James Bond (literary character)
Background and inspiration

The central figure in Ian Fleming's work is the fictional character of James Bond, an intelligence officer in the " Secret Service ". Bond is also known by his code number, 007, and was a Royal Naval Reserve Commander.

James Bond is the culmination of an important but much-maligned tradition in English literature. As a boy, Fleming devoured the Bulldog Drummond tales of Lieutenant Colonel Herman Cyril McNeile (aka "Sapper") and the Richard Hannay stories of John Buchan. His genius was to repackage these antiquated adventures to fit the fashion of postwar Britain... In Bond, he created a Bulldog Drummond for the jet age.

William Cook in the New Statesman

During the Second World War, Ian Fleming had mentioned to friends that he wanted to write a spy novel. It was not until 1952, however, shortly before his wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Ann Charteris, that Fleming began to write his first book, Casino Royale, to distract himself from his forthcoming nuptials. Fleming started writing the novel at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica on 17 February 1952, typing out 2,000 words in the morning, directly from his own experiences and imagination. He finished work on the manuscript in just over a month, completing it on 18 March 1952. Describing the work as his "dreadful oafish opus", Fleming showed it to an ex-girlfriend, Clare Blanchard, who advised him not to publish it at all, but that if he did so, it should be under another name. Despite that advice, Fleming went on to write a total of twelve Bond novels and two short story collections before his death on 12 August 1964. The last two books— The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living Daylights —were published posthumously.
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