more delighted to read on my return to London that my version has been rescued for posterity by a thriller-addicted grocer in Dublin!

TO MR. CHARLES BROWNHILL, 1 Warwick Avenue, Bedford

In very neat handwriting schoolboy Charles Brownhill wrote to say how much he had enjoyed
Live and Let Die.
He had never written to an author (though he had once completed an Enid Blyton competition) and he was
keen to get his hands on
Casino Royale
even if it meant disrupting his A levels
.

26th May, 1955

Thank you very much indeed for your letter of May 24th which gave me a great deal of pleasure.

Authors are always pleased to get such praise from one of their readers just as I expect you will be when you see your marks in the Advanced Level Certificate!

I have just published a new thriller called MOONRAKER, which I hope will give you as much fun as LIVE AND LET DIE.

Again with many thanks for your kind thought in writing.

TO RICHARD USBORNE,
¹⁰
“Firlands”, Ellesmere Road, Weybridge, Surrey

To appease his obstreperous author, Cape made a lucrative deal with Foyle's bookshop for a Book Club edition whereby 20,000 copies of
Live and Let Die
were to be published by their subsidiary World Books. Richard Usborne's review, which first appeared as a puff in ‘World Books' Broadsheet', featured prominently on the dust jacket. It touched a chord with Fleming, who feared comparison with his literary contemporaries.

6th July, 1956

I have just seen your very kindly review of “Live and Let Die” in the “World Books Broadsheet”.

You have always understood that my object in writing these books is to entertain, and you are one of the few reviewers who seem to understand this lowly objective and you never tell me that I ought to be writing like somebody else, which is what depresses me about some critics.

I remember that, in a previous review, you wrote that you would like to hear more about Smersh. The message got through and you may be
interested to know that the next volume in the collected works, provisionally entitled “From Russia with Love”, deals with an attempt by Smersh to destroy Bond. In fact, the first half of the book takes the reader entirely into the Smersh camp.

I don't know how the book will do and many will certainly find the inner workings of Smersh rather slow-going, but at any rate I feel that I have made an attempt to pay off a debt of gratitude to one of James Bond's most kindly sustainers.

TO MISS JOAN HOARE, 33 Monkridge, Crouch End Hill, N.8

Miss Joan Hoare said she hadn't enjoyed a book so much since reading Bulldog Drummond at the age of fourteen. But, ‘in a spirit of constructive criticism', she felt obliged to point out that it was Balmain, not Dior, who produced the perfume ‘Vent Vert'.

‘I venture to write because in the “Broadsheet” accompanying the book you say you take a real interest in avoiding such mistakes [. . .]. It can well be imagined that a modern thriller gains effect from references to the latest fashions in living & I would suggest that any lady of your acquaintance with the requisite “savoir vivre” would surely be only too delighted to help you check your slips in the feminine field.'

21st October, 1958

Thank you very much for your charming letter of October 17th and for all the kind things you have to say.

Of course you are quite right about the Vent Vert. This egregious slip was picked up by many sapient females at the time of its first publication and, through some oversight, my correction never got into the cheaper edition.

I suppose until I go to my grave sharp-eyed, sweet-scented women will continue to rap my bruised knuckles for this mistake, and I can only say that I rather enjoy the process!

Again with many thanks for taking the trouble to write.

 

3

Moonraker

At the outset, 1954 boded well for Fleming. He had been awarded the post of Atticus, leading columnist for the
Sunday Times
, which gave him free rein to expatiate on anyone and anything that caught his fancy. It was an enviable position for a journalist and during his three-year tenure he made the most of it. Best of all, however, was a letter he received in January from film producer Alexander Korda
¹
saying how much he had enjoyed a proof copy of
Live and Let Die
and asking Fleming if he would be interested in writing for films. Fleming replied that his forthcoming novel might be just what Korda was looking for. And with this glittering prospect in mind he departed London for Goldeneye.

There were good moments. During his two-month furlough he inveigled Ann into the sea and taught her how to catch and cook an octopus. ‘I was sad about the octopus,' Ann wrote in a letter to Evelyn Waugh. All the same, it made a very good lunch, fried with conch and lobster, served on saffron rice. When she looked at Fleming's work she felt even sadder: ‘The heroine is a policewoman called Gala, she has perfect measurements. I was hopelessly ignorant about such important facts . . .' Only when Noël Coward brought a corsetry saleswoman for drinks did she get her husband's drift.

And there were bad. Although Fleming worked with his habitual discipline, Ann's guests were more than he could stand – among them a honeymoon couple who stayed for ‘twelve interminable days'. After a while he had had enough. ‘Ian said I was to tell them that they must not
call “Lion” and “Bear” to each other while he was writing,' Ann recorded, ‘but I could think of no tactful approach; finally Ian whose tact is notorious said at luncheon “We should love you to continue using the house but we are going away for three or four days.” An appalling silence fell.' Ann mollified as best she could, with the result that the honeymooners stayed a little longer. Fleming called her a traitor.

Possibly the Flemings did decamp from Goldeneye because on 28 March, shortly after their return to Britain, Atticus condemned Jamaican hoteliers for ramped prices and bad service: ‘Ten days ago, in one of these hotels, a visitor rang three times and telephoned for the maid, finally to be told that the maid could not come until the rain had stopped.' Furthermore, the same thinly disguised visitor was foolish enough to order a dry martini. ‘The level of the glass fell half an inch when he had removed the jumbo olive. It cost him 5s. 8d. and the lights in the bar fused while he was drinking it.'

On their return from Jamaica, Ian and Ann visited the South of France where, at the Villa Mauresque, he persuaded Somerset Maugham to allow the
Sunday Times
to serialise a selection of his short stories. When published in June 1954, with gigantic posters and an invitation for readers to compare their ten favourite novels against Maugham's own selection, it added another 50,000 to the paper's already considerable circulation and prompted Kemsley to consider a separate entertainment section – which materialised eight years later as the ground-breaking
Sunday Times Magazine
.

Whether for reasons of disruption or the fact he was trying to write for film, Fleming wasn't happy with the manuscript. The plot was fine, and very much of its age: a millionaire industrialist, Sir Hugo Drax, had developed a missile that would serve as Britain's unique nuclear deterrent – the trouble being that he and his team were undercover German veterans who intended to drop an atom bomb on Britain itself. Bond's involvement stemmed from an invitation by M to investigate Drax's flukish run of luck at Blade's, London's premier gentleman's club. As he soon discovered, Drax was a card sharp. Having outcheated him at a game of bridge, Bond found himself assigned to guard duty at Drax's missile installation. Piece by piece he unearthed Drax's plans
and, after several brushes with death, managed to alter the missile's course so that it landed in the North Sea. Its detonation killed several hundred innocent observers aboard a warship – also Drax, who had fled, gloatingly, in a submarine – but saved the millions that would have died had it hit London.

The action was set mainly in the county of Kent, where Fleming spent most weekends, and was researched with rigour. He sought advice from, among others, the Bowater Corporation, then the world's largest producer of newsprint, and the British Interplanetary Society (whose recent chairman, Arthur C. Clarke, was sadly unavailable for comment). Given a growing vogue for wartime literature, and Britain's technological advances in rocketry and nuclear physics, it was pitched perfectly at the domestic market.