Thrilling Cities - Background

Background

In 1963 the features editor of the The Sunday Times, Leonard Russell, suggested to Ian Fleming that he take a five-week, all-expenses-paid trip around the world for a series of features for the paper. Fleming declined, saying he was a terrible tourist who "often advocated the provision of roller-skates at the door of museums and art galleries". Russell persuaded him, pointing out that Fleming could also get some material for the Bond books in the process. Fleming's took £500 (£7,800 in 2012 pounds) of travellers cheques for expenses and flew BOAC to his first stop, Hong Kong. He was guided around the city by his friend Richard Hughes, the Australian correspondent for The Sunday Times; Hughes was later the model for the character Dikko Henderson in You Only Live Twice, as well as for "Old Craw" in John le Carré's The Honourable Schoolboy. Fleming stayed just three days in Hong Kong, before he and Hughes flew to Tokyo where they were joined by Torao Saito—also known as "Tiger"—a journalist with the Asahi Shimbun newspaper group. Saito later became the model for the character Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice. Fleming spent three days in Tokyo and decided not there would be "no politicians, museums, temples, Imperial palaces or Noh plays, let alone tea ceremonies" on his itinerary; he instead visited a judo academy, a Japanese soothsayer and the Kodokan, a local gymnasium.

Fleming left Tokyo on Friday the 13th to fly to Hawaii; 2,000 miles into the Pacific one of the Douglas DC-6's engines caught fire and the plane nearly crashed, although it managed to make an emergency landing on Wake Island. After Honolulu, Fleming moved on to Los Angeles, where he visited a number of places he had been before, including the Los Angeles Police Intelligence headquarters, where he again met Captain James Hamilton, much as he had done during his research for Diamonds Are Forever. By the time Fleming got to New York he was fed up with travelling and his biographer, Andrew Lycett notes that "his sour mood transferred to the city and indeed the country he had once loved". The series opened in The Sunday Times on 24 January 1960, with an introduction from Fleming, followed by the article on Hong Kong the following week. The series finished on 28 February 1960 with the article about Chicago and New York.

Roy Thomson, the chairman of The Sunday Times, enjoyed Fleming's articles and suggested a number of other cities, including Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Havana, New Orleans and Montreal. Others, such as The Sunday Times editor Harry Hodson, were less enthusiastic; Hodson considered that "more serious readers have tut-tutted a bit about missing the really important things".

Fleming planned to drive most of his second tour of cities, which concentrated on places he wanted to visit in Europe. For the trip he took his own car, a four-door Ford Thunderbird, crossing the channel and journeying through Ostend, Antwerp and Bremen before arriving at his first destination: Hamburg. He stayed only briefly in the city, praising the sex industry by writing "how very different from the prudish and hypocritical manner in which we so disgracefully mismanage these things in England". Fleming moved on to Berlin, where he was shown round the city by The Sunday Times correspondent Anthony Terry and his wife Rachel. Terry took Fleming into East Berlin and told him many of the details about Operation Stopwatch, the Anglo-American attempt to tunnel into the Soviet-occupied zone to tap into landline communication of the Soviet Army headquarters. In comparison to Hamburg, Fleming thought Berlin was "sinister".

Fleming moved on to Vienna and found the city boring, calling it "clean, tidy, God-fearing", before travelling into Geneva. He met Ingrid Etler, a journalist and old girlfriend, who was resident in the city and who provided him with much of his background material. Fleming then travelled to Les Avants, the villa near Montreux of his close friend Noël Coward, where Coward introduced Fleming to Charlie Chaplin. Fleming had asked Coward to set up the meeting as Chaplin was writing his memoirs and Leonard Russell had asked Fleming to secure the rights for the paper; Fleming was successful in his approach and the memoirs were later serialised in the paper.

Fleming's wife Ann had joined him in Les Avants and the couple then moved on to Naples, where Fleming interviewed Lucky Luciano, finding him "a neat, quiet, grey-haired man with a tired good-looking face." After Naples, the Flemings moved to Monte Carlo, the final stop on Fleming's journey; Despite spending time at the casino, Fleming thought Monte Carlo somewhat seedy. The second series of articles started on 31 July 1960 with Fleming's trip to Hamburg, and finished with his visit to Monte Carlo. Overall the series was considered popular and successful.