Inventing James Bond

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

The author Ian Fleming created the fictional super-spy, James Bond, in the 1950s. Fleming, a former journalist and stockbroker, had served in British naval intelligence during the Second World War. Using interviews with Fleming and his friends from the BBC archive, Alex Last explores how elements of James Bond were drawn from Ian Fleming's own adventurous life. Photo: Ian Lancaster Fleming, British author and creator of the James Bond character, in 1958. (Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last.
0:47.0	And in today's episode we present the origin story of a cultural phenomenon and a billion dollar movie franchise as we delve into the archives
0:56.6	to hear how the author and former intelligence officer Ian Fleming created the fictional
1:02.4	super spy James Bond.
1:05.0	People do connect me with James Bond because I happen to like scrambled eggs and short-sleeved shirts and some of the things that James Bond does.
1:17.0	But I certainly haven't got his guts nor his very lively appetized. But there were elements of Ian Fleming's life that would reappear in Bond.
1:30.0	Ian Fleming was born in London into a wealthy banking family in 1908.
1:38.0	Though his father was killed in the First World War, Fleming grew up in the privileged world of the British upper classes.
1:45.0	As a young man he spent time in Austria and Switzerland where he enjoyed mountaineering and skiing.
1:50.9	He failed to get into the foreign office but did briefly work for Reuters
1:54.6	including as a correspondent in Soviet Russia before becoming a stockbroker in London.
2:00.3	Tall, handsome and sociable he was a hit with women, though he became restless in his establishment
2:06.8	life.
2:07.8	The Second World War changed all that when age 31, he became the personal assistant to the head of British naval intelligence as a
2:15.6	former naval colleague Admiral Denning recalled.
2:18.8	He would have been no good at any routine job.
2:22.2	His position really to put it in modern parlance he was a combination of an ideas
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