Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC

History Magazine.

Bogus sex parties, fake corpses, exploding tin cans and belligerent pigs. If you thought that James Bond's fictional escapades

were outrageous, then the real-life experiences of his creator Ian Fleming are arguably even

more extraordinary. Here in conversation with Spencer Mizzen, Edward Abel-Smith reveals how Fleming's work as a wartime

intelligence officer inspired the plot lines in his world-famous spy novels.

James Bond's been back in the news with the announcement that long-time controllers,

the Broccoli dynasty, have handed over control of the franchise to Amazon.

And there's also been a fair bit of speculation flying around as to who the next James Bond might be.

Now, I guess we on the History Extra podcast aren't in a position to reveal the identity of the next 007.

But what we can do is dissect the extraordinary wartime career of Bond's creator, Ian Fleming. Now, you've obviously spent a lot of time

researching Fleming's life and you've also written a book about him.

What is it about Fleming that you, as a historian and an author, find so fascinating?

Well, I think Ian Fleming is a real enigma of an individual.

He had unsuccessful career up to the point of becoming a writer, or up to the point of joining

the Naval Intelligence. And he lived his whole life feeling like he wasn't a success. So that in

itself I found very interesting from early on because he obviously created this franchise, which was all his own

doing in his own imagination, which is one of the largest in the world. So I was initially very

interested by him as an individual. And then when I started to read into his backgrounds and research his earlier life and his

career and his wartime antics, I started to notice that a lot of James Bond, as we know the

character today and a lot of the stories are actually not as fictional as I had

originally thought. And how much of that stems from Fleming's early life? To what extent were

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