Read The James Bond Bedside Companion for Free Online

which went into his next book, FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE. In Istanbul, Fleming met an Oxford-educated shipowner named Nazim Kalkavan, who gave the author an inside view of the city. Kalkavan became the model for the character of Darko Kerim, the head of the Secret Service station in Turkey. From Istanbul, Fleming took the Simplon-Orient Express to Paris, finding it to be less romantic than he had envisioned. From there he rejoined his family at their house at St Margaret's Bay, near Dover.
    That autumn, CASINO ROYALE was published in England in paperback by Pan Books, Ltd. But Ian Fleming was tiring of James Bond, and felt that he was running out of ideas. So for his next novel, he decided to try something different and began to think about how, on the advice of Raymond Chandler, to elevate the literary merits of the Bond books.
     
    I n January and February of 1956, Ian Fleming labored with what might have been James Bond's swan song. In the front of his own copy of FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE, he wrote that he "took great trouble" over this particular novel. It is clearly one of the author's best. The original manuscript, 228 pages long, was heavily corrected. At the end of Chapter Nine, in which Rosa Klebb attempts to seduce Tatiana Romanova in her office/apartment, Tatiana does not run out of the room in a panic. Instead, the chapter ends as Klebb sits on the sofa and gestures for Tatiana to sit beside her, saying they should become better acquainted! And the final scene is altered, as Bond is not kicked by the poisoned blade in Rosa Klebb's shoe. Instead, he succeeds in pinning the woman down with a chair. After she is taken away by Mathis' men, Bond tells Mathis he has a date with the "most beautiful woman in SMERSH" (Tatiana). Therefore, it was after Fleming returned from Goldeneye that he decided to "kill" Bond at the end of the book.
    About the time he was finishing the manuscript of his fifth novel, Fleming received a telegram invitation from Ivar Bryce to join Dr. Robert C. Murphy (American Museum of Natural History), Arthur Vemay (Bahamas Flamingo Protection Society), and Bryce in the first scientific expedition since 1916 to a flamingo colony on the island of Inagua. He couldn't resist such an invitation, and on March 15, he flew with the party to the small island in the Bahamas. The men lived in tents and roughed it as Fleming gathered material for what would be his next James Bond adventure. Inagua became the model for Dr. No's island fortress, Crab Key, and the marsh buggy on which the party rode was the germ for the "dragon" tank. It was pure adventure for Fleming.
    The party stayed part of the time at the house of a family called Ericson—three brothers who were virtually "The Lords of Inagua." Inagua had a small population of about 1,000, and the Ericsons employed them all in their salt works, salt being the family's (and island's) only export. The Ericsons were originally from Boston, two brothers graduates of Harvard, the other having done graduate work at MIT. The two Audubon wardens who guided the party around the island were Bahamian brothers, Jim and Sam Nixon. The center of activity on Inagua was Matthewtown, which consisted of a few fairly solid shacks and one communal store. Fleming wrote about his experience for the Sun day Times. Just before dawn on the first day, the group rode out in the buggy to the flamingo colony. Fleming, Bryce, and Dr. Murphy sat in garden chairs placed on a platform of the truck. Dr. Murphy wrote in his journal that as they rode through the hot wind, "stinging particles" began hurting their faces. The truck was moving through a swarm of tiny flies. Jim Nixon warned them that if one got in an eye, it would "burn like fire." The threesome immediately donned sunglasses. Arriving at the flamingo colony, Fleming wrote that everywhere one looked there was nothing but pink He began to appreciate even more the purpose of the expedition. The group had a good laugh as the marsh buggy rode