Complete Works of Ian Fleming Read online

  The Complete Works of

  IAN FLEMING

  (1908-1964)

  Contents

  The Novels

  CASINO ROYALE

  LIVE AND LET DIE

  MOONRAKER

  DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

  FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE

  DR. NO

  GOLDFINGER

  THUNDERBALL

  THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

  ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE

  YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

  THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN

  The Short Story Collections

  FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

  OCTOPUSSY AND THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS

  MISCELLANEOUS STORIES

  The Short Stories

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Children’s Book

  CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG: THE MAGICAL CAR

  The Non-Fiction

  THE DIAMOND SMUGGLERS

  THRILLING CITIES

  NEWSPAPER PIECES

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2016

  Version 1

  The Complete Works of

  IAN FLEMING

  By Delphi Classics, 2016

  COPYRIGHT

  Complete Works of Ian Fleming

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2016.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  ISBN: 978 1 78656 044 5

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

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  The Novels

  27 Green Street, Mayfair, London — Fleming’s birthplace

  CASINO ROYALE

  Ian Fleming’s first novel was published in 1953, introducing the character James Bond and paving the way for a further eleven novels and two short story collections featuring the famous secret agent. The plot introduces James Bond, codename 007, as being assigned by M, the Head of the British Secret Service, to play against and bankrupt Le Chiffre, the paymaster for a SMERSH-controlled trade union, in a high-stakes baccarat game at the Royale-les-Eaux casino in northern France. As part of Bond’s cover as a rich Jamaican playboy, M assigns as his companion Vesper Lynd, personal assistant to the Head of Section S (Soviet Union). The CIA and the French Deuxième Bureau also send agents as observers. The game soon turns into an intense confrontation between Le Chiffre and Bond; Le Chiffre wins the first round, cleaning Bond out of his funds. As Bond contemplates the prospect of reporting his failure to M, the CIA agent, Felix Leiter, gives him an envelope of money and a note: “Marshall Aid. Thirty-two million francs. With the compliments of the USA.” The game continues, despite the attempts of one of Le Chiffre’s minders to kill Bond.

  Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several occupations before he was recruited by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence, to become his personal assistant. Fleming joined the organisation full-time in August 1939, with the codename “17F” and worked for them throughout the war. In 1942 Fleming attended an Anglo-American intelligence summit in Jamaica and, despite the constant heavy rain during his visit, he decided to live on the island once the war was over. His friend Ivar Bryce helped find a plot of land in Saint Mary Parish where, in 1945, Fleming had a house built, which he named Goldeneye. Upon Fleming’s demobilisation in May 1945, he became the Foreign Manager in the Kemsley newspaper group, which at the time owned The Sunday Times. In this role he oversaw the paper’s worldwide network of correspondents. His contract allowed him to take two months holiday every winter in Jamaica. Fleming had previously mentioned to friends that he wanted to write a spy novel, but it was not until early 1952, to distract himself from his forthcoming wedding to Ann O’Neill (née Charteris), that he began to write Casino Royale at his Goldeneye estate on 17 February. He typed out 2,000 words in the morning, directly from his own experiences and imagination, completing work on the manuscript in March 1952. It was a pattern he retained for future novels. In May 1963 he wrote a piece for Books and Bookmen magazine in which he said: “I write for about three hours in the morning ... and I do another hour’s work between six and seven in the evening. I never correct anything and I never go back to see what I have written ... By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day.”

  In London, Fleming had his manuscript retyped by Joan Howe, his red-haired secretary at The Times on whom the character Miss Moneypenny was partly based. During the book’s final draft stages, Fleming allowed his friend, and later editor, William Plomer to see a copy, and remarked “I really am thoroughly ashamed of it... after rifling through this muck you will probably never speak to me again, but I have got to take that chance.” Despite this, Plomer thought the book had sufficient promise and sent a copy to the publishing house Jonathan Cape. At first they were unenthusiastic, but were persuaded to publish on the recommendation of Fleming’s older brother, Peter, an established travel writer whose books they managed.

  Casino Royale was inspired by certain incidents that took place during Fleming’s wartime career at the Naval Intelligence Division (NID). On a trip to Portugal, en route to the United States, Fleming and the NID Director, Admiral Godfrey, went to the Estoril Casino. Due to Portugal’s neutral status, Estoril’s population had been swelled by spies and agents from the warring regimes. Fleming claimed that while there he was cleaned out by a “chief German agent” at a table playing chemin de fer, a form of baccarat.

  The failed attempt to kill Bond while at Royale-Les-Eaux was inspired by Fleming’s knowledge of the attempted assassination of Franz von Papen, Vice-Chancellor of Germany and an ambassador under Hitler. Both Papen and Bond survived their assassination attempts, carried out by Bulgarians, because trees protected them from the blasts. The torture scene in which Bond’s genitals are thrashed while he is strapped to a bottomless chair was a version of a French-Moroccan torture technique in which the steel string of a mandolin was used to slice in half the testicles of British wartime agents.

  Fleming initially named his protagonist James Secretan, before he decided upon the name James Bond, inspired by the name of the author of the ornithology guide, Birds of the West Indies. He later explained to the ornithologist’s wife “that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born”. Fleming decided that
Bond should resemble both the American singer Hoagy Carmichael and himself, and in the novel Lynd remarks that “Bond reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless.”

  The novel enjoyed critical success: The Manchester Guardian judged it “a first-rate thriller... with a breathtaking plot”, though this was moderated as being “schoolboy stuff”. The Times Literary Supplement wrote that Casino Royale was “an extremely engaging affair” and that “the especial charm ... is the high poetry with which he invests the green baize lagoons of the casino tables”. The Listener deemed Fleming was a “kind of supersonic John Buchan”, but the paper was dismissive of the plot, observing that it is “a brilliant but improbable notion” that includes “a deal of champagne-drinking, bomb-throwing, relentless pitting of wits etc... with a cretinous love-affair”. John Betjeman, writing in The Daily Telegraph, considered that “Fleming has discovered the secret of the narrative art ... which is to work up to a climax unrevealed at the end of each chapter. Thus the reader has to go on reading”. The critic for Time magazine examined Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye alongside Casino Royale; he praised the latter, saying that “Fleming keeps his incidents and characters spinning through their paces like juggling balls.”

  In 1954 CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 to adapt Casino Royale into a one-hour television adventure as part of its Climax! series. The episode aired live on 21 October 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as secret agent “Card Sense” James ‘Jimmy’ Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre. A brief tutorial on baccarat is given at the beginning of the show by the presenter of the programme, William Lundigan, to enable viewers to understand a game which was not popular in America at the time. For this Americanised version of the story, Bond is a US agent, described as working for “Combined Intelligence”.

  Charles K. Feldman obtained the rights to make a film adaptation, deciding the best way to profit from the film rights was to make a satirical version, which was produced and released in 1967 by Columbia Pictures. The film, which cast David Niven as Bond, was made with five credited directors (plus one uncredited) and a cast that included Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, Orson Welles and Woody Allen. The 1967 version is described by the British Film Institute as “an incoherent all-star comedy”.

  Following the 1967 adaptation, the rights to the film remained with Columbia Films until 1989 when the studio was acquired by the Japanese company Sony. In 1999, following legal action between Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM/UA, Sony traded the rights to Casino Royale for MGM’s partial-rights to Spider-Man. This led to Eon Productions making the 2006 film Casino Royale, starring Daniel Craig as Bond, supported by Eva Green as Vesper Lynd and Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre; Judi Dench returned for her fifth Bond film as M. The 2006 film portrays Bond at the beginning of his career and overall the film remains faithful to the original novel. The film reboots the series, establishing a new timeline and narrative framework not meant to precede or succeed any previous Bond film, depicting a less experienced and more vulnerable Bond. Casino Royale premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square on 14 November 2006 and received positive critical response, with reviewers highlighting Craig’s reinvention of the character and the film’s departure from the tropes of previous Bond films.

  The first edition

  Fleming’s real life model for James Bond: Hoagy Carmichael, an American composer, pianist, singer, actor and bandleader, who is best known for composing the music for “Stardust”, “Georgia on My Mind”, “The Nearness of You”, and “Heart and Soul”.

  James Bond, the ornithologist and provider of the secret agent’s name

  Ian Fleming’s image of James Bond; commissioned to aid The Daily Express comic strip artists.

  Rear Admiral John Henry Godfrey, Fleming’s superior at the Naval Intelligence Division and the basis for the character M

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1. THE SECRET AGENT

  Chapter 2. DOSSIER FOR M

  Chapter 3. NUMBER 007

  Chapter 4. L’ENNEMI ÉCOUTE

  Chapter 5. THE GIRL FROM HEADQUARTERS

  Chapter 6. TWO MEN IN STRAW HATS

  Chapter 7. ROUGE ET NOIR

  Chapter 8. PINK LIGHTS AND CHAMPAGNE

  Chapter 9. THE GAME IS BACCARAT

  Chapter 10. THE HIGH TABLE

  Chapter 11. MOMENT OF TRUTH

  Chapter 12. THE DEADLY TUBE

  Chapter 13. ‘A WHISPER OF LOVE, A WHISPER OF HATE’

  Chapter 14. ‘LA VIE EN ROSE?’

  Chapter 15. BLACK HARE AND GREY HOUND

  Chapter 16. THE CRAWLING OF THE SKIN

  Chapter 17. ‘MY DEAR BOY’

  Chapter 18. A CRAG-LIKE FACE

  Chapter 19. THE WHITE TENT

  Chapter 20. THE NATURE OF EVIL

  Chapter 21. VESPER

  Chapter 22. THE HASTENING SALOON

  Chapter 23. TIDE OF PASSION

  Chapter 24. FRUIT DÉFENDU

  Chapter 25. ‘BLACK-PATCH’

  Chapter 26. ‘SLEEP WELL, MY DARLING’

  Chapter 27. THE BLEEDING HEART

  The 1967 spy comedy film originally produced by Columbia Pictures starring an ensemble cast of directors and actors. It is loosely based on Fleming’s first James Bond novel.

  The 2006 film adaptation

  Chapter 1. THE SECRET AGENT

  The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling — a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension — becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.

  James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired. He always knew when his body or his mind had had enough and he always acted on the knowledge. This helped him to avoid staleness and the sensual bluntness that breeds mistakes.

  He shifted himself unobtrusively away from the roulette he had been playing and went to stand for a moment at the brass rail which surrounded breast-high the top table in the salle privée.

  Le Chiffre was still playing and still, apparently, winning. There was an untidy pile of flecked hundred-mille plaques in front of him. In the shadow of his thick left arm there nestled a discreet stack of the big yellow ones worth half a million francs each.

  Bond watched the curious, impressive profile for a time, and then he shrugged his shoulders to lighten his thoughts and moved away.

  The barrier surrounding the caisse comes as high as your chin and the caissier, who is generally nothing more than a minor bank clerk, sits on a stool and dips into his piles of notes and plaques. These are ranged on shelves. They are on a level, behind the protecting barrier, with your groin. The caissier has a cosh and a gun to protect him, and to heave over the barrier and steal some notes and then vault back and get out of the casino through the passages and doors would be impossible. And the caissiers generally work in pairs.

  Bond reflected on the problem as he collected the sheaf of hundred thousand and then the sheaves of ten thousand franc notes. With another part of his mind, he had a vision of tomorrow’s regular morning meeting of the casino committee.

  ‘Monsieur Le Chiffre made two million. He played his usual game. Miss Fairchild made a million in an hour and then left. She executed three “bancos” of Monsieur Le Chiffre within an hour and then left. She played with coolness. Monsieur le Vicomte de Villorin made one million two at roulette. He was playing the maximum on the first and last dozens. He was lucky. Then the Englishman, Mister Bond, increased his winnings to exactly three million over the two days. He was playing a progressive system on red at table five. Duclos, the chef de partie, has the details. It seems that he is persevering and plays in maximums. He has luck. His nerves seem good. On the soirée, the chemin-de-fer won x, the baccarat won y and the roulette won z. The boule, which was again badly frequented, still makes its expenses.’

  ‘Merci, Monsieur Xavier.’

  ‘Merci, Monsieur le Président.’

  Or something like that, thought Bond as he pushed his way through the swing door
s of the salle privée and nodded to the bored man in evening clothes whose job it is to bar your entry and your exit with the electric foot-switch which can lock the doors at any hint of trouble.

  And the casino committee would balance its books and break up to its homes or cafés for lunch.

  As for robbing the caisse, in which Bond himself was not personally concerned, but only interested, he reflected that it would take ten good men, that they would certainly have to kill one or two employees, and that anyway you probably couldn’t find ten non-squeal killers in France, or in any other country for the matter of that.

  As he gave a thousand francs to the vestiaire and walked down the steps of the casino, Bond made up his mind that Le Chiffre would in no circumstances try to rob the caisse and he put the contingency out of his mind. Instead he explored his present physical sensations. He felt the dry, uncomfortable gravel under his evening shoes, the bad, harsh taste in his mouth and the slight sweat under his arms. He could feel his eyes filling their sockets. The front of his face, his nose and antrum, were congested. He breathed the sweet night air deeply and focused his senses and his wits. He wanted to know if anyone had searched his room since he had left it before dinner.

  He walked across the broad boulevard and through the gardens to the Hôtel Splendide. He smiled at the concierge who gave him his key — No 45 on the first floor — and took the cable.

  It was from Jamaica and read:

  KINGSTONJA XXXX XXXXXX XXXX XXX

  BOND SPLENDIDE ROYALE-LES-EAUX SEINE IN-

  FERIEURE HAVANA CIGAR PRODUCTION ALL

  CUBAN FACTORIES 1915 TEN MILLION REPEAT