Casino Royale (novel) - Background

Background

James Bond is the culmination of an important but much-maligned tradition in English literature. As a boy, Fleming devoured the Bulldog Drummond tales of Lieutenant Colonel Herman Cyril McNeile (aka "Sapper") and the Richard Hannay stories of John Buchan. His genius was to repackage these antiquated adventures to fit the fashion of postwar Britain ... In Bond, he created a Bulldog Drummond for the jet age.

During the course of World War II, Ian Fleming had mentioned to friends that he wanted to write a spy novel. It was not until 1952, however, shortly before his wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Ann Charteris, that Fleming began to write Casino Royale, to distract himself from his forthcoming nuptials. Fleming started writing on his book at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica on 17 February 1952, typing out 2,000 words in the morning, directly from his own experiences and imagination. He finished work on the script in just over two months, completing it on 18 March 1952. Describing the work as his "dreadful oafish opus", Fleming showed it to an ex-girlfriend, Clare Blanchard, who advised him not to publish it at all, but that if he did so, it should be under another name.

Casino Royale was inspired by certain incidents that took place during Fleming's career at the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty. On a wartime trip to Portugal, en route to the United States, Fleming and the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Godfrey, went to the Estoril Casino. Due to Portugal's neutral status, a number of spies from warring regimes were present. Fleming claimed that while there he was cleaned out by a "chief German agent" at a table playing Chemin de Fer. Admiral Godfrey told a different story: Fleming only played Portuguese businessmen and that afterwards he fantasised about playing against German agents. The references in the novel to "Red Indians" (four times, twice on last page) came from Fleming's own 30 Assault Unit, which he nicknamed his "Red Indians". The failed attempt to kill Bond while at Royale-Les-Eaux was also inspired by a real event: a miscarried assassination against Franz von Papen, Vice-Chancellor of Germany and Ambassador under Adolf Hitler. Both Papen and Bond survived their assassination attempts, carried out by Bulgarians, due to a tree that protected them from a bomb blast.