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166-839: Gavin Tudor Lyall (9 May 1932 – 18 January 2003) was an English author of espionage thrillers . Lyall was born in Birmingham , then in Warwickshire (now West Midlands ), England, as the son of a local accountant, and educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham . After completing his two years of National Service , 1951 to 1953, as a Pilot Officer in the Royal Air Force flying Gloster Meteors , he went to Pembroke College, Cambridge , graduating in 1956 with honours in English. While at Cambridge he wrote regularly for

332-479: A "total war" campaign to mobilise society for the war. As part of the "total war" campaign, the state warned people to be vigilant at all times for spies; alongside this campaign went a mania for spy stories, which likewise warned people to be vigilant against spies. Novels and films with a counterespionage theme became ubiquitous in Manchukuo from 1937 onward. Despite the intensely patriarchal values of Manchukuo,

498-579: A MI6 agent's attempts to uncover a mole in apartheid -era South Africa . Greene had worked as a MI6 agent in Freetown, an important British naval base during World War Two, searching for German spies who would radio information about the movements of ships to the Kriegsmarine , experiences which inspired The Heart of the Matter . Greene's case officer during World War Two was Harold "Kim" Philby, who

664-470: A Mossad spy in Greece. The book was published as a novel, but Roth insisted that the book was not a novel as he argued that the book was presented only as a novel in order to give it deniability. At the end of the book, the character of Philip Roth is ordered to publish the account as a novel, and it ends with Roth the character saying: "And I became quite convinced that it was my interest to do that...I'm just

830-753: A Pale Horse (1984). Manning Coles published Drink to Yesterday (1940), a grim story occurring during the Great War, which introduces the hero Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon . However, later novels featuring Hambledon were lighter-toned, despite being set either in Nazi Germany or Britain during the Second World War (1939–45). After the War, the Hambledon adventures fell to formula, losing critical and popular interest. The events leading up to

996-598: A Spy (1938), The Mask of Dimitrios (US: A Coffin for Dimitrios , 1939), and Journey into Fear (1940) feature amateurs entangled in espionage. The politics and ideology are secondary to the personal story that involved the hero or heroine. Ambler's Popular Front –period œuvre has a left-wing perspective about the personal consequences of "big picture" politics and ideology, which was notable, given spy fiction's usual right-wing tilt in defence of establishment attitudes. Ambler's early novels Uncommon Danger (1937) and Cause for Alarm (1938), in which NKVD spies help

1162-718: A US naval attaché and intelligence agent based in Budapest who took the Orient Express from Budapest to Paris in February 1950, carrying papers about blown US spy networks in the Eastern Bloc . Soviet assassins already on the train drugged the conductor, and Karp's body was found shortly afterwards in a railway tunnel south of Salzburg . Many of the names used in the Bond works came from people Fleming knew: Scaramanga ,

1328-642: A blunt instrument ... when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard." Fleming based his creation on individuals he met during his time in the Naval Intelligence Division, and admitted that Bond "was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war". Among those types were his brother Peter, whom he worshipped, and who had been involved in behind-the-lines operations in Norway and Greece during

1494-699: A book later in 1969. In Seventeen Moments of Spring , the story is set in the Great Patriotic War as Isayev goes undercover, using the alias of a Baltic German nobleman Max Otto von Stierlitz to infiltrate the German high command. The plot of Seventeen Moments of Spring takes place in Berlin between January–May 1945 during the last days of the Third Reich as the Red Army advances onto Berlin and

1660-425: A casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul erosion produced by high gambling—a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension—becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it. Opening lines of Casino Royale Fleming had first mentioned to friends during the war that he wanted to write a spy novel, an ambition he achieved within two months with Casino Royale . He started writing

1826-470: A collection of short stories derived from outlines written for a television series that did not come to fruition. Lycett noted that, as Fleming was writing the television scripts and the short stories, "Ian's mood of weariness and self-doubt was beginning to affect his writing", which can be seen in Bond's thoughts. In 1960 Fleming was commissioned by the Kuwait Oil Company to write a book on

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1992-467: A copy to the publishing house Jonathan Cape . At first, they were unenthusiastic about the novel, but Fleming's brother Peter, whose books they managed, persuaded the company to publish it. On 13 April 1953 Casino Royale was released in the UK in hardcover, priced at 10s 6d , with a cover designed by Fleming. It was a success and three print runs were needed to cope with the demand. The novel centres on

2158-578: A field agent; he reprised the role in the sequel The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1987). Other important American authors who became active in spy fiction during this period include Robert Littell , The Defection of A. J. Lewinter (1973); James Grady , Six Days of the Condor (1974); William F. Buckley Jr. , Saving the Queen (1976); Nelson DeMille , The Talbot Odyssey (1984); W. E. B. Griffin ,

2324-571: A good Mossadnik". Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was an English writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels . Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. , and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton , Sandhurst , and, briefly,

2490-813: A grandson of the Scottish financier Robert Fleming , who co-founded the Scottish American Investment Company and the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. In 1914, with the start of the First World War, Valentine Fleming joined "C" Squadron of Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars , and rose to the rank of major . He was killed by German shelling on the Western Front on 20 May 1917. Winston Churchill wrote an obituary for him that appeared in The Times . Because Valentine had owned an estate at Arnisdale , his death

2656-507: A high achiever academically, he excelled at athletics and held the title of Victor Ludorum ("Winner of the Games") for two years between 1925 and 1927. He also edited a school magazine, The Wyvern . His lifestyle at Eton brought him into conflict with his housemaster, E. V. Slater, who disapproved of Fleming's attitude, his hair oil, his ownership of a car and his relations with women. Slater persuaded Fleming's mother to remove him from Eton

2822-489: A keen birdwatcher , had a copy of Bond's guide, and later told the ornithologist's wife, "that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born". In a 1962 interview in The New Yorker , he further explained: "When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be

2988-860: A liaison with other sections of the government's wartime administration, such as the Secret Intelligence Service , the Political Warfare Executive , the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Prime Minister 's staff. On 29 September 1939, soon after the start of the war, Godfrey circulated a memorandum that, "bore all the hallmarks of ... Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming", according to historian Ben Macintyre . It

3154-642: A long-haired, hashish -smoking fop in the novels The Dolly Dolly Spy (1967), The Great Spy Race (1968), The Bang Bang Birds (1968) and Think, Inc. (1971); James Mitchell 's 'David Callan' series, written in his own name, beginning with Red File for Callan (1969); William Garner 's John Morpurgo in Think Big, Think Dirty (1983), Rats' Alley (1984), and Zones of Silence (1986); and Joseph Hone 's 'Peter Marlow' series, beginning with The Private Sector (1971), set during Israel's Six-Day War (1967) against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In all of these series

3320-437: A long-term relationship with her. After her death during a World War II bombing raid in 1944, Fleming was overcome with guilt and remorse, and it is generally thought that she provided the inspiration for the women he was to create for his future novels. Early in 1939 Fleming began an affair with Ann O'Neill, née Charteris, who was married to the 3rd Baron O'Neill ; she was also having an affair with Esmond Harmsworth ,

3486-444: A mixed Russian-Han heritage; the implication being that people of "pure" descent from one of the "five races" of Manchukuo would not betray it. In "A Mixed Race Woman", the villain initially appears to Mali, the eponymous character who has a Russian father and a Han mother, but she ultimately is revealed to be blackmailed by the story's true villain, the foreign spy Baoerdun, and she proves to be loyal to Manchukuo after all as she forces

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3652-580: A moral human being, who remains sociable and kind to all people, including the citizens of the state that his country is at war with. Unlike Bond, Isayev is devoted to his wife who he deeply loves and despite spending at least ten years as a spy in Germany and having countless chances to sleep with attractive German women remains faithful towards her. Through Isayev is a spy for the NKVD as the Soviet secret police

3818-749: A more popular level, Leslie Charteris ' popular and long-running Saint series began, featuring Simon Templar, with Meet the Tiger (1928). Water on the Brain (1933) by former intelligence officer Compton Mackenzie was the first successful spy novel satire . Prolific author Dennis Wheatley also wrote his first spy novel, The Eunuch of Stamboul (1935) during this period. In the sham state of Manchukuo , spies often featured in stories published in its government-sponsored magazines as villains threatening Manchukuo. Manchukuo had been presented since its founding in 1931 as an idealistic Pan-Asian experiment, where

3984-729: A newspaper correspondent where he met Lansdale who appears in The Quiet American as Alden Pyle while the character of Thomas Fowler, a cynical, but goodhearted British journalist in Saigon was partly based on himself. MI6 was outraged by Our Man In Havana with its story of James Wormold, a British vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba, recruited to work for MI6 who bamboozles his employers by selling them diagrams of vacuum cleaners, which he persuades MI6 are really diagrams of Soviet missiles. MI6 pressed for Greene to be prosecuted for violating

4150-449: A novel and the TV mini-series that has offended Westerners who are more accustomed to seeing spy stories via the prism of the fast-paced Bond stories is the way that Isayev spends much time interacting with ordinary Germans despite the fact these interactions do nothing to advance the plot and are merely superfluous to the story. However, the point of these scenes are to show that Isayev is still

4316-700: A parachute that has failed. I understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the Naval Hospital, but, of course, it would have to be a fresh one." In 1940 Fleming and Godfrey contacted Kenneth Mason , Professor of Geography at Oxford University , about the preparation of reports on the geography of countries involved in military operations. These reports were the precursors of the Naval Intelligence Division Geographical Handbook Series produced between 1941 and 1946. Operation Ruthless ,

4482-403: A perception for the colour of human beings: a swift, feminine sensitivity to their characters and motives. He knew mankind as a huntsman knows his cover, as a fox the woods. For a spy must hunt while he is hunted, and the crowd is his estate. He could collect their gestures, record the interplay of glance and movement, as a huntsman can record the twisted bracken and broken twig, or as a fox detects

4648-654: A plan aimed at obtaining details of the Enigma codes used by the German Navy , was instigated by a memo written by Fleming to Godfrey on 12 September 1940. The idea was to "obtain" a Nazi bomber, man it with a German-speaking crew dressed in Luftwaffe uniforms, and crash it into the English Channel. The crew would then attack their German rescuers and bring their boat and Enigma machine back to England. Much to

4814-575: A plot of land in Saint Mary Parish where, in 1945, Fleming had a house built, which he named Goldeneye . (His main residence remained in London, in Victoria ). The name of the house and estate where he wrote his novels has many possible sources. Fleming himself mentioned both his wartime Operation Goldeneye and Carson McCullers ' 1941 novel Reflections in a Golden Eye , which described

4980-509: A recommendation from him and Bryce that McClory act as producer. He additionally told McClory that if MCA rejected the film because of McClory's involvement, then McClory should either sell himself to MCA, back out of the deal, or file a suit in court. Working at Goldeneye between January and March 1960, Fleming wrote the novel Thunderball , based on the screenplay written by himself, Whittingham and McClory. In March 1961 McClory read an advance copy, and he and Whittingham immediately petitioned

5146-483: A sardonic style reminiscent of the "hard-boiled private-eye" genre. Despite the commercial success of his work, Lyall began to feel that he was falling into a predictable pattern, and abandoned both his earlier genres, and the first-person narrative, for his "Harry Maxim" series of espionage thrillers beginning with The Secret Servant published in 1980. This book, originally developed for a proposed BBC TV Series , featured Major Harry Maxim, an SAS officer assigned as

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5312-544: A saucepan, or whether the muzzle flash of a revolver fired across a saucer of petrol really would ignite a fire". He eventually published the results of his research in a series of pamphlets for the Crime Writers' Association in the 1970s. Lyall signed a contract in 1964 by the investments group Booker similar to one they had signed with Ian Fleming . In return for a lump payment of £25,000 and an annual salary, they and Lyall subsequently split his royalties, 51–49. Up to

5478-417: A security adviser to 10 Downing Street , and was followed by three sequels with the same central cast of characters. In the 1990s Lyall changed literary direction once again, and wrote four semi-historical thrillers about the fledgling British secret service in the years leading up to World War I . Lyall died of cancer in 2003. Spy fiction Commentator William Bendler noted that "Chapter 2 of

5644-514: A six-month option on the film rights to his published and future James Bond novels and short stories to Harry Saltzman . Saltzman formed the production vehicle Eon Productions along with Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli , and after an extensive search, they hired Sean Connery on a six-film deal, later reduced to five beginning with Dr. No (1962). Connery's depiction of Bond affected the literary character; in You Only Live Twice ,

5810-525: A social phenomenon of some importance", but this was seen as a negative element, as the phenomenon concerned "three basic ingredients in Dr No , all unhealthy, all thoroughly English: the sadism of a schoolboy bully, the mechanical, two-dimensional sex-longings of a frustrated adolescent, and the crude, snob-cravings of a suburban adult." Johnson saw no positives in Dr. No , and said, "Mr Fleming has no literary skill,

5976-518: A spy novel review column. Nevertheless, counting on the aficionado, publishers continued to issue spy novels by writers popular during the Cold War era, among them Harlot's Ghost (1991) by Norman Mailer . In the US, the new novels Moscow Club (1991) by Joseph Finder , Coyote Bird (1993) by Jim DeFelice, Masquerade (1996) by Gayle Lynds , and The Unlikely Spy (1996) by Daniel Silva maintained

6142-879: A term early for a crammer course to gain entry to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst . He spent less than a year there, leaving in 1927 without gaining a commission, after contracting gonorrhea . In 1927, to prepare Fleming for possible entry into the Foreign Office , his mother sent him to the Tennerhof in Kitzbühel , Austria, a small private school run by the Adlerian disciple and former British spy Ernan Forbes Dennis and his novelist wife, Phyllis Bottome . After improving his language skills there, he studied briefly at Munich University and

6308-579: A thinly disguised version of the CIA while posing as a journalist. Writing under the pen name Trevanian , Roger Whitaker published a series of brutal spy novels starting with The Eiger Sanction (1972) featuring an amoral art collector/CIA assassin who ostensibly kills for the United States, but in fact kills for money. Whitaker followed up The Eiger Sanction with The Loo Sanction (1973) and Shibumi (1979). Starting in 1976 with his novel Saving

6474-434: A tiny scale, at close range" and complained that he has seen too many "people cheated and misled, whole lives thrown away, people shot and in prison, whole groups and classes of men written off for nothing". Le Carré's middle-class hero George Smiley is a middle-aged spy burdened with an unfaithful, upper-class wife who publicly cuckolds him for sport. The American scholars Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen described Smiley as

6640-626: A very low status. One consequence of the French influence on Russian culture was that the subject of espionage was usually ignored by Russian writers during the Imperial period. Traditionally, the subject of espionage was treated in the Soviet Union as a story of villainous foreign spies threatening the USSR. The organisation established to hunt down German spies in 1943, SMERSH, was an acronym for

6806-715: A wargamer and appeared in "Battleground", a Tyne Tees television series on miniature war gaming in 1978. [1] Lyall won the British Crime Writers' Association 's Silver Dagger award in both 1964 and 1965. In 1966-67 he was Chairman of the British Crime Writers Association. He was not a prolific author, attributing his slow pace to obsession with technical accuracy. According to a British newspaper, "he spent many nights in his kitchen at Primrose Hill, north London, experimenting to see if one could, in fact, cast bullets from lead melted in

Gavin Lyall - Misplaced Pages Continue

6972-543: Is a metaphysical thriller ostensibly based on the infiltration of an anarchist organisation by detectives, but the story is actually a vehicle for exploring society's power structures and the nature of suffering. The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes , created by Arthur Conan Doyle , served as a SpyHunter for the British government in the stories " The Adventure of the Second Stain " (1904), and " The Adventure of

7138-535: Is also known by his code number, 007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve . The Bond stories rank among the best-selling series of fictional books of all time, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and two works of non-fiction. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming 14th on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Fleming

7304-501: Is going on in the "secret world" of intelligence-gathering affected both non-fiction and fiction books about espionage. The Cold War and the struggle between Soviet intelligence-known as the KGB from 1954 onward-vs. the CIA and MI6 made the subject of espionage a popular one for novelists to write about. Most of the spy novels of the Cold War were really action thrillers with little resemblance to

7470-498: Is hired to drive a millionaire to Liechtenstein were purchased by actor Steve McQueen , who had planned to adapt it to the cinema before he died. Shooting Script (1966), about a former RAF pilot hired to fly his de Havilland Dove for a filming company, later in the story a B-25 Mitchell , is set around the Caribbean . Whitmore, a central character in the story was inspired by John Wayne who Lyall had met while reporting on

7636-505: Is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonymity and his safety. His fear makes him servile—he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes. But this fear, this servility, this dependence had developed in Smiley

7802-456: Is that each one of the books seems to have been a favourite with one or other section of the public and none has yet been completely damned." In April 1961, shortly before the second court case on Thunderball , Fleming had a heart attack during a regular weekly meeting at The Sunday Times . While he was convalescing, one of his friends, Duff Dunbar, gave him a copy of Beatrix Potter 's The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and suggested that he take

7968-439: Is usually considered the first American modern (glamour and dirt) spy thriller weighing action and reflection. Richard Helms , the director-general of the CIA from 1966 to 1973 loathed le Carré's morally grey spy novels, which he felt damaged the image of the CIA, and encouraged Hunt to write spy novels as a rebuttal. Helms had hopes that Hunt might write an "American James Bond" novel, which would be adopted by Hollywood and do for

8134-562: The Men at War series (1984–); Stephen Coonts , Flight of the Intruder (1986); Canadian-American author David Morrell , The League of Night and Fog (1987); David Hagberg , Without Honor (1989); Noel Hynd, False Flags (1990); and Richard Ferguson, Oiorpata (1990). The culture of Imperial Russia was deeply influenced by the culture of France, and traditionally spy novels in France had

8300-782: The High Court in London for an injunction to stop publication. After two court actions , the second in November 1961, Fleming offered McClory a deal, settling out of court. McClory gained the literary and film rights for the screenplay, while Fleming was given the rights to the novel, provided it was acknowledged as "based on a screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham and the Author". Fleming's books had always sold well, but in 1961 sales increased dramatically. On 17 March 1961, four years after its publication and three years after

8466-638: The Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition . Fleming had a long-term affair in Jamaica with one of his neighbours, Blanche Blackwell , the mother of Chris Blackwell of Island Records . Fleming was also friends with British Prime Minister Anthony Eden whom he allowed to stay at Goldeneye in late November 1953 due to Eden's deteriorating health. The scent and smoke and sweat of

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8632-410: The University of Geneva . While in Geneva, Fleming began a romance with Monique Panchaud de Bottens and the couple became engaged just before he returned to London in September 1931 to take the Foreign Office exam. He scored an adequate pass standard, but failed to get a job offer. His mother intervened in his affairs, lobbying Sir Roderick Jones , head of Reuters News Agency , and in October 1931 he

8798-421: The V-2 rocket , Messerschmitt Me 163 fighters and high-speed U-boats. Fleming later used elements of the activities of T-Force in his writing, particularly in his 1955 Bond novel Moonraker . In 1942 Fleming attended an Anglo-American intelligence summit in Jamaica and, despite the constant heavy rain during his visit, he decided to live on the island once the war was over. His friend Ivar Bryce helped find

8964-407: The "secrets" that he was selling them was merely information culled from the newspapers. The bumbling vacuum cleaner salesman Wormold in Our Man in Havana seems to been inspired by Herbert Greene. In The Human Factor , Greene portrayed MI6 again in a highly unsympathetic light, depicting the British government as supporting the apartheid regime of South Africa because it was pro-Western while

9130-471: The 1930s, Patrick Dalzel-Job , who served with distinction in 30AU during the war, and Bill "Biffy" Dunderdale , station head of MI6 in Paris, who wore cufflinks and handmade suits and was chauffeured around Paris in a Rolls-Royce . Sir Fitzroy Maclean was another possible model for Bond, based on his wartime work behind enemy lines in the Balkans , as was the MI6 double agent Duško Popov . Fleming also endowed Bond with many of his own traits, including

9296-415: The 1943 plan to conceal the intended invasion of Italy from North Africa, which was developed by Charles Cholmondoley in October 1942. The recommendation in the Trout Memo was titled: "A Suggestion (not a very nice one)", and continued: "The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thomson : a corpse dressed as an airman, with despatches in his pockets, could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from

9462-404: The 1950s, inspired an even more popular series of films starting in 1962. The success of the Bond novels and films has greatly influenced popular images of the work of spies even though the character of Bond is more of an assassin than a spy. Despite the commercial success of Fleming's extravagant novels, John le Carré , himself a former spy, created anti-heroic protagonists who struggled with

9628-543: The Affair, which involved elements of international espionage, treason , and antisemitism , dominated French politics. The details were reported by the world press: an Imperial German penetration agent betraying to Germany the secrets of the General Staff of the French Army ; the French counter-intelligence riposte of sending a charwoman to rifle the trash in the German Embassy in Paris, were news that inspired successful spy fiction. At least two Sherlock Holmes stories have clear espionage themes. In The Adventure of

9794-748: The Anglo–American theft of a superior Soviet jet aeroplane. Other important British writers who first became active in spy fiction during this period include Ian Mackintosh , A Slaying in September (1967); Kenneth Benton , Twenty-fourth Level (1969); Desmond Bagley , Running Blind (1970); Anthony Price , The Labyrinth Makers (1971); Gerald Seymour , Harry's Game (1975); Brian Freemantle , Charlie M (1977); Bryan Forbes , Familiar Strangers (1979); Reginald Hill , The Spy's Wife (1980); and Raymond Harold Sawkins , writing as Colin Forbes, Double Jeopardy (1982). Philip Gooden provides an analysis of British spy fiction in four categories: professionals, amateurs, dandies and literary types. During

9960-399: The Bruce-Partington Plans " (1912). In " His Last Bow " (1917), he served Crown and country as a double agent , transmitting false intelligence to Imperial Germany on the eve of the Great War. The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) by Baroness Orczy chronicled an English aristocrat 's derring-do in rescuing French aristocrats from the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution (1789–99). But

10126-425: The Cheka. The frequent name changes for the secret police made no impression with the Russian people who still call any secret policeman a Chekisty . Semichastny felt that the legacy of the Yezhovshchina ("Yezhovz times") of 1936-1939 had given the KGB a fearsome reputation that he wanted to erase as wanted ordinary people to have a more favorable and positive image of the Chekisty as the protectors and defenders of

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10292-457: The FBI was as "coolly efficient super-cop" who always successful in performing his duties. The FBI director, J.E. Hoover , had long cultivated the American press and Hollywood to promote a favorable image of the FBI. In 1955, Edward S. Aarons began publishing the Sam Durell CIA "Assignment" series, which began with Assignment to Disaster (1955). Donald Hamilton published Death of a Citizen (1960) and The Wrecking Crew (1960), beginning

10458-518: The German naval archives from 1870. In December 1944 Fleming was posted on an intelligence fact-finding trip to the Far East on behalf of the Director of Naval Intelligence. Much of the trip was spent identifying opportunities for 30AU in the Pacific; the unit saw little action because of the Japanese surrender . The success of 30AU led to the August 1944 decision to establish a "Target Force", which became known as T-Force . The official memorandum, held at The National Archives in London, describes

10624-405: The Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua might count as the first Spy Story in world literature. (...) Three thousand years before James Bond seduced Pussy Galore and turned her into his ally against Goldfinger , the spies sent by General Joshua into the city of Jericho did much the same with Rahab the Harlot. " Spy fiction as a genre started to emerge during the 19th Century. Early examples of

10790-407: The Naval Treaty , Holmes recovers the text of a secret Naval Treaty between Britain and Italy, stolen by a daring spy. In His Last Bow , Holmes himself acts as a double agent , providing Germany with a lot of false information on the eve of WWI . The major themes of a spy in the lead-up to the First World War were the continuing rivalry between the European colonial powers for dominance in Asia,

10956-414: The Nazis grew more desperate. In 1973, Semnadtsat' mgnoveniy vesny was turned into a television mini-series, which was extremely popular in the Soviet Union and turned the Isayev character into a cultural phenomena. The Isayev character plays a role in Russian culture, even today, that is analogous to the role James Bond plays in modern British culture. As aspect of Seventeen Moments of Spring , both as

11122-421: The Official Secrets Act, claiming that he revealed too much about MI6's methods in Our Man in Havana , but it decided against charging Greene out of the fear that prosecuting him would suggest the unflattening picture of MI6 in Our Man in Havana was based on reality. Greene's older brother, Herbert, a professional con-man had briefly worked as a spy for the Japanese in the 1930s before his employers realised that

11288-441: The Palestinians, against the backdrop of continuing Cold War tensions, and the increasing use of terrorism as a political tool. The end of the Cold War in 1991 mooted the USSR , Russia and other Iron Curtain countries as credible enemies of democracy, and the US Congress even considered disestablishing the CIA . Espionage novelists found themselves at a temporary loss for obvious nemeses . The New York Times ceased publishing

11454-489: The Queen , the conservative American journalist and former CIA agent William F. Buckley published the first of his Blackford Oakes novels featuring a CIA agent whose politics were the same as the author's. Blackford Oakes was portrayed as a "sort of an American James Bond" who ruthlessly dispatches villainous KGB agents with much aplomb. The first American techno-thriller was The Hunt for Red October (1984) by Tom Clancy . It introduced CIA deskman (analyst) Jack Ryan as

11620-467: The Red Menace, which was perceived as another "clash of civilizations". Spy fiction was dominated by British authors during this period, initially former intelligence officers and agents writing from inside the trade. Examples include Ashenden: Or the British Agent (1928) by W. Somerset Maugham , which accurately portrays spying in the First World War, and The Mystery of Tunnel 51 (1928) by Alexander Wilson whose novels convey an uncanny portrait of

11786-544: The Second World War, and the War itself, continue to be fertile ground for authors of spy fiction. Notable examples include Ken Follett , Eye of the Needle (1978); Alan Furst , Night Soldiers (1988); and David Downing , the Station series, beginning with Zoo Station (2007). The metamorphosis of the Second World War (1939–45) into the Soviet–American Cold War (1945–91) gave new impetus to spy novelists. Atomsk by Paul Linebarger (later known as Cordwainer Smith ), written in 1948 and published in 1949, appears to be

11952-608: The Second World War. Richard served with Scottish regiments ( Lovat Scouts and Seaforth Highlanders ) and was the father of author, James Fleming . Michael died of wounds in October 1940 after being captured at Normandy while serving with the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry . Fleming also had a younger maternal half-sister born out of wedlock, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming (1925–1999), whose father

12118-429: The Soviet Union instead of torturers and killers. As such, Semichastny encouraged the publication of a series of spy novels that featured heroic Chekisty defending the Soviet Union. It was also during Semichastny's time as KGB chairman that the cult of the "hero spies" began in the Soviet Union as publications lionised the achievements of Soviet spies such as Colonel Rudolf Abel, Harold "Kim" Philby, Richard Sorge and of

12284-598: The Soviet writer Yulian Semyonov published a novel set in the Russian Civil War featuring a Cheka agent Maxim Maximovich Isaуev as its hero. Inspired by its success, the KGB encouraged Semyonov to write a sequel, Semnadtsat' mgnoveniy vesny ("Seventeen Moments of Spring"), which proved to one of the most popular Soviet spy novels when it was serialized in Pravda in January–February 1969 and then published as

12450-571: The United States, where he assisted in writing a blueprint for the Office of the Coordinator of Information , the department that turned into the Office of Strategic Services and eventually became the CIA . Admiral Godfrey put Fleming in charge of Operation Goldeneye between 1941 and 1942; Goldeneye was a plan to maintain an intelligence framework in Spain in the event of a German takeover of

12616-572: The United States, where the achievements of Anglo-American intelligence during the Second World War were to a certain extent publicized soon after the war such as the fact that the Americans had broken the Japanese naval codes (which came out in 1946) and the British deception operation of 1943, Operation Mincemeat (which was revealed in 1953), there was nothing equivalent in the Soviet Union until

12782-482: The Western powers were betraying their values by supporting the white supremacist South African government. Much controversy ensued when shortly after the publication of The Human Factor it emerged that such a plan had in fact been carried out, which led to much speculation about whether this was a coincidence or whether Greene had more access to secret information than he let on. There was also much speculation that

12948-470: The actual work of spies. The writer Malcolm Muggeridge who had worked as a spy in World War Two commented that thriller writers in the Cold War took to writing about espionage "as easily as the mentally unstable become psychiatrists or the impotent pornographers". The city that was considered to be the "capital of the Cold War" was Berlin, owing to its post-war status as the city was divided between

13114-532: The amateur protagonist survive, are especially remarkable among English-language spy fiction. Above Suspicion (1939) by Helen MacInnes , about an anti-Nazi husband and wife spy team, features literate writing and fast-paced, intricate, and suspenseful stories occurring against contemporary historical backgrounds. MacInnes wrote many other spy novels in the course of a long career, including Assignment in Brittany (1942), Decision at Delphi (1961), and Ride

13280-528: The annoyance of Alan Turing and Peter Twinn at Bletchley Park , the mission was never carried out. According to Fleming's niece, Lucy , an official of the Royal Air Force pointed out that if they were to drop a downed Heinkel bomber in the English Channel, it would probably sink rather quickly. Fleming also worked with Colonel "Wild Bill" Donovan , President Franklin D. Roosevelt 's special representative on intelligence co-operation between London and Washington. In May 1941 Fleming accompanied Godfrey to

13446-704: The author Katharine Whitehorn , with whom he was to have two sons. Lyall lived at 14 Provost Rd, London NW3 and enjoyed sailing on the Thames in his motor cruiser. From 1959 to 1962 he was a newspaper reporter and the aviation correspondent for the Sunday Times . His first novel , The Wrong Side of the Sky , was published in 1961, drawing from his personal experiences in the Libyan Desert and in Greece . It

13612-592: The background to the stories came from Fleming's previous work in the Naval Intelligence Division or from events he knew of from the Cold War . The plot of From Russia, with Love uses a fictional Soviet Spektor decoding machine as a lure to trap Bond; the Spektor had its roots in the wartime German Enigma machine. The novel's plot device of spies on the Orient Express was based on the story of Eugene Karp,

13778-500: The background, detail, and depth of his James Bond novels . Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale , in 1952, at age 44. It was a success, and three print runs were commissioned to meet the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two collections of short stories followed between 1953 and 1966. The novels centre around James Bond , an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6 . Bond

13944-455: The book at Goldeneye on 15 January 1952, and was finished writing no later than 16 February 1952, averaging more than 2,000 words per day. He claimed afterwards that he wrote the novel to distract himself from his forthcoming wedding to the pregnant Charteris, and called the work his "dreadful oafish opus". His manuscript was typed in London by Joan Howe (mother of travel writer Rory MacLean ), Fleming's red-haired secretary at The Times on whom

14110-473: The book's protagonist, the MI6 officer Maurice Castle, married to a black South African woman, provides information to the KGB to thwart MI6 operations. Much of the plot of The Human Factor concerned a secret plan by the British, American and West German governments to buy up South African gold in bulk in order to stabilise the economy of South Africa , which Greene presented as fundamentally amoral, arguing that

14276-427: The character Miss Moneypenny was partially based. Clare Blanchard, a former girlfriend, advised him not to publish the book, or at least to do so under a pseudonym. During Casino Royale's final draft stages, Fleming allowed his friend William Plomer to see a copy, and remarked "so far as I can see the element of suspense is completely absent". Despite this, Plomer thought the book had sufficient promise and sent

14442-741: The character of Maurice Castle was inspired by Philby, but Greene consistently denied this. Other novelists followed a similar path. Len Deighton 's anonymous spy protagonist of The IPCRESS File (1962), Horse Under Water (1963), Funeral in Berlin (1964), and others, is a working-class man with a negative view of " the Establishment ". Other notable examples of espionage fiction during this period were also built around recurring characters. These include James Mitchell 's 'John Craig' series, written under his pseudonym 'James Munro', beginning with The Man Who Sold Death (1964); and Trevor Dudley-Smith 's Quiller spy novel series written under

14608-407: The construction of the book is chaotic, and entire incidents and situations are inserted, and then forgotten, in a haphazard manner." Lycett notes that Fleming "went into a personal and creative decline" after marital problems and the attacks on his work. Goldfinger had been written before the publication of Dr. No ; the next book Fleming produced after the criticism was For Your Eyes Only ,

14774-487: The counter-spy campaign targeted women who were encouraged to report anyone suspicious to the police with one slogan saying, "Women defend inside and men defend outside". The spy stories of Manchukuo such as "A Mixed Race Woman" often had female protagonists. In "A Mixed Race Woman", it is two ordinary women who break up the spy ring instead of the Manchukuo police as might be expected. The South Korean scholar Bong InYoung noted stories such as "A Mixed Race Woman" were part of

14940-499: The country and its oil industry. The Kuwaiti government disapproved of the typescript, State of Excitement: Impressions of Kuwait , and it was never published. According to Fleming: "The Oil Company expressed approval of the book but felt it their duty to submit the typescript to members of the Kuwait Government for their approval. The Sheikhs concerned found unpalatable certain mild comments and criticisms and particularly

15106-687: The early 1960s. Soviet novels prior to the 1960s to the extent that espionage was portrayed at all concerned heroic scouts in the Red Army who during the Great Patriotic War as the war with Germany is known in the Soviet Union who go on dangerous missions deep behind the Wehrmacht's lines to find crucial information. The scout stories were more action-adventure stories than espionage stories proper and significantly always portrayed Red Army scouts rather than Chekisty ("Chekists") as secret policemen are always called in Russia as their heroes. The protagonists of

15272-474: The engagement to Monique after his mother threatened to cut off his trust fund allowance. Fleming bowed to family pressure again in October 1933, and went into banking with a position at the financiers Cull & Co. In 1935 he moved to Rowe and Pitman on Bishopsgate as a stockbroker. Fleming was unsuccessful in both roles. The same year, Fleming met Muriel Wright whilst skiing in Kitzbühel, and began

15438-489: The espionage novel are The Spy (1821) and The Bravo (1831), by American novelist James Fenimore Cooper . The Bravo attacks European anti- republicanism , by depicting Venice as a city-state where a ruthless oligarchy wears the mask of the "serene republic". In nineteenth-century France, the Dreyfus Affair (1894–99) contributed much to public interest in espionage . For some twelve years (ca. 1894–1906),

15604-431: The ethical issues involved in espionage and sometimes resorted to immoral tactics. Le Carré depicted spies as living a morally grey world having to constantly make morally dubious decisions in an essentially amoral struggle where lies, paranoia and betrayal are the norm for both sides. In le Carré best known novel, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1963), the hero Alec Leamas views himself as serving in "...a war fought on

15770-596: The exploits of James Bond , an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6 . Bond is also known by his code number, 007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Reserve . Fleming took the name for his character from that of the American ornithologist James Bond , an expert on Caribbean birds and author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies . Fleming, himself

15936-428: The fictional spy most likely to be successful as a real spy, citing le Carré's description of him in A Murder of Quality : "Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colorful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley has lived and worked for years among his country's enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation

16102-507: The field with the unit, but selected targets and directed operations from the rear. On its formation the unit was 30 strong, but it grew to five times that size. The unit was filled with men from other commando units, and trained in unarmed combat, safe-cracking and lock-picking at the SOE facilities. In late 1942 Captain (later Rear-Admiral ) Edmund Rushbrooke replaced Godfrey as head of the Naval Intelligence Division, and Fleming's influence in

16268-486: The film ended with disillusioned British spy Alec Leamas and his lover, the naïve young woman Liz Gold being shot down while trying to cross the Berlin Wall from East Berlin into West Berlin. With Secret Ministry (1951), Desmond Cory introduced Johnny Fedora , the secret agent with a licence to kill , the government-sanctioned assassin . Ian Fleming , a former member of naval intelligence, followed swiftly with

16434-408: The first espionage novel of the dawning conflict. The "secret world" of espionage allowed a situation when writers could project anything they wanted onto the "secret world". The author Bruce Page complained in his 1969 book The Philby Conspiracy : "The trouble is that a man can hold almost any theory he cares to about the secret world, and defend it against large quantities of hostile evidence by

16600-457: The first head of the Secret Intelligence Service , Mansfield Smith-Cumming , the original 'C'. In the book Literary Agents (1987), Anthony Masters wrote: "Ashenden's adventures come nearest to the real-life experiences of his creator"'. John Le Carré described Ashenden stories as a major influence on his novels as praised Maugham as "the first person to write anything about espionage in a mood of disenchantment and almost prosaic reality". At

16766-659: The glamorous James Bond , secret agent 007 of the British Secret Service, a mixture of counter-intelligence officer, assassin and playboy. Perhaps the most famous fictional spy, Bond was introduced in Casino Royale (1953). After Fleming's death the franchise continued under other British and American authors, including Kingsley Amis , Christopher Wood , John Gardner , Raymond Benson , Sebastian Faulks , Jeffery Deaver , William Boyd and Anthony Horowitz . The Bond novels, which were extremely popular in

16932-650: The growing threat of conflict in Europe, the domestic threat of revolutionaries and anarchists, and historical romance. Kim (1901) by Rudyard Kipling concerns the Anglo – Russian " Great Game ", which consisted of a geopolitical rivalry and strategic warfare for supremacy in Central Asia , usually in Afghanistan . The Secret Agent (1907) by Joseph Conrad examines the psychology and ideology motivating

17098-401: The gun out of Baoerdun's hand at the story's climax. However, Ding's story also states that Baoerdun would not dare to have attempted his blackmail scheme against a Han woman and that he targeted Mali because she was racially mixed and hence "weak". When Japan invaded China in 1937 and even more so in 1941, the level of repression and propaganda in Manchukuo was increased as the state launched

17264-538: The heavy criticism of Dr. No , an article in Life listed From Russia, with Love as one of US President John F. Kennedy 's 10 favourite books. Kennedy and Fleming had previously met in Washington. This accolade and the associated publicity led to a surge in sales that made Fleming the biggest-selling crime writer in the US. Fleming considered From Russia, with Love to be his best novel; he said "the great thing

17430-763: The heir to Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail . In May 1939 Fleming was recruited by Rear Admiral John Godfrey , Director of Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy , to become his personal assistant . He joined the organisation full-time in August 1939, with the codename "17F", and worked out of Room 39 at the Admiralty , now known as the Ripley Building. Fleming's biographer, Andrew Lycett , notes that Fleming had "no obvious qualifications" for

17596-594: The heroic Scotsman Richard Hannay . In France Gaston Leroux published the spy thriller Rouletabille chez Krupp (1917), in which a detective, Joseph Rouletabille , engages in espionage. After the Russian Revolution (1917) , the quality of spy fiction declined, perhaps because the Bolshevik enemy won the Russian Civil War (1917–23). Thus, the inter-war spy story usually concerns combating

17762-495: The image of the CIA what Fleming's Bond novels did for the image of MI6. In the 1970s, former CIA man Charles McCarry began the Paul Christopher series with The Miernik Dossier (1973) and The Tears of Autumn (1978), which were well written, with believable tradecraft. McCarry was a former CIA agent who worked as an editor for National Geographic and his hero Christopher likewise is an American spy who works for

17928-436: The journal Twentieth Century , attacked Fleming's work as containing "a strongly marked streak of voyeurism and sado-masochism" and wrote that the books showed "the total lack of any ethical frame of reference". The article compared Fleming unfavourably with John Buchan and Raymond Chandler on both moral and literary criteria. A month later, Dr. No was published, and Fleming received harsh criticism from reviewers who, in

18094-478: The local concerns in order to defeat the Communists until the modernization process was completed. The Nick Carter-Killmaster series of spy novels, initiated by Michael Avallone and Valerie Moolman, but authored anonymously, ran to over 260 separate books between 1964 and the early 1990s and invariably pitted American, Soviet and Chinese spies against each other. With the proliferation of male protagonists in

18260-721: The making of the 1957 film 'Legend of the Lost' in Libya. The protagonists of Judas Country (1975) are again former RAF pilots, and the setting is now in Cyprus and the Middle East . Lyall is credited as co-writer (together with Frank Hardman and Martin Davison) of the original story on which the screenplay of the 1969 science-fiction film Moon Zero Two is based. Gavin Lyall was also

18426-761: The material had appeared in The Sunday Times and was based on Fleming's interviews with John Collard, a member of the International Diamond Security Organisation who had previously worked in MI5 . The book received mixed reviews in the UK and US. For the first five books ( Casino Royale , Live and Let Die , Moonraker , Diamonds Are Forever and From Russia, with Love ) Fleming received broadly positive reviews. That began to change in March 1958 when Bernard Bergonzi , in

18592-585: The men and women who served in the Rote Kapelle spy network. Seeing the great popularity of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels in Britain and the United States, Soviet spy novels of the 1960s used the Bond novels as inspiration for both their plots and heroes, through Soviet prurience about sex ensured that the Chekisty heroes did not engage in the sort of womanising that Bond did. The first Bond-style novel

18758-532: The most widely read and most successful British writers of spy fiction, especially of invasion literature. Their prosaic style and formulaic stories, produced voluminously from 1900 to 1914, proved of low literary merit . During the War, John Buchan became the pre-eminent British spy novelist. His well-written stories portray the Great War as a "clash of civilisations" between Western civilization and barbarism . His notable novels are The Thirty-nine Steps (1915), Greenmantle (1916) and sequels, all featuring

18924-424: The novel La Mal Jaune (1965) by the French writer Jean Lartéguy . The Ugly American was written as a rebuttal to The Quiet American under which the idealistic Colonel Barnum operating in the fictional Vietnam-like Southeast Asian nation of Sarkhan shows the way to defeat Communist guerillas by understanding local people in just the same way that Lansdale with his understanding and sympathy for ordinary Filipinos

19090-670: The occupation of Denmark. He ended his service on 16 August 1952, when he was removed from the active list of the RNVR with the rank of lieutenant-commander. Upon Fleming's demobilisation in May 1945, he became the foreign manager in the Kemsley newspaper group , which at the time owned The Sunday Times . In this role he oversaw the paper's worldwide network of correspondents. His contract allowed him to take three months' holiday every winter, which he took in Jamaica. Fleming worked full-time for

19256-462: The official film series. Ian Lancaster Fleming was born on 28 May 1908, at 27  Green Street in the wealthy London district of Mayfair . His mother was Evelyn "Eve" Fleming , née Rose, and his father was Valentine Fleming , the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 to 1917. As an infant he briefly lived with his family at Braziers Park in Oxfordshire. Fleming was

19422-408: The officially designated "five races" of the Japanese, Han Chinese, Manchus, Koreans and Mongols had come together to build a utopian society. Manchukuo also had a substantial Russian minority who initially been considered as the "sixth race", but had been excluded. The spy stories of Manchukuo such as "A Mixed Race Woman" by the writer Ding Na often linked the willingness to serve as spies with having

19588-549: The organisation declined, although he retained control over 30AU. Fleming was unpopular with the unit's members, who disliked his referring to them as his "Red Indians". Before the 1944 Normandy landings , most of 30AU's operations were in the Mediterranean, although it is possible that it secretly participated in the Dieppe Raid in a failed pinch raid for an Enigma machine and related materials. Fleming observed

19754-467: The paper until December 1959, but continued to write articles and attend the Tuesday weekly meetings until at least 1961. After Anne Charteris's first husband died in the war, she expected to marry Fleming, but he decided to remain a bachelor. On 28 June 1945, she married the second Viscount Rothermere . Nevertheless, Charteris continued her affair with Fleming, travelling to Jamaica to see him under

19920-440: The passages referring to the adventurous past of the country which now wishes to be 'civilised' in every respect and forget its romantic origins." Fleming followed the disappointment of For Your Eyes Only with Thunderball , the novelisation of a film script on which he had worked with others. The work had started in 1958 when Fleming's friend Ivar Bryce introduced him to a young Irish writer and director, Kevin McClory , and

20086-410: The pretext of visiting his friend and neighbour Noël Coward . In 1948 she gave birth to Fleming's daughter, Mary, who was stillborn . Rothermere divorced Charteris in 1951 because of her relationship with Fleming, and the couple married on 24 March 1952 in Jamaica, a few months before their son Caspar was born in August. Both Fleming and Ann had affairs during their marriage, she with Hugh Gaitskell ,

20252-542: The principal villain in The Man with the Golden Gun , was named after a fellow Eton schoolboy with whom Fleming fought; Goldfinger , from the eponymous novel, was named after British architect Ernő Goldfinger , whose work Fleming abhorred; Sir Hugo Drax , the antagonist of Moonraker , was named after Fleming's acquaintance Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax ; Drax's assistant, Krebs, bears

20418-1076: The pseudonym 'Adam Hall', beginning with The Berlin Memorandum (US: The Quiller Memorandum , 1965), a hybrid of glamour and dirt, Fleming and Le Carré; and William Garner 's fantastic Michael Jagger in Overkill (1966), The Deep, Deep Freeze (1968), The Us or Them War (1969) and A Big Enough Wreath (1974). Other important British writers who first became active in spy fiction during this period include Padraig Manning O'Brine , Killers Must Eat (1951); Michael Gilbert , Be Shot for Sixpence (1956); Alistair MacLean , The Last Frontier (1959); Brian Cleeve , Assignment to Vengeance (1961); Jack Higgins , The Testament of Caspar Schulz (1962); and Desmond Skirrow , It Won't Get You Anywhere (1966). Dennis Wheatley 's 'Gregory Sallust' (1934-1968) and 'Roger Brook' (1947-1974) series were also largely written during this period. Notable recurring characters from this era include Adam Diment 's Philip McAlpine as

20584-412: The publication in 1975 of Judas Country , Lyall's work falls into two groups. The aviation thrillers ( The Wrong Side of the Sky , The Most Dangerous Game , Shooting Script , and Judas Country ), and what might be called "Euro-thrillers" revolving around international crime in Europe ( Midnight Plus One , Venus With Pistol , and Blame The Dead ). All these books were written in the first person , with

20750-527: The raid from HMS Fernie , 700 yards offshore. Because of its successes in Sicily and Italy, 30AU became greatly trusted by naval intelligence. In March 1944 Fleming oversaw the distribution of intelligence to Royal Navy units in preparation for Operation Overlord . He was replaced as head of 30AU on 6 June 1944, but maintained some involvement. He visited 30AU in the field during and after Overlord, especially following an attack on Cherbourg for which he

20916-472: The role. As part of his appointment, Fleming was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in July 1939, initially as lieutenant , but was promoted to lieutenant commander a few months later. Fleming proved invaluable as Godfrey's personal assistant and excelled in administration. Godfrey was known as an abrasive character who made enemies within government circles. He frequently used Fleming as

21082-450: The same golf handicap, his taste for scrambled eggs, his love of gambling, and use of the same brand of toiletries. After the publication of Casino Royale , Fleming used his annual holiday at his house in Jamaica to write another Bond story. Twelve Bond novels and two short-story collections were published between 1953 and 1966, the last two ( The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living Daylights ) posthumously. Much of

21248-461: The same name as Hitler's last Chief of Staff ; and one of the homosexual villains from Diamonds Are Forever , "Boofy" Kidd, was named after one of Fleming's close friends—and a relative of his wife— Arthur Gore, 8th Earl of Arran , known as Boofy to his friends. Fleming's first work of non-fiction, The Diamond Smugglers , was published in 1957 and was partly based on background research for his fourth Bond novel, Diamonds Are Forever . Much of

21414-497: The scout stories always almost ended being killed at the climax of the stories, giving up their lives up to save the Motherland from the German invaders. In November 1961, Vladimir Semichastny became the chairman of the KGB and sent out to improve the image of the Chekisty . The acronym KGB ( Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti -Committee of State Security) was adopted in 1954, but the organisation had been founded in 1917 as

21580-731: The series featuring Matt Helm , a CIA assassin and counter-intelligence agent. Major General Edward Lansdale , a charismatic intelligence officer who was widely credited with having masterminded the defeat of the Communist Huk rebellion in the Philippines inspired several fictional versions of himself. Besides for The Quiet American , he appeared as Colonel Edwin Barnum in The Ugly American (1958) by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick and as Colonel Lionel Teryman in

21746-626: The signs of danger". Like Le Carré, former British Intelligence officer Graham Greene also examined the morality of espionage in left-wing, anti-imperialist novels such as The Heart of the Matter (1948), set in Sierra Leone , the seriocomic Our Man in Havana (1959) occurring in Cuba under the regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista before his deposition in the Cuban Revolution (1953–59), and The Human Factor (1978) about

21912-465: The simple expedient of retreating behind further and further screens of postulated inward mystery. Secret services have in common with Freemasons and mafiosi that they inhabit an intellectual twilight-a kind of ambiguous gloom in which it is hard to distinguish with certainty between the menacing and the merely ludicrous. In such circumstances the human affinity for myth and legend easily gets out of control". This inability to know for certain about what

22078-676: The socially marginal men and women of a revolutionary cell. A diplomat from an unnamed (but clearly Russian) embassy forces a double-agent, Verloc, to organise a failed attempt to bomb the Greenwich Observatory in the hope that the revolutionaries will be blamed. Conrad's next novel, Under Western Eyes (1911), follows a reluctant spy sent by the Russian Empire to infiltrate a group of revolutionaries based in Geneva . G. K. Chesterton 's The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)

22244-476: The spy fiction genre, writers and book packagers also started bringing out spy fiction with a female as the protagonist. One notable spy series is The Baroness , featuring a sexy female superspy, with the novels being more action-oriented, in the mould of Nick Carter-Killmaster. Other important American authors who became active in spy fiction during this period include Ross Thomas , The Cold War Swap (1966). The Scarlatti Inheritance (1971) by Robert Ludlum

22410-461: The spy novel in the post– Cold War world. Other important American authors who first became active in spy fiction during this period include David Ignatius , Agents of Innocence (1997); David Baldacci , Saving Faith (1999); and Vince Flynn , with Term Limits (1999) and a series of novels featuring counter-terrorism expert Mitch Rapp. In 1993, the American novelist Philip Roth published Operation Shylock , an account of his supposed work as

22576-458: The state's campaign to take over "...the governance of private and family life, relying on the power of propaganda literature and the nationwide mobilization of the social discourse of counterespionage". At the same time, she noted "A Mixed Race Woman" with its intelligent female protagonists seemed to challenge the patriarchal values of Manchukuo which portrayed women as the weaker sex in need of male protection and guidance. However, Bong noted that

22742-558: The term "spy novel" was defined by The Riddle of the Sands (1903) by Irish author Erskine Childers . The Riddle of the Sands described two British yachtsman cruising off the North Sea coast of Germany who turned amateur spies when they discover a secret German plan to invade Britain. Its success created a market for the invasion literature subgenre, which was flooded by imitators. William Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim became

22908-534: The territory. Fleming's plan involved maintaining communication with Gibraltar and launching sabotage operations against the Nazis. In 1941 he liaised with Donovan over American involvement in a measure intended to ensure the Germans did not dominate the seaways. In 1942 Fleming formed a unit of commandos , known as No. 30 Commando or 30 Assault Unit (30AU), composed of specialist intelligence troops. 30AU's job

23074-468: The three, together with Fleming and Bryce's friend Ernest Cuneo , worked on a script. In October McClory introduced experienced screenwriter Jack Whittingham to the newly formed team, and by December 1959 McClory and Whittingham sent Fleming a script. Fleming had been having second thoughts on McClory's involvement and, in January 1960, explained his intention of delivering the screenplay to MCA , with

23240-468: The time to write up the bedtime story that Fleming used to tell to his son Caspar each evening. Fleming attacked the project with gusto and wrote to his publisher, Michael Howard of Jonathan Cape, joking that "There is not a moment, even on the edge of the tomb, when I am not slaving for you"; the result was Fleming's only children's novel, Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang , which was published in October 1964, two months after his death. In June 1961 Fleming sold

23406-471: The true heroine of "A Mixed Race Woman", Shulan is presented as superior to Mali as she is Han and the story is one "...of female disempowerment in that Mali is completely subordinate to the racial order Shulan sets". The growing support of fascism in Germany, Italy and Spain , and the imminence of war, attracted quality writers back to spy fiction. British author Eric Ambler brought a new realism to spy fiction. The Dark Frontier (1936), Epitaph for

23572-411: The two German states while Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States all had occupations zones in Berlin. As a result, Berlin was a beehive of espionage during the Cold War with the city full of American, British, East German, French, Soviet and West German spies; it was estimated that there was an average of about 8,000 spies in Berlin at any given moment during the Cold War. Because Berlin

23738-514: The undergraduate newspaper Varsity and also created a strip cartoon whose hero, "Olly", reflected student life and became a cult figure. He became editor of Varsity in 1956. After graduating he worked briefly as a reporter for the Birmingham Gazette , Picture Post and Sunday Graphic newspapers and then as a film director for the BBC 's Tonight programme. In 1958, he married

23904-464: The unit's primary role: "T-Force = Target Force, to guard and secure documents, persons, equipment, with combat and Intelligence personnel, after capture of large towns, ports etc. in liberated and enemy territory." Fleming sat on the committee that selected the targets for the T-Force unit, and listed them in the "Black Books" that were issued to the unit's officers. The infantry component of T-Force

24070-418: The universities of Munich and Geneva , Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing. While working for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units: 30 Assault Unit and T-Force . He drew from his wartime service and his career as a journalist for much of

24236-527: The use of British naval bases in the Caribbean by the American navy. Fleming was demobilised in May 1945, but remained in the RNVR for several years, receiving a promotion to substantive lieutenant-commander (Special Branch) on 26 July 1947. In October 1947, he was awarded the King Christian X's Liberty Medal for his contribution in assisting Danish officers escaping from Denmark to Britain during

24402-506: The war E. Howard Hunt wrote his first spy novel, East of Farewell (1943). In 1949 he joined the recently created CIA and continued to write spy fiction for many years. Paul Linebarger , a China specialist for the CIA, published Atomsk , the first novel of the Cold War, in 1949. During the 1950s, most of American spy stories were not about the CIA, instead being about agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who tracked down and arrested Soviet spies. The popular American image of

24568-443: The war. Fleming envisaged that Bond would resemble the composer, singer and actor Hoagy Carmichael ; others, such as author and historian Ben Macintyre , identify aspects of Fleming's own looks in his description of Bond. General references in the novels describe Bond as having "dark, rather cruel good looks". Fleming also modelled aspects of Bond on Conrad O'Brien-ffrench , a spy whom Fleming had met while skiing in Kitzbühel in

24734-444: The wartime slogan Smert shpionam! ("Death to Spies!"), which reflected the picture promoted by the Soviet state of spies as a class of people who deserved to be killed without mercy. The unfavorable picture of spies ensured that before the early 1960s there were no novels featuring Soviet spies as the heroes as espionage was portrayed as a disreputable activity that only the enemies of the Soviet Union engaged in. Unlike in Britain and

24900-459: The words of Ben Macintyre, "rounded on Fleming, almost as a pack". The most strongly worded of the critiques came from Paul Johnson of the New Statesman , who, in his review "Sex, Snobbery and Sadism", called the novel "without doubt, the nastiest book I have ever read". Johnson went on to say that "by the time I was a third of the way through, I had to suppress a strong impulse to throw the thing away". Johnson recognised that in Bond there "was

25066-437: The writing is literary and the tradecraft believable. Noteworthy examples of the journalistic style and successful integration of fictional characters with historical events were the politico-military novels The Day of the Jackal (1971) by Frederick Forsyth and Eye of the Needle (1978) by Ken Follett . With the explosion of technology, Craig Thomas , launched the techno-thriller with Firefox (1977), describing

25232-425: Was The Zakhov Mission (1963) by the Bulgarian writer Andrei Gulyashki who had commissioned by Semichastny and was published simultaneously in Russian and Bulgarian. The success of The Zakhov Mission led to a follow-up novel, Zakhov vs. 007 , where Gulyashki freely violated English copyright laws by using the James Bond character without the permission of the Fleming estate (he had asked for permission in 1966 and

25398-411: Was a center of espionage, the city was frequently a setting for spy novels and films. Furthermore, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 made the wall into a symbol of Communist tyranny, which further increased the attraction for Western writers of setting a Cold War spy novel in Berlin. Perhaps the most memorable story set in Berlin was The Spy Who Came In From The Cold which in both the novel and

25564-447: Was an immediate success; P.G. Wodehouse said of it, "Terrific: when better novels of suspense are written, lead me to them." Lyall then left journalism in 1963 to become a full-time author. Lyall's first seven novels in the 1960s and early 1970s were action thrillers with different settings around the world. The Most Dangerous Game (1963) was set in Finnish Lapland . The film rights to Midnight Plus One (1965), in which an ex-spy

25730-405: Was called the Trout Memo and compared the deception of an enemy in wartime to fly fishing . The memo contained several schemes to be considered for use against the Axis powers to lure U-boats and German surface ships towards minefields. Number 28 on the list was an idea to plant misleading papers on a corpse that would be found by the enemy; the suggestion is similar to Operation Mincemeat ,

25896-464: Was commemorated on the Glenelg War Memorial. Fleming's elder brother Peter became a travel writer and married actress Celia Johnson . Peter served with the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, was later commissioned under Colin Gubbins to help establish the Auxiliary Units , and became involved in behind-the-lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war. Fleming had two younger brothers, Richard and Michael, who also served in

26062-441: Was concerned that the unit had been incorrectly used as a regular commando force rather than an intelligence-gathering unit. This wasted the men's specialist skills, risked their safety on operations that did not justify the use of such skilled operatives, and threatened the vital gathering of intelligence. Afterwards, the management of these units was revised. He also followed the unit into Germany after it located, in Tambach Castle,

26228-438: Was credited with defeating the Communist Huk guerrillas. The Ugly American was greatly influenced by the modernization theory, which held Communism was something alike to a childhood disease as the modernization theory held that as Third World nations modernized that this created social-economic tensions which a ruthless minority of Communists exploited to seize power; what was required from the United States were experts who knew

26394-461: Was denied). In Zakhov vs. 007 , the hero Avakoum Zakhov defeats James Bond, who is portrayed in an inverted fashion to how Fleming portrayed him; in Zakhov vs. 007 , Bond is portrayed as a sadistic killer, a brutal rapist and an arrogant misogynist, which stands in marked contrast to the kindly and gentle Zakhov who always treats women with respect. Zakhov is described as a spy, he more of a detective and unlike Bond, his tastes are modest. In 1966,

26560-437: Was given a position as a sub-editor and journalist for the company. In April 1933 Fleming spent time in Moscow , where he covered the Stalinist show trial of six engineers from the British company Metropolitan-Vickers . While there he applied for an interview with Soviet premier Joseph Stalin , and was amazed to receive a personally signed note apologising for not being able to attend. Upon returning from Moscow he ended

26726-403: Was in part made up of the 5th Battalion , King's Regiment , which supported the Second Army . It was responsible for securing targets of interest for the British military, including nuclear laboratories, gas research centres and individual rocket scientists. The unit's most notable discoveries came during the advance on the German port of Kiel , in the research centre for German engines used in

26892-411: Was known from 1934 to 1946, it is stated quite explicitly in Semnadtsat' mgnoveniy vesny (which is set in 1945) that he left the Soviet Union to go undercover in Nazi Germany "more than ten years ago", which means that Isayev was not involved in the Yezhovshchina . The June 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and its neighbours introduced new themes to espionage fiction - the conflict between Israel and

27058-422: Was later revealed in 1963 to be a long time Soviet spy, who had been recruited by Soviet intelligence in the early 1930s while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge. Greene's best known spy novel The Quiet American (1955), set in 1952 Vietnam featured a thinly disguised version of the real American intelligence officer, Major General Edward Lansdale as the villain. Greene had covered the Vietnam war in 1951-52 as

27224-483: Was married to Anne Charteris . She had divorced her husband, the 2nd Viscount Rothermere , because of her affair with the author. Fleming and Charteris had a son, Caspar. Fleming was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life and succumbed to heart disease in 1964 at the age of 56. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously; other writers have since produced Bond novels. Fleming's creation has appeared in film twenty-seven times, portrayed by six actors in

27390-435: Was the artist Augustus John . Amaryllis was conceived during a long-term affair between John and Evelyn which had started in 1923, six years after the death of Valentine. In 1914 Fleming attended Durnford School , a preparatory school on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset . He did not enjoy his time at Durnford; he suffered unpalatable food, physical hardship and bullying. In 1921 Fleming enrolled at Eton College . Not

27556-413: Was to be near the front line of an advance—sometimes in front of it—to seize enemy documents from previously targeted headquarters. The unit was based on a German group headed by Otto Skorzeny , who had undertaken similar activities in the Battle of Crete in May 1941. The German unit was thought by Fleming to be "one of the most outstanding innovations in German intelligence". Fleming did not fight in

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