Ian Fleming
The Complete Man
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4.4 • 17 Ratings
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
A fresh portrait of the man behind James Bond, and his enduring impact, by an award-winning biographer with unprecedented access to the Fleming family papers.
Ian Fleming's greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous and ongoing impact on our culture. What Bond represents about ideas of masculinity, the British national psyche and global politics has shifted over time, as has the interpretation of the life of his author. But Fleming himself was more mysterious and subtle than anything he wrote.
Ian's childhood with his gifted brother Peter and his extraordinary mother set the pattern for his ambition to be “the complete man,” and he would strive for the means to achieve this “completeness'”all his life. Only a thriller writer for his last twelve years, his dramatic personal life and impressive career in Naval Intelligence put him at the heart of critical moments in world history, while also providing rich inspiration for his fiction. Exceptionally well connected, and widely travelled, from the United States and Soviet Russia to his beloved Jamaica, Ian had access to the most powerful political figures at a time of profound change.
Nicholas Shakespeare is one of the most gifted biographers working today. His talent for uncovering material that casts new light on his subjects is fully evident in this masterful, definitive biography. His unprecedented access to the Fleming archive and his nose for a story make this a fresh and eye-opening picture of the man and his famous creation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Shakespeare (The Dancer Upstairs) delivers an exemplary biography of British spy novelist Ian Fleming (1908–1964). The scion of a wealthy banking family, Fleming was an indifferent student and at age 23 flunked the Foreign Office exam, after which he became a Reuters correspondent. After WWII began, Fleming used his contacts to join the Naval Intelligence Division as a lieutenant commander. Though Fleming's war service remains shrouded in mystery, Shakespeare builds a strong case that the novelist authored the memo that inspired operation Mincemeat, which fed the Axis powers bogus plans to distract from the upcoming Allied invasion of Sicily. After the war, Fleming became a Sunday Times editor, and in 1952, he wrote the spy thriller Casino Royale. The book's suave protagonist, James Bond, eclipsed Fleming's own fame after his death by heart attack at age 56. Shakespeare offers shrewd insight into the enduring appeal of Bond ("The lower the sun has sunk on the empire that Bond was born into, the more radiant his glow") and how Fleming's personal life shaped 007, suggesting the character reflects the heroism of Fleming's father, a major who died in WWI, as well as Fleming's own "cavalier treatment of women" (Fleming had many affairs during his fractious marriage to Ann Charteris). This will stand as the definitive biography of the popular author.
