'James Bond, Reel or Real?' was the title I gave to my website in 2000, when I first began doing this. I wanted to discuss the way that people blur fiction and reality, ending up with a version they are unsure of. At the time, I still had the subjects of my Bachelors Degree fresh in my mind and the overwhelming comparison I found myself making, though a grand one, was that Shakespeare had set out review the history of the Wars of the Roses, and had reinterpreted history witch so much success that we are now sometimes unsure of what is fact and what is fiction.
Perhaps the best example, and certainly best known, is that of Richard III. Shakespeare's Richard is a child-killing psychopath, physically deformed to boot. The version of Richard that is generally accepted by many today is that he was such a person and should be reviled for it. No English King since has taken the name Richard.
I'm not going to set out my stall to defend Richard III, I don't know enough about it to ensure that what I say is wholly accurate. What I can say is that Richard is known to have been a genuine patron of the arts and there are many, though still in the minority, that believe that Richard has been much maligned.
We have to think of Shakespeare's possible reasons for this. Shakespeare had Elizabeth I as a patron - a direct descendent of Henry VII (Henry Tudor), who deposed Richard at Bosworth. Making Richard out to have been 'alright really' would have been somewhat unwise. Elizabeth took Shakespeare's history plays very seriously - on seeing Richard II for the first time she remarked that she was Richard! His use of favourites and his blindness to the path he was leading himself along struck a cord with Elizabeth who left quite shocked by the consequences that befell her predecessor in 1399.
I don't wish to labour the point, but just to mention that even those we, quite rightly, hold in high esteem are not incapable of presenting things in a way that is necessarily fair and accurate.
What then does this have to do with the 'real' James Bond? Everything and nothing is the cryptic answer. Whereas Shakespeare took a real person and wove them into fiction, which later became accepted by many as fact, Bond is a fictional person that many assume to have been real. Many people believe that James Bond must be based on a real person and that someone with many of those characteristics and maybe some very impressive stories to tell has actually existed. Personally, I have never believed this.
Contenders
A reading of Andrew Lycett's biography of Fleming introduces a complex and brooding man who, despite his fame and success, was overshadowed by his father and his own failure to live out the 'action man' role that he craved so much. Although Fleming worked in the Intelligence world, it was never in the capacity of a spy and yet many rumours to this effect have abounded. As a piece of anecdotal evidence, a while ago I was at my doctor's surgery for a minor procedure and amongst a variety of things we got to discussing James Bond. At this point my doctor reeled off a story of how Fleming once 'despatched' somebody on the Orient Express. This may be true, but is highly unlikely to be so, yet it fits with the image of Fleming that many people like to conjure up.
The one name that keeps recurring as a potential 'real' Bond is Fitzroy Maclean. Maclean only died within the last few years, atwhich point the speculation about him being some sort of role model for Bond was discussed again. Maclean carried out covert operations in Yugoslavia and has written what I'm told is a vary entertaining book about it. Maclean may or may not have had some of the characteristics of Bond, but if one looked hard enough, a Bond-like person would eventually be found, yet would that person have actually been a silent contributor to the novel that Fleming penned between 1953 and his death in 1964?
Another possible contender is Commander 'Buster' Crabb who drowned in 1956 'testing' equipment off Portsmouth Harbour. His records are now declassified and can be downloaded here (14MB zip file). Commander Crabb (Lionel Kenneth Philip Crabb) is a name that is often used in connection with James Bond. In fact, the National Archives at Kew released his records for free download under the advert that he was a likely 'real' Bond.
Occasionally, people contact me with names of people they think might be the 'real' Bond and ask me if they are right. My answer is always the same, I don't think there ever was one.
In the course of my research I did a lot of reading into Fleming himself and the one thing that I found was that as well as being quite a bleak character in many ways, Fleming was also transparent in his writing. This is not a criticism, it is merely an observation. If you read Jeremy Black's The Politics of Bond or better still Ian Fleming by Andrew Lycett, you will see that almost all of the early characters that Fleming uses are closely based on people he has met. In fact, he changed little.
This would appear to suggest that I'm talking rubbish about there being no 'real' Bond, but that is where he is the exception that proves the rule. Fleming always referred to Bond as his 'pillow fantasy', which in part alludes to the fact that Fleming had created the man he wished he had been in James Bond.
James Bond has all the same interests as Fleming - cars, smoking, gambling, golf, travel and so on. Bond spends quite a lot of time in Jamaica (Fleming's retreat) and often expresses opinions on it. If you read the Bond novels objectively, then the 'real' Bond does start to become clear. The 'real' Bond is Fleming and the fantasy of being the field agent that he so often read about.
The general consensus amongst academic researchers is that Bond was just a fantasy of Fleming's. This always seems to disappoint people and it somehow seems to tarnish the Bond novels. There is nothing wrong at all in Fleming using what he knew and building on that by using his imagination - it's what the majority of novelists do!
I've included below an excerpt from Lycett's book and also an article from Spectator magazine. I think the Spectator article sums this often-asked question better than I can.
Again, if we consider Fleming the man, it is true that certain aspects of his life – the intelligence work during the war, the house in Jamaica the friends in high places and the strings of mistresses – suggest romance, adventure and even wickedness; but closer inspection reveals that Fleming’s existence was a pretty humdrum affair, being distinguished from that of lesser men only by its ample circumstances. The intelligence work was done at a desk; the house in Jamaica was simply a holiday retreat; the powerful friends were the natural acquaintance of one born and brought up in a wealthy upper-class family; and the mistresses (to judge from some of the photographs in these pages) were many of them remarkably plain. Let us add that for most of his life Fleming sat in an office from nine to five (in a stockbroking firm before the war and in Kemsey House after it) or went on what were elaborate business trips.
Simon Raven, ‘The Natural Man’, Spectator, 28 October, 1966, pp. 552-554.
…could not help introducing a strong element of wish-fulfilment into his creation. James Bond was the man of action he would have liked to have been. Again Bond was a projection of the heroic image of his father, which he spent his life measuring up to and not quite emulating. More prosaically, Bond gave at least fictional form to Ian’s frustrated urge to have been out in the field during the war, a full-time secret agent, rather than a competent staff officer sitting, office-politicking and dreaming in Room 39 of the Admiralty.
A. Lycett, Ian Fleming, p. 223.
Books to Buy:
Eastern
Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean
