Goldeneye
Where Bond was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica
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- ¥1,300
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THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'Completely fascinating, authoritative and intriguing' William Boyd
'The big bang of Bond books... Beautiful, brilliant' Tony Parsons
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Goldeneye: the story of Ian Fleming in Jamaica and the creation of British national icon, James Bond.
From 1946 until the end of his life, Ian Fleming lived for two months of every year at Goldeneye - the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white sand beach on Jamaica's north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written here.
Fleming adored the Jamaica he had discovered, at the time an imperial backwater that seemed unchanged from the glory days of the empire. Amid its stunning natural beauty, the austerity and decline of post-war Britain could be forgotten. For Fleming, Jamaica offered the perfect mixture of British old-fashioned conservatism and imperial values, alongside the dangerous and sensual: the same curious combination that made his novels so appealing, and successful. The spirit of the island - its exotic beauty, its unpredictability, its melancholy, its love of exaggeration and gothic melodrama - infuses his writing.
Fleming threw himself into the island's hedonistic Jet Set party scene: Hollywood giants, and the cream of British aristocracy, the theatre, literary society and the secret services spent their time here drinking and bed-hopping. But while the whites partied, Jamaican blacks were rising up to demand respect and self-government. And as the imperial hero James Bond - projecting British power across the world - became ever more anachronistic and fantastical, so his popularity soared.
Drawing on extensive interviews with Ian's family, his Jamaican lover Blanche Blackwell and many other islanders, Goldeneye is a beautifully written, revealing and original exploration of a crucially important part of Ian Fleming's life and work.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On the north coast of Jamaica in 1952, Ian Fleming began work from a home he designed next door to Noel Coward's estate, writing about a suave secret agent named James Bond. In this fascinating exploration of that house, called Goldeneye, Parker tells the exciting story of how the Bond novels were produced and how strongly Jamaica influenced Fleming's direction in life. The languishing British colony proved the perfect setting for the former soldier to relax and craft the tales of a world-conquering British spy. Parker proceeds chronologically, showing that the creation of Goldeneye and the Bond novels was inextricably intertwined with the drama of Fleming's love life. To that end, what began as Fleming's adulterous WWII relationship with Ann Charteris, whom he later married, explains much of why he wanted to remain in the Caribbean, away from the British press. Parker treats each Bond novel, beginning with Casino Royale, with respect and expertise, taking care to show that Fleming often integrated his deep knowledge of Jamaica into the plotlines. The depiction of Fleming's own life of luxury in Jamaica, meanwhile, is mesmerizing. The book is as charming as Bond himself, leaving us a greater understanding of the world's most famous spy, his creator, and the house in which he was conceived.
