For Americans who aren’t Fleming fans, a footnote would sadly be necessary. British audiences might be able to get by with Orion’s annotation!
Incidentally, I suspect Coward was joking when he claimed Fleming offered him the role of Dr. No. I doubt Fleming would ever have thought him right for the part.
It’s very odd, that Fleming-Coward friendship. At the face of it not many of their contemporaries probably would have guessed the two would get on - and yet they did, maybe each finding in the other qualities they admired, resulting in a long friendship like especially Fleming didn’t make many in his time.
Given how both men liked to drink I’m not sure there hasn’t been the odd occasion when the one or the other made outlandish remarks which, on sober reflection, couldn’t have been anything but the result of one or six martinis too much.
If I recall correctly Coward stated something along the lines he got a telegram from Fleming that offered him the part. To which he supposedly replied: No - No - No. I would have thought that was likely a running gag between the two.
Books and Authors Abroad: English Laurels in America (Sunday Times, July 4, 1948)
By Ian Fleming
In the United States the literary event of the year has been the publication of the first of five volumes of Mr. Churchill’s war memoirs entitled The Gathering Storm. The New York Times and Life have published long extracts from the book, as has The Daily Telegraph in England, and now a further huge section of the American public will read this great English adventure story by Britain’s first citizen.
The efforts of our official propaganda organisations are small beer beside the vast American audience created by Mr. Churchill, and it is debatable whether the handiwork of any other single Englishman will bring in more hard currency this year. The Gathering Storm, which has been acclaimed by the critics with “rave” but reverent notices, deals with the prelude to war—in the author’s words, “How the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm”—and with the Twilight War, ending in May, 1940. The volume (nearly 800 pages with the appendices) closes with Mr. Churchill’s appointment as Prime Minister and Minister of Defence.
Due largely to the shortage .of paper and cloth, the majority of the British public will not read this great segment of their own history until Messrs. Cassell publish the volume here in September.
Few other major works of general interest have appeared. "Vinegar” Joe Stilwell’s posthumous and peppery memoirs of the Burma campaign have not been praised, and Mr. Sumner Welles’s We Need Not Fail has made no stir. Dr. Kinsey’s Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male still leads the best-sellers for the worst reasons. In fact, it is a stodgy agglomeration of statistics and graphs whose findings will be treated with respect by the medical authorities to whom it is addressed. The Hatfields and the McCoys, by Virgil Jones, is an exciting piece of folklore retelling the story of the famous family feud on the Kentucky-West Virginia border. The Harvard University Press are publishing the definitive Letters of Edgar Allan Poe in October.
English authors are well represented by Edward Crankshaw’s Russia and the Russians and by Simon Nowell Smith’s scholarly piece of Henry James research, The Legend of the Master, and English novelists easily lead a barren fiction field. Evelyn Waugh’s piece of side-splitting necrophilia, The Loved One, which has so far only appeared here in Horizon (Chapman & Hall are to publish in book form), has been greeted with masochistic ecstasy, and Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter has been chosen as the Book of the Month.
Forthcoming volumes include a new James M. Cain The Moth; The Sky and the Forest, a tale of Africa by C. S. Forester; No High Way, by Nevil Shute; and Ape and Essence, a new Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World vein. Ernest Hemingway’s long new novel is said to be maturing slowly.
American books are only qualitatively absent from this short survey. The output of literary chewing-gum continues apace, but the public is surfeited, probably owing to “an unfortunate combination of higher prices and lower quality,” as the Saturday Review of Literature puts it. The publishers moan and groan, but the drumming of the book clubs, the tireless superlatives of reviewers, and ever shinier book jackets are of no avail and, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a slump is a slump is a slump.
West Indian (Sunday Times, June 1, 1952)
By Ian Fleming
Pleasure Island: the book of Jamaica. Edited by Esther Chapman. (Chantry Publications. 21s.)
There should be a series of Baedeker-Michelin guides to the British Empire. I offer the suggestion with respectful urgency to the Ministries concerned and to the Colonial Development Corporation.
Esther Chapman’s guide book to Jamaica provides an excellent model, edited as it is with intelligence and common sense. There should be a better map of the island, and the section devoted to the local fauna could be improved, but in a beautifully illustrated book of twenty-one chapters covering everything of interest to a tourist or a resident such minor criticisms are captious. Esther Chapman has done a great service to Jamaica.
Island in the Sun (Sunday Times, January 12, 1958)
By Ian Fleming
Jamaica. By Peter Abrahams. (Corona Library: H.M. Stationery Office. 25s.)
There ought to be a Baedeker series on the British Commonwealth. Living small lives in this dull little Island at its centre, we have no idea of the fabulous lands and islands in the sun that are linked to us by history, speech and currency. Not even distance separates us now that you can be in the Caribbean in twenty or Singapore in forty hours’ flying time—only poverty and, more important, our cliff-girt mentality.
While waiting for the philanthropist who will finance the series, the next best thing is the Corona Library, sponsored by the Colonial Office, an imaginative and luxuriously conceived project which has brilliantly examined Hongkong, Sierra Leone, Nyasaland, British Guiana, and now Jamaica.
Jamaica is rather more serious-minded than some of the others, and Mr. Peter Abrahams’s treatment is thorough rather than seductive. The flora and fauna, for instance, which, with the landscape, are Jamaica’s glory, are given short shrift compared with politics, administration and various aspects of development and welfare; but the latter are admirably handled, generally with entertaining and illuminating scraps of conversation with the Jamaican man-in-the-street.
The production is up to the very high Corona standards, and the line drawings by Rosemary Grimble, daughter of “Grimble of the Islands,” are particularly attractive and apposite.
Fleming praising guide books, looking for maps and accounts of flora and fauna. There’s more than a hint of his longing for exotic places when he talks of ‘small lives in this dull little Island’ there. One wonders what he would make of the world sixty years onwards - backwards? - today.
Three Men at the Motor Show (Sunday Times, October 21, 1956)
The Sunday Times asked three men to go to the Motor Show and to give their uninhibited views on what they found there. Two are family motorists, the third a famous racing driver. Their views have been kept deliberately non-technical. This was the “panel” of critics:
STIRLING MOSS has owned several small family saloons, the most recent a Standard 8 fitted with a 10 h.p. engine.
IAN FLEMING drives a Ford Thunderbird which is the envy of his friends.
GODFREY SMITH fits a wife and a baby daughter into a 1955 Morris Minor.
The place, Earls Court, on the day of the preview. The critics begin:
FLEMING: Nothing really startling this year. The usual difficulty in choosing between too many models with much the same good English qualities. Most of the cars are, as usual, too good for the drivers.
SMITH: There’s no doubt that this will go down in history as the two-pedal car Show. I think our manufacturers deserve a pat on the back for the way they’ve got them into production.
MOSS: I wish there had been a few more gimmicks to attract people to British cars. Rovers have done it with their turbine. And look at the crowds round that Buick Centurion mock-up. Heaven knows when it will be in production, but it’s full of blueprint ideas. I’m surprised that at least the B.M.C. doesn’t have a “Car of the Future” to get us all excited. Well, we’ve got to start somewhere. Let’s start in the millionaire’s class. The Rolls is still supreme, of course. It’s a name that commands affection all over the world.
FLEMING: I’m sorry the old basketwork Rolls has gone for ever. Incidentally, I gather it’s quite untrue they ever thought of turning out a £2,000 Rolls-Royce. Just a rumour. Their S Series Bentley is the most successful car Rolls have ever built. Waiting list of over a year. I’ve tried one, it’s like driving a Swiss watch.
SMITH: I must say I hanker after the Continental, but there really ought to be more luggage space in a car of that price. You can hardly get one normal suitcase into the boot. I’d like to see what the Italian coachbuilders could do with it.
MOSS: But for real Lord Mayor comfort give me that big Daimler. There’s room for six in the back. It’s practically a drawing-room on wheels.
FLEMING: I’m glad to hear Daimler’s have fitted a new heater. I’ve never known an engine run so coolly, but, as a result, the heater just didn’t heat.
SMITH: I think the companies should give one a total guarantee for accessories and the accessory firms should issue a guarantee to the motor manufacturers. If I buy a new suit and the buttons break my tailor replaces them. He doesn’t send me hunting round London after the button manufacturer.
MOSS: I agree. What I want is a really truthful petrol gauge that doesn’t say “empty” when I’ve got another 50 miles’ driving in hand (or vice versa), windscreen wipers that don’t make a noise, and long window handles that move the window up and down with one stroke. But let’s get back to cars. Here’s the Aston Martin. Lovely car, and that body design is truly original. Stacks of room for luggage, all-round visibility and good driving positions. I’m not impressed by that open Superleggera model. Looks nice enough but visibility is poor, and there’s hardly room for anything but a small blonde with a sponge bag. May be all right for Italy. It’s the same old problem: how to marry the beautiful and the practical.
SMITH: Don’t you think the Fords come closest to doing that?
MOSS: I do. I think their styling is probably the most up to date in this country.
FLEMING: The Riley owners used to be some of the staunchest fans in motoring, but I think, since the B.M.C. took over Rileys, the fans have been slipping away. Rileys seem to be rather the ugly duckling of the B.M.C. group. All the brains seem to be going into the Austins and Morrises. Look at the Austin Healeys. They ought to bring out a Riley-Healey, and get a bit of zest back into the car.
SMITH: They’ve let Jaguar get the edge on them.
MOSS: Marvellous cars. Jaguar performance in racing since the war is one of the things we can really be proud of. Wonderful workmanship and finish. I can’t see how they do it for the price.
FLEMING: Pretty imposing front view on the new one but I don’t see why they need all those lamps and horns and traffic signals. There are ten of them altogether.
SMITH: They could have put the horns behind the radiator grille and put the traffic lights into the sidelights.
MOSS: Here’s the new Rover 105. Rover owners are still as faithful as Riley owners used to be. I’m not surprised. They’ve always built a good, car and they’ve always been forward-looking. Don’t know when this turbine model of theirs will be on the road. It’ll be quite a race with Detroit, but it’s going to be a new kind of motoring when it comes. But take the 105. It’s a genuine two-pedal car, and what’s so extraordinary about it is that it’s the only British company with its own automatic transmission and torque converter. Usual good Rover driving lay-out, and plenty of room for parcels.
SMITH: One of the reasons why It has always been a favourite with women.
MOSS: Women don’t have to worry about their comforts so much nowadays. All the big manufacturers look after them. Take the styling of that Austin Estate car. I really like that red and white combination. Their colours are some of the most dashing in the Show. It’s a big selling point, now people are less conservative about colour schemes.
FLEMING: The Armstrong Siddeley is another luxurious affair at a reasonable price. Wonderfully silent engine and as fast as you like, though I think the springing’s a bit soft for really fast driving. You can’t get that comfortable ride and still go round corners at sixty.
MOSS: They’ve tightened it up on the 238, but I think its looks could be improved. There’s a sort of downward slant about the bonnet which I don’t like. Here are Bristols next door. Good fast cars and a clean, handsome body without any nonsense. They make that 2-litre work pretty hard, but it seems to like it. Rather a dull stand with just two drab-coloured cars. One of their competition models would have livened it up.
SMITH: They’ve certainly put some work into my Morris Minor. I’d like to see a long road test between this 1,000 model and the Volkswagen. I hear that the gearbox is a beauty. And I’m delighted to find they’ve put more steam in the engine.
FLEMING: I haven’t tried either of them, but I’d rather have the Morris or the little Austin every time. At least you have an engine in front of you in case you hit something. In the Volkswagen there’s nothing under that bonnet except perhaps a suitcase.
MOSS: But here’s the M.G. I must say I like the appearance of the new hard-top. I only hope that it won’t be too noisy inside. If your father has promised you a sports car for your twenty-first birthday, there are plenty to choose from these days. There’s the M.G., the Austin Healey (I like those bright colours they’ve laid on for the American market) and the new six-cylinder should be a smooth job. Then there’s the Triumph with disc brakes on the front wheels—they’ll all be having them in time I expect—and now there’s the little Berkeley, which is pretty good value at £575. It’s stripped to essentials, but somebody had plenty of initiative to put a really cheap sports car on the road. The man on the stand says they’ve got orders of upwards of 5,000 already. Anyway, I’d like to be 21 again with all those to choose from.
FLEMING: What about the Citroen? Have you tried it? I gather they’re having plenty of trouble with it in France. It’s so revolutionary there aren’t many garages who can repair it if anything goes wrong. It came out a bit too quickly, I dare say. But Frenchmen rave about it.
MOSS: It’s probably the most comfortable jar in the show, and packed full of brilliant ideas. Huge boot, wonderful visibility and every kind of gadget. It deserves to succeed and I think it certainly will once it has settled down. Let’s have a look at the Skoda and see what they’re doing on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Of course this is very much a Show model. But it’s got plenty of bright ideas too—propeller-shaft running through the main chassis member, independent front and rear springing, and notice those aluminium fittings. I don’t know why we don’t take to them instead of chrome. You’ll find them on that Swiss-bodied Alvis, too. Another fine-looking car. But this Skoda looks a workmanlike Job. Rather austere, but I suppose it’s made for rather austere people.
SMITH: Is there anything else you notice looking round the Show?
MOSS: I like the new Station Wagon models. There’ll be more of them. They’re ideal for a family and particularly for holidays abroad, and the coach builders like Grosvenor and Abbott have got a fine line into them. Wheel trims are much smarter. Take a look at the Austins. There’s still too much chrome about. Vauxhalls make such a good car that I don’t know why they have to smother it in the stuff. The same applies to those tiny chrome strips on the face of the Singer. Finish seems to be getting better and better, and I hope basic workmanship is keeping up with It. Prices on balance seem more or less constant, but we’re getting more for our money—extra instruments for example. That’s about all. There’s quite a lot to be proud of here. If we’ve criticised a bit, so will the other people who come to the Show.
FLEMING: If you could have your pick of the cars, what would it be?
MOSS: I’ll have an Aston Martin DB 2.4 saloon, if you’ll quieten the engine a trifle. Off-white and silver-green.
SMITH: I’ll have a Continental Bentley.
FLEMING: An Austin 105 Station Wagon for me. Elephant’s-breath grey.
MOSS: One thing we do agree on, then. We’re all going to go on driving British.
Notes: As we’ll see next week, Fleming did not buy that station wagon and did not go on buying British!
The Times obituary for Godfrey Smith, future editor of the Sunday Times notes that “His first job after Oxford was as personal assistant to Lord Kemsley, owner of The Sunday Times. In 1956, he was appointed news editor, where he got to know Ian Fleming, who was the foreign manager. When Fleming’s first James Bond book, Casino Royale, was published he gave Smith a signed copy. Among his reporters was John Pearson…They were to become lifelong friends, with Pearson always referring to Smith as ‘the Guvnor’.”
Those of you familiar with Ian Fleming’s TV treatment “Murder on Wheels” will know that the plot involves James Bond saving Stirling Moss from agents of SMERSH, who hope to sabotage an auto race. Fleming wrote “The whole brunt of this episode is, of course, borne by the motor racing. Stirling Moss has, in fact, provided me with the two crash manoeuves as described and there is little doubt that he and Mr. Vanderwell, who designed and owns the Vanwalls, would co-operate in the filming.”
One final note: this thread officially turned a year old on July 3! There are still quite a few articles left to post, though some (like this one) might not have much to do with crime fiction.
I can’t thank you enough for posting these. I actively look forward to these posts.
As always, you’re very welcome! I’m so glad to know people are enjoying these. The above article was something of a discovery, since it wasn’t listed in the Fleming Bibliography (at least not in the first edition–I’ve never seen the second). It showed up when I searched the Sunday Times database for any mention of Fleming.
This reads like a pilot for an early Top Gear concept; would have been interesting had they filmed this Motor Show visit.
By the way, Fleming’s choice of the Austin 105 Station Wagon seems rather unspectacular:
I actually had wondered if the Motor Show article was originally a television or radio program that was later transcribed for the Sunday Times. A subject for further research perhaps.
I would definitely watch a version of Top Gear with those hosts!
Fleming luckily bypassed the very unspectacular Austin station wagon for something more Bondian but less British, as I’ll reveal next week…
I believe the Austin may have been inspired by Ann Fleming, who supposedly disapproved of the Thunderbird (‘beyond our means and below our standards’ or something to that effect IIRC - she threatened to put sugar into the petrol tank).
Connoisseurs’ Choice (Sunday Times, October 21, 1962)
As a further guide to would-be buyers at the Motor Show, The Sunday Times invited some of its contributors and staff, as well as some recognised experts, to say what car they would choose and why.
Ian Fleming:
I would choose a Studebaker Avanti, full four-seater V8 Gran Sport, supercharged by Paxton, styled by Raymond Loewy. Price around £3,000.
Having driven two Thunderbirds for six years, during which not a light bulb has fused and paint and chromium have not wilted, despite a garageless life, I have become wedded to American cars when they have something approximating to European styling.
I am now switching to the Studebaker, which has always produced first class cars, and
has now, with the Avanti, created something really startling—top speed with four up of over 160 m.p.h. and acceleration of 0-60 in 7.4 seconds. My model, packed with intelligent gimmicks such as switches in the roof, aircraft-type levers for the heating, disc brakes and a powerful built-in roll bar in case I turn over, is being delivered in a few weeks.
Note: In his 1964 interview with Playboy, Ian Fleming said the following about his cars:
"I like a car I can leave out in the street all night and which will start at once in the morning and still go a hundred miles an hour when you want it to and yet give a fairly comfortable ride. I can’t be bothered with a car that needs tuning, or one that will give me a lot of trouble and expenditure. So I’ve had a Thunderbird for six years, and it’s done me very well. In fact, I have two of them, the good two-seater and the less-good four-seater. I leave them both in the street, and when I get in and press the starter, off they go, which doesn’t happen to a lot of motorcars.
Now, the Studebaker supercharged Avanti is the same thing. It will start as soon as you get out in the morning; it has a very nice, sexy exhaust note and will do well over a hundred and has got really tremendous acceleration and much better, tighter road holding and steering than the Thunderbird. Excellent disk brakes, too. I’ve cut a good deal of time off the run between London and Sandwich in the Avanti, on braking power alone. So I’m very pleased with it for the time being."
Nightmare Among the Mighty (Sunday Times, June 30, 1957)
By Ian Fleming
Every sport has its own nightmare — the dropped baton, the goal scored against your own side, running out your captain when he has scored ninety-nine; and, in your dreams, they all have the same ghastly background—the packed stands, the serried ranks of spectators, the incredulous hush and then the deep condemnatory groan.
In golf the two-foot putt missed on the eighteenth green is quickly over, and you are at once awake, sweating and whimpering. This terror must be common to even the greatest in the game, but for the week-end golfer, there is a far longer, more horrible nightmare—partnership with a world champion over a course black with the crowds.
Last week-end I endured this nightmare, thirty-six holes of it, and I live, but only just, to tell the tale.
It came about like this. Three weeks ago a friend said he wanted me to play in the Bowmaker Invitation Amateur/Professional Tournament at the Berkshire. “It’s great fun,” he said. “All the best professionals take two amateurs each, and you play a threesome against bogey. Each team puts in three cards—the professional’s for the best scratch score and the professional plus each amateur for the lowest better ball score. The amateur plays off full handicap, and if he makes good use of his strokes he and his pro can get a better ball score around 60. You can pick up when you’ve played too many. They have film stars and such like to amuse the crowds. Come on.”
It sounded fun. I said “Yes,” and forgot about it.
I forgot about it until I got the draw. I was to play with Peter Thomson, three times Open champion, and Alec Shepperson, handicap plus 1, a Walker Cup probable. I was to be on the first tee of the Red Course at 2.15 last Sunday.
That was Tuesday the eighteenth. On the Wednesday, Peter Thomson, fresh from a fine performance in the American Open, equalled the course record of Sand Moor with a 65 in the Yorkshire Evening News tournament. He followed this with a 67, 64 and 68. He won the tournament by fifteen strokes and broke a handful of records. The golfing world gasped.
Apart from praying that the biggest thunderstorm in living memory would deluge the home counties on the following Sunday and Monday (it was a two-day contest ), there was really nothing I could do about It. I am a nine handicap week-end golfer with a short, flat swing that has been likened to a housemaid sweeping under a bed. It is a fast swing with reserves of fantastic acceleration in moments of stress.
The only reason I am nine is that I obstinately try to play down to it rather than take life more easily off twelve, which I should be. I have never had a golf lesson, except from my grandmother at the age of about fifteen, and my only equipment for the game is a natural “eye” and strong forearms. Against these virtues it should be said that I remember to keep my head down only on one shot in three and that, on occasional shots, “everything moves except the ball.”
The greatest weakness of my essentially immaculate game is that I am quite unable to “repeat” my swing. Even on the putting green, my stance and stroke are at the mercy of the moment’s whim. The fact that I have played golf for some thirty years with occasional success and great pleasure is due to enjoying the company, the exercise and the zest of competition. In short, I am the quintessential amateur.
The virtues of amateurishness are all right in a friendly game, perhaps sharpened by a gamble, in the privacy of one’s home course. There the quick, sharp dunch into a bunker is a matter for hilarity only mildly tinged with bitterness. But how, I wondered feverishly as the dreadful day approached, would my insouciance stand up playing before vast crowds, with the greatest, or at any rate the second greatest, golfer in the world?
But why worry? It’s only a game. The ball won’t move. Just walk up and hit it. These and other specious exhortations were mouthed at me through wolfish grins by my friends. The worst you can do is maim a few spectators, perhaps even kill one. But the club will be insured. Have a double kümmel before you start. Take an Oblivon.
Steeled by the relish of my friends, I assumed a nonchalant mask. I looked to my equipment. The head of my driver (circa 1930, one of the earliest, surely, of the steel shafts and known around Sandwich as “Excalibur”) was loose. I had it fixed. My double-faced chipper (Tom Morris, 1935), a beloved but temperamental club, was rebound. I bought two pairs of expensive socks in pale blue. I reread the red ink passages in Armour’s How To Play Your Best Golf All The Time, watched Peter Thomson’s unearthly progress through the Yorkshire Evening News tournament and waited queasily for H- (for Horror) Day.
H-Day dawned bright and clear. No earthquakes. No tornadoes. No thunderstorms. I drove at an even pace to the Berkshire, parked my car among the hundreds, and proceeded to the seventh fairway of the Blue Course, which a number of young gods were bisecting with arrow-straight drives and iron shots using mounds of practice balls.
I retired to an inconspicuous corner with my caddie, six balls and a No.3 iron. It took me about twenty minutes, in my usual ratio of one good shot in three, to lose four of the balls in the woods.
Then came lunch and the unwelcome news that the matches were running over an hour late. I wandered out among the dreadful trappings of my nightmare—the marquees, the huge scoreboard ablaze with the most famous names in professional and amateur golf, and already showing the results of the early starters and, in the background, the loudspeaker giving the position on the near-by 17th tee.
Henry Cotton passed me, his face a mask of concentration, and Locke, majestic, indomitable. Henry Longhurst tossed me a few phrases of gleeful commiseration. And then there were Peter Thomson and Alec Shepperson, and I was explaining who I was and apologising in advance for the dreadful things that they would shortly be witnessing.
For the first time I felt a ray of comfort. All golfers have their problems. Shepperson was a candidate for the Walker Cup team and he knew the names would be announced the next day and that the selectors were on the course. Thomson knew that every spectator would expect him to go round in level threes. We commiserated with one another over the swelling crowds and in due course there we were standing on the first tee.
The starter’s voice rang out — unnecessarily loudly. Thomson drove 250 yards down the centre of the fairway.
“Mr. Iarn Fleming.”
I wiped my hands on the seat of my trousers and stepped forward. Half-conscious, I teed up and gave a practice swing, listening with half my mind for the hiss of astonishment. The crowd was too well bred. I addressed the ball and promptly knocked it off its peg. I put it on again.
Then there was a moment when the world stood still, a brief glimpse of the ball through a mist of tears, a more or less articulated swirl of motion and the blessed ball was well airborne and on its way with a slight draw to come to rest in the rough fifty yards behind Thomson’s.
Shepperson hit a beauty and we were off and away, with the crowd streaming after us. One of my chief tortures, easily foreseen, was that I should always be playing first of the trio. I hacked the ball out of the shallow heather and got it 100 yards on its way down the fairway. Thomson pushed his to the right of the green. Shepperson fluffed with a 4 wood, and there I was having to hit mine again.
I had a stroke at all the odd holes. Now it was vital that I should hit the simplest of simple shots 150 yards on to the green. I took out my blaster, with which I thought I would be safest. There was a respectful hush. Head down, you fool! Slow back! BOING!!! The ball, hit off the sole, whizzed along the ground, bumbled up the green and stopped within three yards of the pin.
Muttering something about “Dundee run-up” I strode after it, and, to cut a long story short, both Thomson and Shepperson got fives and all I had to do was to get down in two putts to win a net 4 for Thomson and our better ball. I putted, or rather twitched, the ball a yard past, missing the hole by three inches. Then, with a thumping heart, stroked, or more accurately topped, the ball into the hole amid heartfelt applause from the agonized crowd.
I will pass over the second hole where I hit a No. 7 over the green and picked up and where Thomson got an immaculate 3.
Another stroke at the 3rd. An adequate drive. A fluffed spoon and a smothered 4 iron which again rattled up on the green. Again I somehow got my net 4 to Thomson’s 5. I had “improved” twice for Thomson, but by the foulest means, and there was no question of my golf having settled down.
I forget what happened at the 4th, but at the par three 5th, having been advised by Thomson to take a 7 Instead of an 8, I at last hit the ball in the middle of the bat and got a net two, which I followed up with another net two, also well played, at the 7th. Again at the 9th, but this time again by foul means, I scrambled a net four. I had helped Peter Thomson five times in nine holes!
Those treacherous crocodiles my friends, who had come to gloat at my discomfiture, changed their tune. Now they edged up and whispered that my handicap would have to be reduced at Sandwich. I brushed them aside. The sun was shining, the course was beautiful. What fun it was playing with the Open champion!
Alas, while by dunch, scuffle and fluff I somehow played the next nine holes. I was no further help to Peter Thomson and all I can remember of the inward half is the most glorious three I have ever seen, by Shepperson, at the bogey five 15th, and an appalling shank by myself at the 17th. It was with a No. 8, off a downhill lie, and the air positively quivered with the horrible clang as the ball sped at right angles through the spectators’ legs into the deep rough.
And then the round was over, with a 72 for Peter Thomson and net 66s for Alec Shepperson and myself. No earthly good, but at least I hadn’t played Thomson’s ball by mistake, or done an air shot or killed a spectator. It was in a mood of euphoria that I returned to London.
Monday was not so good, and I did many terrible things that even now make me shudder, but it had rained very heavily and there were fewer witnesses. Thomson did a 69 and Shepperson, who by this time had been nominated for the Walker Cup, and I, repeated our 66s, which meant that at least I had been able to help Thomson on three holes.
And now the dreadful glory of the occasion is fading and this weekend I shall be playing either a new kind of golf, tempered to the finest steel by its visit to the blast furnace, or, more probably, wilted by the fierce flame.
Alas, when my friends or my grandchildren ask me how Peter Thomson played this shot or Alec Shepperson that, I shall be unable to tell them. I shall have many memories of the two men—of Peter Thomson, justly renowned for a bearing as fine as his golf, and of the modest, charming Shepperson—but of the champion’s golf I shall recall nothing but the immortal words of Leonard Crawley in last Monday’s Daily Telegraph:
“Though Peter Thomson was assisted five times by Ian Fleming, the champion had evidently spent much of his force at Leeds last week.”
What a fabulously told nightmare - thank you for sharing this tale with us, @Revelator. Serves to show how invested Fleming was in his golf.
I’m very glad you liked it! Golf was definitely one of Fleming’s greatest and most consistent pleasures in life…and he managed to pass the obsession on to Sean Connery as well!
Introducing Jamaica (Preface to Ian Fleming Introduces Jamaica)
By Ian Fleming
Jamaica has now been my second home for eighteen years. Since 1946 I have been coming here, as regularly as clockwork, from January 15 to March 15 and, each year when the time comes to leave, I say my goodbye with a lump in the throat. In this long span of time everything has changed and yet nothing. Jamaica has grown from a child into an adult, she has flirted with Federation and then broken off the engagement, she has gained her Independence and Membership of the United Nations, bauxite and tourism have changed her economy, emigration to the United Kingdom, with all its problems, brings around £7,000,000 back into the island every year, the West Indian cricketers have become the darlings of the Commonwealth and a Jamaican girl has been chosen Miss World.
But the Doctor’s Wind continues to blow in from the sea during the day and the Undertaker’s Wind blows the stale air out again at night, and the news in The Daily Gleaner, the “Country Newsbits”, is just the same. A family at Maggotty has been wiped out by “vomiting sickness” (the paper still will not add the medical diagnosis of “eating unripe ackee”), — and Cornelius Brown has “mashed” Agatha Brown with his cutlass and has been sentenced to prison and twelve strokes of the tamarind switch. And the people are just the same, always laughing and bawling each other out, singing the old banana songs as they load the fruit into the ships, getting drunk on rum when the ship has sailed, sneaking an illicit whiff of ganja, or an equally illicit visit to the obeahman when they are ill or in trouble, driving motor cars like lunatics, behaving like zanies at the cricket matches and the races, making the night hideous with the “Sound System” on pay night, and all the while moving gracefully and lazily through the day and fearing the “rolling calf” at night.
And yet, against this background of “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” my own life has been turned upside down at, or perhaps even by, the small house named ‘Goldeneye’ I built eighteen years ago on the north shore, and by my life in Jamaica. In 1952, I got married here, in the Registry Office in my neighbouring Port Maria. Noel Coward and his secretary Cole Leslie were the witnesses and Noel tied the shoe on to the back of his own car by mistake.
Encouraged by marriage, or as an antidote to this dangerous transmogrification after forty-three years of bachelorhood, I sat down at the red bullet-wood desk where I am now typing this, and, for better or for worse, wrote the first of twelve best-selling thrillers that have sold around twenty million copies and been translated into twenty-three languages. I wrote every one of them at this desk with the jalousies closed around me so that I would not be distracted by the birds and the flowers and the sunshine outside until I had completed my daily stint. (I have interrupted my sticky thirteenth to write these words.)
The books feature a man called James Bond. Here is another Jamaican link. I was looking for a name for my hero — nothing like Peregrine Carruthers or “Standfast” Maltravers — and I found it, on the cover of one of my Jamaican bibles, Birds of the West Indies by James Bond, an ornithological classic. (Only a couple of weeks ago, I met him, the real James Bond, and Mrs Bond, for the first time. They arrived out of the blue and couldn’t have been nicer about my theft of the family name. It helped at the customs, they said!) Would these books have been born if I had not been living in the gorgeous vacuum of a Jamaican holiday? I doubt it. Noel Coward has written much of his later music and prose here and other still more famous writers, let alone painters, have been stimulated by Jamaica. I suppose it is the peace and silence and cut-offness from the madding world that urges people to create here. There is certainly enough native talent to support the theory.
And my life has been changed in other ways. I first learned about the bottom of the sea from the reefs around my property and that has added a new dimension to my view of the world. And, a vital postgraduate study, I learned about living amongst, and appreciating, coloured people — two very different lessons I would never have absorbed if my life had continued in its pre-Jamaican metropolitan rut. But, above all, Jamaica has provided a wonderful annual escape from the cold and grime of winters in England, into blazing sunshine, natural beauty and the most healthy life I could wish to live.
My house, Goldeneye, has also lived through many changes. The thirty or so acres in which it stands were a barren donkey’s racecourse when I built it. Now the land is a jungle of tall trees and tropical shrubs and we could live on my citrus and coconuts and the fish from the sea. Couples have spent their honeymoons here, stricken friends have regained their health, painters and writers — Cecil Beaton, Truman Capote, Lucian Freud, Graham Greene, Robert Harling, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Rosamund Lehmann, Peter Quennell, Alan Ross, Stephen Spender, Evelyn Waugh — have stayed and worked here, and a British Prime Minister and his wife, Sir Anthony and Lady Eden, were here for three weeks during his convalescence in the winter of 1956, after Suez. (The Jamaican Government turned my little gazebo on the western corner of the property into a direct teleprinter link with Number 10 Downing Street. The police guards cut ‘God Bless Sir Anthony and Lady Eden’ into the bark of my cedar trees. The detective, sleeping in the back room, shot at the bush rats, beloved by my wife, with his revolver, but the two trees, of a species still wrapped in mystery, which the Edens planted, have flourished mightily.)
But this is name-dropping. Why should this modest house, with wooden jalousies and no glass in the windows, with three bedrooms with shower baths and lavatories that often hiss like vipers or ullulate like stricken bloodhounds, with its modest staff of local help, headed by Violet, my incomparable housekeeper for all these years, have attracted all these famous people to its meagre bosom come rain (which can often fall, as it does in all corners of the world) or shine which it always will in my memory? Noel Coward provides a comment. He is given to hyperbole. In 1948, from March 22 to May 31, he stayed at Goldeneye, at, he claims, an exorbitant rent. He wrote in the visitor’s book, and foolishly signed them, the following words: “The happiest two months I have ever spent.” He then went off and, as close to me as he could get, built a house (what am I saying? four houses) and — to hell with the charms of Bermuda and Switzerland! — comes here every year. But, before he left Goldeneye, he wrote the ode which I now reprint, not for its merit, which is small, but purely to fill up space.
NOEL COWARD MEMORIAL ODE
Alas! I cannot adequately praise
The dignity, the virtue and the grace
Of this most virile and imposing place
Wherein I passed so many airless days.
Alas! Were I to write ’till crack of doom
No typewriter, no pencil, nib, nor quill
Could ever recapitulate the chill
And arid vastness of the living-room.
Alas! I cannot accurately find
Words to express the hardness of the seat
Which, when I cheerfully sat down to eat
Seared with such cunning into my behind.
Alas! However much I raved and roared
No rhetoric, no witty diatribe
Could ever, even partially, describe
The impact of the spare-room bed — and board.
Alas! I am not someone who exclaims
With rapture over ancient equine prints.
Ah no, dear Ian, I can only wince
At all those horses framed in all those frames.
Alas! My sensitivity rebels,
Not at loose shutters; not at plagues of ants,
Nor other “sub-let” bludgeonings of chance
But, at those hordes of ageing faded shells.
Alas! If only common-sense could teach
The stubborn heart to heed the crafty brain
You would, before you let your house again
Remove the barracudas from the beach.
But still my dear Commander, I admit,
No matter how I criticize and grouse,
That I was strangely happy in your house
In fact I’m very very fond of it.
Signed “Noel”, February 1949
(Note that it took the man nine months to dream up this insulting doggerel!)
Well, I am still devoted to the monster (misprint for “Master”) and the rivalry between our houses (he refers to mine as “Goldeneye, Nose and Throat”) has continued all these fifteen years (he wanted to build a swimming bath — his beach is lousy — and asked his “attorney” what strength of pump he would need to keep the water clean. The attorney replied “Hit depend, Mister Cowhard, how much soap you use”). But the point is clear. It is not the rude comforts of my house that appeal nor, I think, entirely my wife, who is as honey to a hummingbird. It is the friendly embrace of Jamaica and of the Jamaican way of life, and the fact, as the advertisements put it, that Jamaica is no place like home. To illustrate what the country is made of and what it has to offer, and as an hors d’oeuvre to the more nourishing fare that follows, I will reprint here my very first impressions of Jamaica, a mood piece which I wrote for Cyril Connolly’s famous Horizon magazine in December, 1947, and specifically for the lively series, entitled “Where Shall John Go?” which was aimed at readers who wished to flee the drabness of postwar Britain. I have made a very few alterations in the light of my experience of Jamaica since it was first written. But these few alterations are only of facts; the mood remains unaltered.
[Article omitted for reason of length and because it is already online]
Well, there you are — the great part of the first article I ever wrote, the writing of which perhaps gave me confidence one day to write a book. There is little that I would alter today. Many facts have dated. The mosquitoes have been almost entirely eradicated, the political background has changed, although those perennial duellists, Sir Alexander Bustamente and Mr Norman Manley, are still at it, and the University has been built, but I would alter nothing of the “mood” of the piece except to add the caveat that some of the many new hotels charge exorbitantly and that shrimp cocktails and steak have followed the almighty dollar into the island.
To write any more would be only to repeat myself and to hold you from the wonderful team of Jamaican writers whom my friend Morris Cargill has assembled to make this the first comprehensive book ever to have been written on Jamaica.
Ian Fleming
Goldeneye
February 1964
As you can see from the date, this one of Fleming’s last writings–probably his second to last. For greater context, make sure to read the invaluable Goldeneye. Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming’s Jamaica, by Matthew Parker.
There are a number of positive reviews on that book, such as that of the Financial Times…
Yes, the book was well-received, though there were a couple of reviewers who resented Parker for not demonizing Fleming as a racist/sexist etc. I also reviewed the book for Artistic Licence Renewed. Parker’s Goldeneye belongs on the short shelf of required reference books on literary Bond, next to The Man with the Golden Typewriter, Amis’s Bond Dossier, and Chancellor’s James Bond: The Man and His World.
The Case of the Painfully Pulled Leg (San Francisco Chronicle, September 16, 1963)
By Ian Fleming
Some Caen. Some Caen’t.
No harm in starting off with a really bad joke. Master, or rather Past-master Caen has several times exercised his lamentable sense of humor at my and James Bond’s expense and I am glad of this opportunity to strike back.
But a valid truism lies behind the execrable pun. To the uninitiated, it looks easy enough to be a columnist. What could be more simple than to sit down at the typewriter and ramble on about the passing scene—the human comedy?
After all, Boswell was no genius. He just wrote down what he saw and what he thought—commonplace stuff. He was no Shakespeare, no Shelley—a competent reporter with ink in his veins.
Ah, but that’s the point! You must have ink in your veins. You really must love writing and communicating in order to sit down and write around 1000 words a day in such a fashion that people will read them. And that is what a daily columnist has to do.
Every day, come hangover, come flu, come lack of inspiration, come ailing wife or bawling children, he must go confidently and with seeming omniscience on stage and show himself to the public in naked black and white.
No excuses! You are a columnist, and by God you’ve got to fill your column to the satisfaction of your readers and, though this may be rare, to your own.
I know these things because I once wrote a column myself. I did it for three years and chucked it about five years ago when James Bond came to my rescue.
I was Foreign Manager of the Sunday Times (the real one. Not yours!) and I thought that its gossip column, which went, and still goes, by the pompous name of “Atticus,” was so bad that I would have a bash at it in between coping with the future of the world and the marital tangles of my foreign correspondents.
I renamed the column “People and Things” by Atticus, because I am interested in Things, and got into business. It went down all right, though I received more kicks than ha’pence from an editor whose sense of humor differed from mine, and the from readers who appeared only interested in writing in when I made a mistake, and to this day I am proud of two paragraphs of undying merit from that long stint.
The first, through a careful study of the psychology of the drinking American, correctly forecast the winning Miss Rheingold for that year (You see how right the editor was. Perhaps .007 per cent of Sunday Times readers had even heard of Rheingold beer).
The second, revealing the existence of a Grimsby troglodyte who smoked kippers as they should be smoked, brought in 4,700 letters (A record for the paper) and incidentally made a fortune for the old man.
Is there a common denominator between my modest achievement and Herb
Caen’s majestic record? What’s all this about Fleming anyway? We want to hear about Herb. Patience! Pazienza! Geduld!
Yes, there is a common denominator. Every columnist, and Herb Caen is a shining example, must be interested in everything, even in those matters which are outside his readers’ ken, and he must communicate his enthusiasms to the reader, and secondly, he must have some vague social purpose—a desire to help and instruct his readers and if possible right an occasional wrong (rescue the kipper merchant for instance).
But above all, whether exposing a peccant mayor or police chief (a favorite sport in the United States, I believe) or just writing about the smog, he must at all costs avoid being a bore.
For half a generation, and from the evidence of this anniversary accolade, Herb Caen, writing for perhaps the most wide-awake community in the United States, somehow has managed, day in, day out, to avoid being a bore. For what it is worth, we have not, in Great Britain, got one journalist with anything like the same record.
And, in conclusion, I will tell you something else which is even more to his credit, and something which may be news to you. Some time ago, amongst my cuttings (clippings), I received a column by Herb Caen which affectionately but devastatingly sent up James Bond, pulling the author’s leg almost out of its socket.
A saboteur in the pay of SMERSH, I surmised, and tucked the author’s name away in my “unfinished business” file.
When next in New York, I asked one of the hamlet’s most famous editors about this fellow Caen.
“He’s one of America’s greatest columnists,” he said. “We’d all like to get him. Trouble is, nothing on earth will drag him away from San Francisco.”
Well, feed your captive well. He’s good for another 25 years at the coal face.
Note: Caen actually spent 34 more years at the coal face. He was one of Fleming’s early American fans and helped popularize the books in his column from January 28, 1962, titled “The Thin Cruel Smile.”
Well, you can imagine how excited I got recently when I read that President Kennedy’s favorite author of secret service thrillers is Britain’s Ian Fleming. In the twinkling of a trice, I felt closer to the lonely young man in the White House—perhaps even a step along the road toward solving the mystery of those hooded, opaque eyes (Mr. Fleming writes like that)…
Mr. Fleming, whose books sell in the millions, is the creator of James Bond, the classiest British secret service agent ever to purr down the pike in a Bentley convertible with two inch exhausts. Bond’s exploits and sexploits are explored (all right, and sexplored!) in a series of adventures with such compelling titles as Moonraker, Goldfinger, Doctor No and From Russia, With Love, to name only a few…
Mr. Fleming is a Mickey Spillane who went to Eton—snobbish, sadistic and inventive, with a fine eye for detail. Hence his James Bond wouldn’t be caught dead in anything so obvious as a trenchcoat; when Bond is caught dying (but soon to make a miraculous recovery), you can be sure he will be wearing something from Savile Row, tastefully old.
After this article, Caen and Fleming met in London. Their lunch was immortalized in Caen’s May 16, 1963 column “Conversation at Scott’s.” Excerpts below:
“Do you know any good villains?” he inquired, flicking an ash off his blue suit (no pocket handkerchief). “Villains are the hardest for me. I was rather fond of Rosa Klebb, but, of course, I had to kill her off. Same with ‘Doctor No.’” I mentioned Blofeld, the evil fellow with the syphilitic nose who almost finishes Bond in his newest book, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but Mr. Fleming merely shook his head over his lamb chops (pink in the middle).
“I kill off Blofeld in the next book, which I just finished,” he said regretfully. “An excruciating death. And as for Bond, I’ve got him in such a devil of a pickle I don’t know how I’m EVER going to get him out. Poor James.”
In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service the dashing Bond, who averages three affairs and an equal number of killings per book, marries a fine girl named Tracy. As they are starting out on their honeymoon in a white Lancia, the unspeakable Blofeld, in a red Maserati, races past and fires at them. At the end of the book, the Lancia has crashed into a field, “and Bond put his arm around her shoulders, across which the dark patches had begun to flower.”
“I hate to ask this,” I said, mindful of previous miraculous recoveries, “but is Tracy REALLY dead?”
Mr. Fleming poured himself a splash of vin ordinaire from a carafe and nodded sorrowfully. “Of course,” he replied. “Blood oozing out the back—sure sign. Too bad, but I couldn’t keep Bond married, you know. He’s on constant call, has to be too many places, get into too many scrapes. Wouldn’t do at all.”
He glanced at the stainless steel Rolex on his left wrist. “Really must go,” he apologized. “Catching a plane for Istanbul, where they’re filming From Russia, With Love. The first picture made from one of my books—Dr. No—has just been released here. Tremendous success. Made all its costs back right away, and I’m happy to say I have a small piece of the action. Sean Connery will play James Bond again—don’t you think he’s a fine Bond?”
We agreed. We had seen a preview of Dr. No, and Connery seemed almost as good as the real thing. Mr. Fleming struggled into a luminous blue raincoat and led the way out of Scott’s into the gray London afternoon. As we searched for a cab, he pointed to a second-story corner window of the restaurant. “See that window?” he asked. When James is in London he always lunches there, at the corner table. That’s so he can look down and watch the pretty girls walking past.”
Caen later devoted a column to Fleming’s death. In “Farewell to Double Nought Seven” (August 16, 1964), he wrote:
I saw Ian Fleming for the first and last time in London, a little over a year ago. His penultimate book, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, was about to be published and the word was already around that in it, James Bond, the avowed bachelor, had married La Comtesse Teresa di Vicenzo, otherwise known as Tracy. “That’s true,” smiled Fleming over lunch at Scott’s, “but of course I had to kill her off at the end. Nasty death, on their honeymoon. It wouldn’t do at all for James to be married, you understand—a wife would just be in the way. I may have to kill off Bond one of these days, too—before he kills me. Plots are getting harder and harder to come up with.”
…I didn’t realize how closely he identified with Bond till we got around to a discussion of the movie versions of his books (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and next, Goldfinger). When we agreed that the actor who portrayed M., Bond’s chief, was miscast, I suggested “You should play M.—you’re about the same age, aren’t you?”
Immediately, he looked hurt, and I clammed up. Obviously, he felt he had nothing in common with the aging sea dog who headed the British Secret Service. He gave me a long, cold, ironical look that would have done justice to James Bond.
…Spy critics poked fun at Bond’s modus operandi…They snickered at Fleming’s penchant for ticking off Bond’s clothing, smoking and drinking habits by brand name, never letting him forget that he misspelled Bond’s favorite champagne…Fleming’s patient report to all this criticism was “Don’t they have any sense of fun?”—and, in this gloomy, literal-minded world, Bond was fun, for all his faults…it’s hard to fault a writer who could invent such lovely names as Pussy Galore, Tiffany Case, Sable Basilisk and Emilio Largo. And when James slipped into his faultless evening clothes, patted the .25 Beretta in its chamois holster, filled his gun metal cigarette case with 50 Morlands and got behind the wheel of his Mark II Continental Bentley, with the two-inch pipes bubbling in his wake, we knew we were off to high adventure. For James Bond was licensed to kill. And last week, he killed the man who loved him best—and, in the process, himself. If he were still around, he would have read the news with a cold, ironical smile, creasing the vertical scar in his right cheek.
Caen also wrote about the San Francisco world premiere of A View to a Kill, which he hated:
With the enthusiastic cooperation of the Mayor and the police and fire departments, San Francisco is made to look like a loony-bin in the newest and possibly last James Bond film, A View to a Kill, an awkward movie with an awkward title. As I recall, author Ian Fleming’s original title for the flimsy short story on which this $30-million bombo is shakily based was With a View to a Kill [sic], which scans a little more smoothly. It wasn’t Fleming at his best but the movie it inspired may be James Bondage at its worst.
One Man’s World (Sunday Times, April 24, 1960)
By Ian Fleming
Have you murdered anyone lately? All right. How do you know you haven’t?
Watching the Halford-Hewitt Tournament the other day, I remembered my first visit to Deal twenty-five years ago and the murder, or at least culpable homicide, in which I participated.
My accomplices and I, tenderloins in golf and life, stood on the first tee. Halfway down the fairway, moving slowly and hitting the ball erratically, were two elderly gentlemen. One of the caddies said: “You’ll never get through them. That’s Captain Smith and Colonel Jones. They never let anyone through.”
For five holes, despite first courteous requests, then unheeded shouts of “Fore!” and finally mild bombardment, we could only creep forward like angry snails. Finally, at No. 6, Colonel Jones sliced into the shingle and there they both were, scrabbling for their one sphere amidst a million others—but still not waving us through. We played that hole as if it was a fast hockey match, calling sarcastic “Thank you, sirs” as we sprinted past.
When, later, we came out from luncheon for our second round, we expressed the fervent hope that we would not find the Colonel and the Captain ahead of us again.
“No, you won’t that,” said my caddie.
“Why not?”
“Colonel Jones is dead!”
“Good heavens, what happened?”
“He was that mad after this morning, sir, when he finished his round he got into his car and drove off like crazy. When he got to the sharp turn on to the esplanade he stamped on the accelerator by mistake for the brake and went over into the sea.”
As certainly as if with a gun, we had slain Colonel Jones.
To be serious, people, just as unwittingly, are killing their neighbours every day all over the world—by an act of bad driving, after which, perhaps far behind, there is the distant crash of a collision; by blowing germs into people’s faces; by bathing and mountain-climbing “accidents” for which, however remotely, they were the indirect cause. And then there is the slow homicide, by cruelty, neglect, hate, lack of charity.
To go back to the beginning, how do you know you haven’t?
True and Blue
I have no connection with the company (except, that is, for using their products for the past thirty years) so I can’t be accused of payola if I reveal that Gillettes have a splendid new razor blade—the Extra-Blue—coming on the market in a few days’ time. Indeed I almost severed relations with them recently when I found them responsible for squandering some of my small stock of virtue.
All those years, after shaving, I had meticulously washed my razor and carefully cleaned the blade, sneering at the unkempt razors in other people’s bathrooms. Not long ago, I began frequently to cut myself shaving. Reluctantly, because I hate the noise they make, I consulted my chemist about electric razors. He asked me if I had recently changed houses—as in fact I had—and suggested that probably the water in the new house was much harder than in my old. (This turned out to be the solution.) He also asked suspiciously if I cleaned the razor blade after use.
“Of course,” I said proudly.
“Well, you shouldn’t. You blunt the blade. You should just rinse the razor under the tap.”
I was, and still am, aghast at the oceans of virtuous diligence I have wasted because this vital piece of intelligence (confirmed by Gillettes) was excluded from my education. A few printed words by the bewhiskered patriarch on those packets would have saved me thirty years of doing dutifully, laboriously, the right thing—and being utterly wrong!
No Medals
A murrain on the Governor and Company of the Bank of England for slaughtering our pound notes—and so soon after slaying our beautiful fivers. A murrain also on the Big Five, to whom I understand the new design was submitted, and a murrain re-doubled on the Treasury, who lord it over the Bank when it suits them but now publicly disown responsibility for the Bank’s vandalism.
I personally believe that it is nothing but an act of self-aggrandisement by the Bank of England. Not only has she given herself a type several points larger, but she has managed to get her own name on the new notes something like 300 times instead of only twice on the old bit of lettuce.
Only two aspects of the new design commend themselves—the smaller size of the note, slightly more commensurate with its purchasing power, and the “how-dare-you!” expression on the face of Her Majesty the Queen.
Scrambled Ego
I write thrillers whose “hero” is a secret agent called James Bond. Not long ago I was invited to play golf for an Old Etonian side against the school. My young opponent was called Ian Bond. Amused by the coincidence, I asked him if he had ever heard of a man called James Bond. “Oh yes,” he said politely. “That’s my uncle. He lives in Essex.”
