The Spy Who Loved Me (novel) - Background

Background

The Spy Who Loved Me was written in Jamaica at Fleming's Goldeneye estate in January and February 1961 and was the shortest manuscript Fleming had produced for a novel, being only 113 pages long. Fleming found the book the easiest for him to write and apologised to his editor at Jonathan Cape for the ease. The Spy Who Loved Me has been described by Fleming biographer Andrew Lycett as Fleming's "most sleazy and violent story ever", which may have been indicative of his state of mind at the time.

Fleming borrowed from his surroundings, as he had done with all his writing up to that point, to include places he had seen. One such location was a motel in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, which Fleming would drive past on the way to Ivar Bryce's Black Hollow Farm; this became the Dreamy Pines Motel. Similarly, he took incidents from his own life and used them in the novel and Vivienne Vivienne Michel's seduction in a box in the Royalty Kinema, Windsor, mirrors Fleming's loss of virginity in the same establishment. A colleague at The Sunday Times, Robert Harling, gave his name to a printer in the story while another minor character, Frank Donaldson, was named after Jack Donaldson, a friend of Fleming's wife. One of Fleming's neighbours in Jamaica was Vivienne Stuart, whose first name Fleming purloined for the novel's heroine.