Thanks to Alexander Armstrong on Classic FM, I have learnt that today 5th October is Global James Bond Day. Apparently this is because the first film in the franchise, Dr No was released on this day in 1962. The day became James Bond Day in 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary, and the release of Adele’s Skyfall.
The writer in me asks why the films? Why not 13th April, the date in 1953 when Casino Royale was published? Well, you only have to look at the Global James Bond Day website to realise why. There is simply so much more you can do with the films. Actors, props, theme tunes, singers, song writers, can all get involved.
It’s prompted me to take another look at Ian Fleming. He died at only 56 from a heart attack. He was a very heavy smoker and drinker. He’d lunched at Royal St. George’s Golf Club and dined at his hotel. He collapsed shortly after dinner. Apparently his last recorded words were an apology to the ambulance crew saying “I am sorry to trouble you chaps. I don’t know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days.”
I was interested to learn that Fleming’s mental image of Bond was based on Hoagy Carmichael, the songwriter who wrote, amongst many others, Georgia on My Mind (lyrics by Stuart Gorrell).
Ian Fleming is one of the writers to have influenced me. Certainly the discovery that Sir Anthony Standen was my 10th great-granduncle, pressed me to write his story. He was the James Bond of the Elizabethan age, and working within the constraints of the period, I have Bond in mind rather than George Smiley when I write.
Ian Fleming is buried in Sevenhampton, which is only 29 miles from me. I must pay homage one day.