Background
Fleming became interested in diamond smuggling after reading an article in The Sunday Times in 1954 concerning the Sierra Leone diamond industry. Philip Brownrigg, an old friend from Eton and a senior exec of De Beers, arranged for Fleming to visit the London Diamond Club to see diamonds being sorted and polished. In 1955 Brownrigg also introduced Fleming to Sir Percy Sillitoe, former head of MI5, who was working for De Beers and investigating the illicit diamond trade through the International Diamond Security Organisation. Fleming met Sillitoe and used much of the research as background material for his fictional Bond novel, Diamonds Are Forever.
Fleming retained an interest in the subject and when Sillitoe suggested to the editor of The Sunday Times, Denis Hamilton, that the paper may want to write a story on the International Diamond Security Organisation, Hamilton offered the story to Fleming. Sillitoe also offered his deputy, retired MI5 officer John Collard, as liaison for Fleming to interview. During World War II, Collard had assisted in the planning of Operation Overlord as part of MI11 and had joined MI5 under Sillitoe at the war's end. Whilst in MI5 he played a major role in the capture and conviction of the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs, before Sillitoe had approached him in 1954 to work for the International Diamond Security Organisation.
Fleming and Collard met in Tangiers on 13 April 1957; Fleming considered Collard to be a "reluctant hero, like all Britain's best secret agents". The pair spent two weeks discussing the issue of diamond smuggling, with Collard explaining what happened in South Africa and Sierra Leone. Fleming would then dictate an average of 5,000 words a day to a secretary.
When the drafts of the books were shown to De Beers they objected to a number of areas and threatened an injunction against Fleming and The Sunday Times, which resulted in much material being removed. The Sunday Times serialised the book over six weeks, starting on 15 September 1957 and finishing on 20 October 1957.
Shortly after publication, The Rank Group offered £13,500 (£242,304 in 2012 pounds) for the film rights to the book, which Fleming accepted, telling them he would write a full story outline for an extra £1,000. Despite attempts being made to produce the film by Rank, it never materialised. American producer George Willoughby subsequently obtained the rights from them and commissioned a screenplay from Australian writer, Jon Cleary. Despite interest from Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors and Anglo Embassy Productions in early 1966, the project was shelved later that year.
Read more about this topic: The Diamond Smugglers
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