The Real Story_5of5_James Bond
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00:00For over 50 years, James Bond has been one of the best-loved fictional characters ever
00:10invented.
00:11The books have sold over 100 million copies, and the films have been seen by half the population
00:17of the planet.
00:19Bond's world seems like the ultimate male fantasy, filled with gadgets, girls, a gripping
00:26adventure.
00:27But how much did Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, take from real life?
00:3395% of what he wrote was based on fact, which is why James Bond is so intriguing, because
00:40you then ask the question, is this true?
00:43Are there people going around with a license to kill?
00:46In this film, we can reveal just how much of Ian Fleming's personality was poured into
00:51the pages of James Bond.
00:53He did have a lot of things that he enjoyed doing, which were the same, like driving,
00:58swimming underwater, skiing.
01:00He enjoyed danger.
01:04Fleming would base Bond on his wartime experience in British intelligence, but he was also inspired
01:10by real life spy gadgets, eccentric villains, and his own checkered love life.
01:18They are the books of an old rake.
01:20I mean, the titles are outrageous.
01:22Like a pussy galore.
01:23That's sheer obscenity.
01:24You should be ashamed of yourself.
01:28This is the story of how Ian Fleming created the greatest secret agent the world has ever
01:33known, and the extraordinary truth behind James Bond.
01:52James Bond first came to life on January 15th, 1952.
02:06His creator, Ian Fleming, had always wanted to write the spy story to end all spy stories.
02:13But when he sat down at his typewriter in his Jamaican villa, not even Fleming could
02:17have imagined the phenomenon he was about to create.
02:21It's a beautiful day, the birds are singing.
02:24He has swum out to the reef that morning.
02:27He's feeling pretty good.
02:29His wife-to-be, Anne Rothermere, is down in the garden somewhere.
02:33He puts a fresh sheet of paper in his battered typewriter, and begins to hammer out with
02:39three fingers the first words of Casino Royale.
02:44Fleming hadn't prepared any kind of outline or plot.
02:48He simply made it up as he went along.
02:52Three hours later, he'd typed out 2,000 words, and six weeks after that, he arrived at the
02:57last line of the novel.
03:07The James Bond stories would go on to captivate people all over the world.
03:11John Pearson, who was working with Fleming at the time, was impressed by the book's winning
03:15formula.
03:19I think really he was enormously, he was building on the books that he'd read as a schoolboy.
03:26They're escapist thrillers.
03:29And what he did was to add something to them.
03:31He added three things, and what he was criticized for was being guilty of sex, snobbery, and
03:37sadism.
03:38Well, absolutely right.
03:39You see, that's what you have got in the books, and what better extra ingredients to bring
03:43the English spy thriller up to date.
03:47But where was Ian Fleming finding the ingredients for his exciting new novels?
03:52Mr. Fleming, in your books, there's a great amount of detail.
03:55Is this detail based on personal experience?
03:59Do you make it up?
04:00Where does it come from?
04:03Well, I can say it's 90% from personal experience, really.
04:08If I started sticking too close to the espionage, true espionage work of today, I should be
04:14in trouble with the Official Secrets Act in England.
04:18When it came to drawing from personal experience, Ian Fleming had a rich and varied life.
04:24Like James Bond, Fleming was half Scottish, born into a wealthy family and sent to the
04:29best schools.
04:30He spent much of his twenties working as a reporter, where he developed a love of foreign
04:35travel and a nose for a good story.
04:38But on the eve of World War II, Fleming was catapulted into a role that would change his
04:43life forever, and formed the basis for the character of James Bond.
04:48Fleming was recruited by the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1939.
04:55He was asked to go to lunch by two admirals, and one of the things about Fleming to remember
05:01is that he had a great ability to charm older men.
05:06He didn't ingratiate himself to them, but he was a very energetic, zestful, good companion.
05:11And the bloke in charge was a man called Admiral Godfrey, who was a very sort of prestigious,
05:17impressive man.
05:19But actually he was a bit of an old teddy bear too, and he loved Ian.
05:24Admiral Godfrey was the Director of Naval Intelligence, the department charged with
05:28waging secret warfare against the German Navy.
05:33He wanted Ian Fleming to become his assistant at the Admiralty.
05:37For Fleming, the opportunity was a dream come true.
05:41Ian was in this extraordinary, sort of wonderful position for a future thriller writer, of
05:48being right at the heart of the whole British intelligence operation in the war.
05:54With his exciting new job, Fleming was perfectly placed to gather material for his future series
06:00of spy novels.
06:03He travelled extensively with Admiral Godfrey, who was his boss, and he went to all sorts
06:08of places that almost nobody else could get to, and he saw them in a pretty glamorous
06:13way.
06:14I mean, this was another reason for thinking that Fleming's wartime life was actually
06:17quite good fun.
06:19And he got a taste for foreign travel that never left him.
06:25The gambling scene in the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, was inspired by a visit to
06:30Lisbon in 1941.
06:34Fleming was supposed to be there on government business, but he ran into trouble when he
06:39took an evening off to try and meet some German spies.
06:43We talked to some of our Secret Service chaps there, and they said, well, if you want to
06:47see these German agents, you'll find most of them gambling in the casino at Estoril.
06:52I suddenly had the brilliant idea that I would take on these Germans and strip them of their
06:58funds.
07:00Fleming went off to the casino, but after several hours on the gaming tables, he found
07:04himself completely cleared out.
07:06Of course, this even framed Ian's thriller writer's imagination.
07:12He had docketed it away, as he would do, you see.
07:15And there were lots of stories like this that he put at the back of his thriller writer's
07:20mind.
07:21When Fleming came to write Casino Royale, this time his hero James Bond would win in
07:27a high-stakes card game against the villain.
07:33It was a nine, a wonderful nine of hearts, the card known in gypsy magic as a whisper
07:38of love, a whisper of hate.
07:41The card that meant almost certain victory for Bond.
07:50As the war went on, Fleming expanded his role in naval intelligence.
07:55His boss, Admiral Godfrey, had clearly spotted something special in his imaginative assistant.
08:02I think Godfrey brought in a lot of people who weren't to do with the sort of old traditional
08:07navy, and I think that he wanted, you know, people from all different walks of life who
08:13were interesting in their own ways, and who could sort of think out of the box.
08:19Fleming was clearly inspired by Godfrey, and would later turn him into a character in his
08:24novels.
08:25M, head of the British Secret Service, and James Bond's boss.
08:32M gestured to the chair opposite him across the red leather desk.
08:38Bond sat down and looked across into the tranquil, lying sailor's face that he loved, honoured and obeyed.
08:48The similarities are striking, the way in which M is described, how he looks, the colour
08:54of his eyes, his naval manner, very brusque, takes no nonsense.
09:00Godfrey was a fascinating character, tremendously irascible, bad-tempered, grumpy, demanding,
09:06but he was also very indulgent of Fleming, he was obviously very fond of Ian.
09:11For us as grandchildren, he was very intimidating, and we always knew that he was this great
09:19naval man, and so whenever we went to stay, we knew that we had to behave, and we had
09:24to be very quiet, and there were lots of rules, I mean, you should never slam doors
09:30or anything.
09:31Oh, slamming doors, yeah.
09:33We were occasionally allowed to stay up for dinner, which was a big thing, the pouring
09:38of the wine and everything was quite a, you know, there was a distinct code of behaviour.
09:45Also in his study were all the first editions of Ian Fleming's books.
09:52Every year he was given a first edition, and Ian Fleming wrote to M from Ian.
10:00Fleming's role in the Admiralty became increasingly powerful as the war went on.
10:05He loved dreaming up radical ideas that might win the war.
10:09One plan was so extraordinary that parts of it would also make it into the pages of James
10:14Bond.
10:16British naval intelligence were desperately trying to intercept German radio messages
10:21which were coded using an elaborate scrambling machine called an Enigma.
10:26The Enigma code was supposedly uncrackable, but Ian Fleming came up with an ingenious
10:31way of stealing its key.
10:36Fleming knew that every ship in the German navy had a code book, so what they needed
10:41to do was to capture a German ship and then just sail it into an English port.
10:51Fleming's plan involved taking a captured German plane and crash landing it into the
10:56English Channel.
10:58Nearby German ships would immediately send a rescue boat to save the occupants of the
11:03sinking aircraft.
11:05But as soon as this boat arrived, British airmen would emerge from the plane, storm
11:09the boat, seize the code book and take it back to the UK.
11:14It got quite a long way, this particular thing.
11:17They found a Heinkel that had crash landed in a field, they fixed fireworks on the wings
11:23to make it look like it was exploding so that they could ditch it quite near a German ship.
11:29They had all the uniforms made, Fleming went to have his uniform measured up.
11:34This was a fantastical idea, it came fairly close to reality, but it wouldn't have worked
11:39I don't think, because finally someone from the Admiralty pointed out that if you crash
11:44a German bomber it sinks very, very fast, and so the likelihood that any of the people
11:49inside this thing would have survived was just about nil.
11:54Operation Ruthless may have been unsuccessful, but it was the perfect dress rehearsal for
11:58James Bond.
12:01Years later, Bond would steal an encryption machine in From Russia With Love.
12:07Bond reached up and hauled down the heavy case and put it on the seat.
12:11He tore the zip sideways and looked in.
12:14Yes, a grey Japaned metal case with three rows of squat keys, rather like a typewriter.
12:21With his job in the heart of British naval intelligence, Ian Fleming would never be short
12:25of inspiration for his future series of Bond novels.
12:29But did this mean that Fleming was the real James Bond?
12:33At first glance, there were certain similarities between the author and his fictional secret
12:38agent.
12:39He always said that he had some of Bond's foibles, but he didn't see himself, Ian, as
12:44a character like the same character as Bond.
12:47He did have a lot of things that he enjoyed doing which were the same, like driving, cars,
12:55skiing, swimming underwater, and he enjoyed danger.
13:02But although Fleming may have enjoyed danger, in reality he was kept away from active service
13:07throughout World War II.
13:10He was never actually in action himself, and that's one of these curious things about him
13:17which was always a source of extreme dissatisfaction with himself.
13:21Admiral Godfrey said he was simply too important, really, to be allowed to go on specific missions
13:28because if he'd been captured, he knew far too much.
13:31Fleming knew where all the bodies were buried and he would have been an absolute goldmine
13:35to German intelligence.
13:38Fleming may have been desk-bound, but he would still find excitement during the war by sending
13:43other people off on daring missions.
13:46In summer 1942, he created a specialized commando unit that would operate behind enemy lines.
13:54Called 30 AU, Fleming's commandos would race ahead of front-line troops, capturing documents
14:00and hardware before they were destroyed.
14:04Like were any of them, the inspiration for the action hero side of James Bond.
14:11One of the problems of finding an individual who is more like James Bond than anybody else
14:18is the fact that that was a time when there were more heroes around than you can shake
14:25a stick at.
14:26And that is probably why so many people claim to be James Bond, because there were a lot
14:31of people doing Bond-like things during the Second World War.
14:35He and Fleming came across dozens of real-life action heroes or amazing spies throughout
14:41the war, and any one of them could have been plucked from the pages of James Bond.
14:47Michael Mason, a tough ex-boxing champion who worked for Fleming behind enemy lines.
14:53Or the Yugoslav double agent, Dusko Popov, who dated one of France's most glamorous movie
14:59stars, Simone Simon.
15:02But of all the characters in Fleming's commando unit, 30 AU, one agent stands out.
15:08Patrick Diehl-Jobe.
15:11This newly-discovered home movie footage gives a rare glimpse of this amazing individual.
15:17A keen skier and superb marksman, Patrick Diehl-Jobe had already seen service as a seaman,
15:24commando, submariner, and spy.
15:28But on top of his extraordinary list of achievements, he was known for his swashbuckling disregard
15:34for red tape.
15:36In May 1940, he single-handedly organized a flotilla of fishing boats to evacuate the
15:42Norwegian town of Narvik.
15:45Diehl-Jobe was defying the British Navy, who had ordered him not to concern himself with
15:50the civilian population.
15:54My father knew that the Germans would bomb the place within two or three days, and the
16:01Navy had signaled and said, look, do not evacuate the Norwegians.
16:06And he thought that this was absolutely wrong.
16:09And he went to the mayor of Narvik and said, look, I have got boats.
16:14And he evacuated all the women and children, probably about 4,000 or 5,000 people.
16:19He is now a hero in Narvik, because actually, they realized that without that, an enormous
16:24number of people would have been killed, because the Germans came back and bombed it two days
16:28later.
16:33The reason that he was not court-martialed, as he was going to be, was that the Norwegian
16:37king immediately gave him a decoration.
16:41And so, obviously, you could not court-martial somebody who has just been decorated by the
16:45Norwegian king.
16:47When Ian Fleming met Diehl-Job in 1944, he was so impressed that he made him commander
16:52of one of 30 AU's top teams.
16:56His most stunning exploit came in April 1945, when he and three of his men discovered 16
17:03high-speed submarines at one of Germany's largest shipyards.
17:08Diehl-Job's unit took several prisoners, rescued vital documents, and stopped the British Army
17:13from shelling the shipyard and destroying everything inside it.
17:20But was Patrick Diehl-Job an inspiration for Fleming's James Bond?
17:26His war records had been protected by the Official Secrets Act for over 50 years.
17:31But today, his son Ian is opening them for the very first time.
17:34This is a confidential report on 30th Advanced Unit, 30 AU, an unusual officer who possesses
17:42no fear of danger, keeps himself as an exceptionally high state of physical fitness, can withstand
17:48an unusual amount of hardship and exposure, excels at fieldwork, where individual effort,
17:54bravery and self-reliance are required, intensely individual officer whose temperament makes
17:59him appear erratic in behavior when he's expected to work with others.
18:04It's very interesting, because my father has always been a rather unusual man.
18:12It confirms what I've always known.
18:14To people that he likes and appreciates, he's a very, very good, hard-working man.
18:19To people that he doesn't like, he's quite rude to them.
18:22Diehl-Job's heroic exploits and defiance of authority make him closer than any other candidate
18:27to being the basis for the action hero side of James Bond.
18:31But he always denied that he was the model for 007.
18:37My father always said, well, it can't be me, because I only married one girl.
18:42Other people have said that he was the inspiration of Bond, and people told him at the time that
18:48you are the inspiration for Bond.
18:51And I can understand why people think that, but I'm not sure that he is totally the origin
18:57of James Bond.
18:59He's certainly part of it.
19:02With men like Patrick Diehl-Job in his unit, Ian Fleming had no shortage of models for
19:08his secret agent hero, even if he never went on the missions himself.
19:15One could read Bond as blueprints, in a way, of what Fleming himself would love to have done.
19:22He knew all about it.
19:23He knew how it was done.
19:25But having never really been the man who did it himself, I think there's an element of
19:28wish fulfillment in Bond.
19:31Fleming may have been inspired by other people's actions, but as he wrote his novels, much
19:36of James Bond was shaped by his own personality.
19:40James Bond is so much a part of Ian Fleming that you cannot distinguish between the two.
19:49He may have done many things that Ian Fleming never did, but only dreamt about.
19:55But Ian Fleming lived with this character, his alter ego, for ten years or more, writing
20:01two thousand words in three hours, every day for six weeks.
20:05You could not do that unless you absolutely understood that character, and that character
20:11was part of you.
20:14Everything about him is Ian.
20:15He put...
20:16The strange thing about it, and when I go and see the films, I'm still struck by how
20:22like Ian they really are.
20:24Ian is at the center of them all.
20:27He's an elegant man.
20:29He's not a lout.
20:30He's brave.
20:31It really is Ian right through.
20:37Six actors have played James Bond in the official movies.
20:41As the first cinematic 007, Sean Connery's rugged scoundrel is probably the closest match
20:47to the Bond in the books.
20:50Roger Moore was light-hearted and debonair, but Bond's sensitive side can be seen most
20:56clearly in the latest incarnation, Daniel Craig.
21:01I think what's interesting is they're now coming back to Ian's original feelings about
21:08Bond is that he was a human being who hurt, who got hurt by women, by baddies, and, you
21:15know, bled.
21:16He didn't...
21:17He wasn't just a Superman.
21:18He was a hero, funnily enough.
21:20He said that.
21:24Ian Fleming always intended Bond to be a flawed individual.
21:28Just like his author, Bond could be cruel and spiteful, particularly in the way that
21:33he treated and regarded women.
21:37Bond does reflect part of the darker side of Fleming's character.
21:42Certainly his attitude to women is perhaps representative of Fleming's own often rather
21:47cruel approach to women.
21:50Bond is not a character who loves easily.
21:53Like Bond, Fleming had spent years leading a playboy lifestyle.
21:58His favorite seduction technique was to ply women with champagne and sausages before luring
22:04them into bed.
22:06Many of Fleming's lovers would reappear in his fiction, transformed into the glamorous
22:12Bond girls.
22:14They are the books of an old rake.
22:19I mean, the titles are outrageous.
22:22There's heroines on there.
22:24Think of Pussy Galore.
22:25That's sheer obscenity.
22:26You should be ashamed of yourself.
22:29But Fleming had one wartime love affair that would change his outlook on women forever.
22:36He had a girlfriend during the war called Muriel Wright, who was terribly beautiful.
22:42She was a model.
22:43She was very vivacious.
22:44She was great fun.
22:45She was, importantly for Fleming, very undemanding of him, very pliant.
22:51And she was also a tragic figure because she was killed in the middle of the war during
22:56the Blitz.
22:58And Fleming was distraught as a result of this.
23:02And I think it affected him very deeply in quite profound psychological ways.
23:07After the heartbreak of Muriel Wright's death, Ian Fleming decided to settle down.
23:14He returned to journalism after the war, but spent every winter in Jamaica trying to write
23:20his first Bond novel.
23:25In 1952, he became engaged to his long-term mistress, Anne.
23:34Fleming had mixed feelings about entering into marriage, but the change to his bachelor
23:39lifestyle finally seemed to jolt him into writing Casino Royale.
23:48I think there's a lot of factors which came together at that moment as to why Fleming
23:54chose that particular point to start writing his book.
23:58Yes, he was about to get married, and he had done just about everything else there was
24:03to do in Jamaica.
24:05He did a bit of this, he did a bit of that, but ultimately he needed something to get
24:09his teeth into, something that he'd been promising himself that he was going to do for a long
24:14time.
24:18But even as the books were hitting the shelves, in private, Fleming hardly spoke about his
24:23new writing venture.
24:25I worked for him for nearly a year before I knew that he was writing Bond books.
24:30They were not being wildly successful at the time, and they were very arcane books
24:36for a few.
24:37Someone told me he wrote these thrillers, and I asked him about it.
24:40My dear boy, he said, oh, we mustn't talk about that, they're too boring, too boring.
24:44Talk about false modesty and hidden genius.
24:50Despite his humility, Fleming was fiercely proud of the stories he was creating and researched
24:56every detail to ensure maximum accuracy.
25:04He traveled to countries that would inspire James Bond stories.
25:08America, France, Japan, and of course, the Caribbean.
25:13He also loved fine dining, but he didn't share Bond's knowledge of how to mix a drink.
25:20So the idea of Ian being a sophisticated good liver was nonsense.
25:26He really didn't know anything about wine, and he didn't really know how to mix a good
25:31martini.
25:32I mean, that is true, he didn't.
25:34And all the stuff about shake and not stirred, that's typical Ian.
25:39It's a clever journalist saying, what the fuck can I say?
25:42How do you do a martini?
25:44Shake and not stirred, ah, good phrase.
25:45You see, that's Ian.
25:48His job as a thriller writer was to thrill the audience, and that meant describing all
25:53the taste sensations, the touch sensations, the experience of driving in a fast car with
26:00a hood down, the experience of eating toast and caviar.
26:04All of those things, Fleming wanted his audience to experience, and therefore he had to experience
26:09it.
26:10The books gave people a bit of escapism with the exotic locations, the meals that Ian described
26:15in detail, and the drinks.
26:17But the fact was, when Ian wrote these books, Britain was still a hungry nation, recovering
26:22from the war and the rationing, and so it was a great thing to have food described so
26:29wonderfully.
26:30While mademoiselle is enjoying the strawberries, I will have half an avocado pear with a little
26:36French dressing.
26:37And do you approve?
26:39Now, an avocado pear was not in Sainsbury's in 1953.
26:45Very few people had probably seen an avocado pear.
26:48Many people hadn't even seen a banana.
26:51And to have this, and to be a secret agent, sitting opposite the most beautiful girl in
26:58the world, in a fantastic dress, and to be drinking the best champagne, is so seductive.
27:05Who wouldn't want to be sitting where James Bond is sitting?
27:09But Fleming wasn't just researching fine food for his novels.
27:16He also kept a keen eye on what was happening in the Cold War.
27:20I think there's no doubt that certainly the contemporary readers of Fleming felt that
27:25what they were getting was a version of reality.
27:28So he was absolutely determined to make them as believable as they could be.
27:33And to that end, he specifically cited various news events as evidence that what he was describing,
27:41while it was a sort of fantasy, was not outlandish, was not impossible.
27:46And among those events, there are several that stand out.
27:49The Buster Crab case.
27:53Buster Crab was a diver working for the British Secret Service.
27:58In April 1956, he was sent to inspect the newfangled propeller of a ship carrying the
28:03Russian president on a visit to Britain.
28:07Crab then mysteriously disappeared in one of the strangest incidents of the Cold War.
28:14Buster Crab is one of these characters who conspiracy theorists love to talk about.
28:21Most people think that he went straight to the bottom, or something terrible happened
28:25to him, and would continue to think that were it not for the fact that six weeks later,
28:32Buster Crab's headless corpse was washed up on the beach a few miles away.
28:43Commander Crab's name has jumped into the news since the Soviet cruiser...
28:46Crab's body was found at the British press had a field...
28:49What was Commander Crab doing when he disappeared?
28:51Was he spying on the Soviet cruiser?
28:53Crab's death was never explained, but Ian Fleming would rewrite the real-life incident
28:58for his hero, James Bond.
29:01Fleming was well aware of these stories, and in fact used a similar event in Thunderball,
29:07where James Bond makes an underwater investigation of the Disco Volante, the villain's boat,
29:15and is engaged in a similar underwater battle with a sentry.
29:22Anyone reading that in the 1950s would absolutely see that this was very similar to what happened
29:28to Buster Crab.
29:29The Buster Crab story wasn't the only time that Fleming found inspiration from the Cold
29:34War.
29:36For the villains in the Bond novels, Fleming drew from a wide range of sources.
29:42Well, Fleming himself wrote that it was particularly hard to produce believable villains, yet he
29:50managed brilliantly.
29:51Again, he plucked them from real life.
29:55There was a high probability if you knew Fleming, or you had crossed Fleming, that you might
29:59end up in his books.
30:02The villain's birth that I like most is really the story of Goldfinger, who was based, we
30:10are told, on an architect called Erno Goldfinger, blameless man, and in some ways a rather brilliant
30:16modernist architect.
30:17But Fleming didn't like his buildings.
30:20He particularly didn't like a row of buildings in Hampstead that he used to walk past.
30:25And so, entirely as a way of getting at Goldfinger, he called one of his principal villains not
30:31Erno Goldfinger, but Stavro Goldfinger.
30:35Now Goldfinger, the real Goldfinger, was enraged by this, understandably, and even threatened
30:39to stop the publication of the book.
30:43Goldfinger decided not to sue, and Fleming's publishers settled his costs.
30:48He wasn't the only real-life person turned into a baddie.
30:51The newspapers were filled with juicy tales of spies defecting from the Soviet Union,
31:00and some of them were even rumored to be assassins.
31:04The West began to wake up to the fact that there were these Soviet James Bonds with licenses
31:12to kill, wandering around Europe prosecuting their business, which was fascinating and
31:19appalling at the same time.
31:22Fleming was just as fascinated, and even though it didn't exist in Britain's real-life secret
31:26service, he gave James Bond his own license to kill.
31:32One defector, Nikolai Koklov, also came armed with some extraordinary weapons.
31:38He was an experienced Russian spy and saboteur who defected to the West in the 1950s, and
31:45brought with him a number of rather extraordinary gizmos and gadgets that look as if they came
31:49straight out of Kew's laboratory, cigarette cases that fired special poison bullets and
31:55that kind of thing.
31:56But Fleming cited Koklov and his case as proof that really what he was describing was not
32:03impossible at all.
32:06Fleming already had his own personal experience of spy gadgets.
32:11During the war he was fascinated by the use of particular sorts of technology for particular
32:16ends.
32:17There was a character involved in the secret service at that point called Fraser Smith,
32:24who would have made a model for Kew had there been a character called Kew in the books.
32:30There isn't in fact, there is a Kew section which did exist and was involved in creating
32:35various sorts of technology.
32:37But Fleming did work very closely with Fraser Smith to produce various sorts of gadget and
32:42gizmo, exploding golf balls and things that you, cigarette cases you could hide cameras
32:48in and that kind of thing.
32:50So Fleming from an early, early part of his wartime career was fascinated by the machines
32:54that make espionage run.
32:57Fraser Smith's department also made weapons for Britain's elite agents working behind
33:02enemy lines, the Special Operations Executive or SOE.
33:07These are some of the tools and weapons used by SOE in their work.
33:12One item which we have here, it looks like a pipe but in fact it's a pistol.
33:16You can place a 2-2 cartridge in the chamber there, close it and here we have a trigger.
33:24The stem of the pipe forms the barrel of the gun.
33:27This pencil contains a compass, a miniature compass of about three millimetres in diameter.
33:34We have saws, one's wrapped in card, there's a saw there hidden in a piece of rubber.
33:41Another SOE device is this tear gas pen.
33:45That little ball bearing is actually the trigger which can be hidden by the pen clip and you
33:51move that round and press it.
33:54Some more conventional weapons were used obviously during the war by SOE.
33:59This little Spanish 6.35 millimetre pistol was the kind of pistol which SOE were very
34:04keen to get hold of because they could arm their agents with it who were out in the field
34:09and if they were found with it, it wouldn't necessarily link them with British intelligence.
34:15And familiarity with this sort of weapon may well have been what led Ian Fleming to select
34:19this pistol, the Beretta 1919, as a suitable weapon he thought to arm James Bond with in
34:25the first of his books.
34:27It's rather better made than the Spanish pistol but it's still chambered for the 6.35 millimetre
34:34cartridge which is a round of fairly marginal lethality.
34:39But several novels later, Fleming would change his mind about Bond's Beretta and this time
34:44the inspiration would come from an unusual source, one of his readers.
34:50He was contacted soon after I think the second Bond book came out by a man called Boothroyd
34:56who was a brilliant gun expert who said, you've got to swap Bond's guns, he's not using the
35:01right gun, you've got to get him a different gun.
35:05Boothroyd told Fleming that the Beretta was a ladies' gun and suggested a more powerful
35:10alternative, the Walther PPK.
35:13A grateful Fleming returned the favour by turning Boothroyd into a character in Dr. No.
35:32What Fleming then realised is that there were so many handgun fanatics out there who were
35:38so interested in what Bond was doing with his gun that they would write to Fleming and
35:42Fleming would just send the letters straight on to Boothroyd and he ended up lecturing
35:47on the 007 circuit and became a star, in fact, technical consultant for the first James Bond
35:54film.
35:55But Fleming's readers didn't just tell him to swap Bond's handguns.
36:00In fact, it was another 007 fan who persuaded Fleming to change Bond's car into the legendary
36:07Aston Martin.
36:10Bond originally starts out by driving a Bentley, which was a museum piece, even by the 1950s.
36:18And this reader thought that Bond really needed something a bit more modern and what about
36:23the DB3 and why doesn't Fleming go and try it?
36:27And Fleming did and decided that this was the car.
36:31And 50 years later, James Bond is still driving an Aston Martin, so probably the greatest
36:38car franchise ever.
36:41By the time the movies were made, Bond had the latest Aston Martin, the DB5, complete
36:47with revolving number plates, secret guns, an on-board transmitter and lethal wheel sides
36:56to push other cars off the road.
37:02As the movies became bigger and bolder, Bond's gadgets and vehicles built from the books
37:09became even more fantastical.
37:14You Only Live Twice featured the extraordinary miniature gyrocopter Little Nellie, designed
37:19and flown by pilot Ken Wallace.
37:22The Little Nellie is very much for real, actually.
37:25Right from the start, I decided that these had a working role.
37:30She has a sister that has been back in military markings and has been taking part in further
37:35military trials.
37:37She's been carried in a C-130 Hercules, been flown into the battle area, and the moment
37:42the C-130 has landed, she's rolled down and they've got eyes in the sky.
37:47Apart from the reconnaissance capability, she has a ground attack capability.
37:52She could carry as many as six of them if necessary and no question about it, she could
37:57attack as well as do reconnaissance.
38:03Even at the ripe old age of 93, Ken Wallace still flies gyrocopters.
38:10When Little Nellie appeared in the movie, the Bond producers wanted her to look even
38:30more dangerous for the film's famous battle sequence.
38:35I asked Wing Commander Wallace to come to Pinewood and demonstrate that gyrocopter.
38:41And of course, then I redesigned it with colors and rockets and God knows what.
38:46We were trying to be as realistic as possible, not to cheat the audience.
38:57The gyrocopter was fitted with real life weapons, some of which could even have fired live rounds.
39:04She has simulated machine guns here.
39:07They fire 30 explosive charges in each gun, and there's an electric motor that runs the
39:13switch around, so it's flash, flash, flash from the guns, but nothing actually comes out.
39:18These smaller rockets are genuine rockets, they are actually fired time and time again
39:24in the film.
39:25And then these represent the so-called heat-seeking missiles, and they were fired off the aircraft
39:32with powerful rocket motors, and they could have been for real as well.
39:36So there's no question about it, it could fire real weapons and it could knock out another
39:41aircraft or tank.
39:44With its winning formula of guns, gadgets, girls, and gripping storylines, James Bond
39:50has truly become a cult phenomenon.
39:54The Bond movies began in 1962, and with Sean Connery playing the role of 007, they were
40:01soon captivating audiences all over the world.
40:05Meanwhile, President Kennedy had named From Russia With Love as one of his ten favorite
40:10books, and James Bond was taking the United States by storm.
40:15007's rise to fame was nothing short of meteoric, but back in his Jamaican villa, Bond's creator
40:22Ian Fleming was privately feeling the strain.
40:26He had a very strict routine, he used to be at GoldenEye for January and February,
40:30and he wrote for three hours in the morning and then another hour in the evening.
40:35When he came back, he would then publicize the book he'd written the previous year, edit
40:41the one that he was writing, and also have to think of the next adventure, which he was
40:46going to have to write on his next holiday, following January.
40:49So at any one point, Ian Fleming was involved with three Bond books.
40:56Fleming was finding the pressure to produce Bond more and more exhausting.
41:01Even as he wrote the fifth book, he was already beginning to think the unthinkable.
41:06Should he bring his secret agent story to an end?
41:12He actually toyed with killing him off many times in the series, and at the end of From
41:19Russia With Love, you don't know whether Bond has survived or not.
41:24He gets stabbed in the shins by a poison spike that has come out of the front of Rosa
41:31Klebb's boot.
41:34Now he had to gasp for breath.
41:37Again, his hand moved up towards his cold face.
41:40He had an impression of Mephis starting towards him.
41:44Bond felt his knees begin to buckle.
41:48He said, or thought he said, I've already got the loveliest.
41:55Bond pivoted slowly on his heel and crashed headlong to the wine red floor.
42:04Many readers believed it was the end of James Bond.
42:07Fleming was deluged with letters to keep him going.
42:10In fact, Fleming had already written the next book by the time that came out, but it was
42:16a sort of measure of how he had entered the public consciousness that he couldn't just
42:22be killed off.
42:24But James Bond would never be killed off.
42:27By the time the next novel appeared, Bond was back and very much alive and well.
42:33And in the movie From Russia With Love, Bond's death was noticeably absent.
42:38He simply got the girl.
42:40As the public image of James Bond passed into Sean Connery's hands, Ian Fleming retreated
42:45from the limelight, staying in the countryside and playing golf with friends.
42:50By the time he began writing The Man With the Golden Gun, the 12th James Bond novel,
42:55Fleming secretly knew that this would be his final story.
43:03Fleming certainly grew tired of Bond.
43:06I think the weariness of maintaining this fiction, this fantasy, got to him.
43:12I think Ian was quite fed up by the time he finished writing them.
43:15It takes a lot of energy to write a book and to keep up the pace.
43:19I mean, one a year.
43:21Fleming wasn't simply fed up with his punishing schedule.
43:24He was still barely in his 50s, but his body was falling apart after a lifetime of indulgence.
43:30As his health began to fail, because he was a very heavy drinker and smoker all his life,
43:36he had a heart attack in 1961.
43:38He found the strain of creating yet another Bond really tough.
43:43And that's why he began to feel out of love with his character.
43:48And to some, that is why the later books don't have quite the dash and verve of the earlier books.
43:56Fleming's ill health continued to plague him, and he was forced to cut his working schedule
44:01to an hour and a half a day as he wrote his final Bond novel.
44:07By the time he completed The Man with the Golden Gun on March 14, 1964,
44:13Fleming's longstanding relationship with 007 had come to an end.
44:19It's a bit far-fetched, perhaps, but, you know, I think this monster that he created,
44:24all this Frankenstein-like figure that he dreamed up, finally turned on its creator.
44:33By the summer of 1964, Fleming's heart had become weaker than ever,
44:38and he had very little to do with James Bond.
44:42The third movie, Goldfinger, had been completed, but he would never make it to the premiere.
44:50Ian Fleming died on August 12, 1964, aged just 56.
44:57The end of it was that he did finally get one thing he really wanted,
45:01which was to be made the captain of Sandwich Golf Club.
45:05It was actually, or virtually, while he was playing golf that he had the heart attack,
45:09which killed him three hours later.
45:12And so I always feel that, you know, with that, that was when Bond killed his only real victim.
45:20Today, over half a century after James Bond was first created,
45:24the iconic secret agent is more popular than ever.
45:30The extraordinary truth of Ian Fleming's own experiences
45:34has given the world a hero whose fantasy life is far closer to reality than anyone could ever have imagined.
45:41And the breathtaking blend of guns, gadgets, and gorgeous girls
45:48remains remarkably close to Fleming's original vision.
45:52I understand the test of time really well.
45:54Bond, in some ways, was the first of a thriller genre that really hasn't changed all that much since.
46:00Fleming set the rules, and I think we still, in some ways, abide by them.