Inspirations for James Bond

Although the stories and characters were fictional, a number of elements had a real-life background, taken from people whom Fleming knew or events he was aware of.

[3] On the morning of 17 February 1952, Ian Fleming started writing what would become his first book, Casino Royale, at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica.

He typed out 2,000 words in the morning, directly from his own experiences and imagination[4] and finished work on the manuscript in just over a month,[5] completing it on 18 March 1952.

On another occasion, Fleming said: "I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, 'James Bond' was much better than something more interesting, like 'Peregrine Carruthers'.

[13] During the Second World War Fleming was the personal assistant to the director of the Naval Intelligence Division, Admiral John Godfrey.

Fleming used the experiences of his espionage career and other aspects of his life as inspiration when writing, including using names of school friends, acquaintances, relatives and lovers throughout his books.

[24] Regarding him, Fleming wrote in The Sunday Times of 21 October 1962, that Bond was: "a highly romanticized version of a true spy.

Bond's number - 007 - may have been assigned by Fleming in reference to one of British naval intelligence's key achievements of the First World War: the breaking of the German diplomatic code.

[59] One of the German documents cracked and read by the British was the Zimmermann Telegram, which was coded 0075,[60] and which was one of the factors that led to the US entering the war.