Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming (1908-1964) was the author of the popular "James Bond" series of spy novels. He was a former Royal Navy officer who served as an intelligence officer during the Second World War. After the war he settled down in the Caribbean. His first novel, "Casino Royale" was written from his home "Goldeneye" in Jamaica.

Fleming is featured in the 2013 ITV adaptation of A Caribbean Mystery. In this adaptation, one of the characters, an ornithologist Edward Hillingdon, a guest at the Golden Palm Hotel, arranges a lecture by an American expert on the bird of the Caribbean. The lecture is attended by Miss Marple and Ian Fleming among others. Fleming is seated next to Miss Marple and he tells her he is planning on writing a spy novel but he is stuck trying to think of a suitable name for his hero character. Then the American speaker is introduced, none other than James Bond, a real life ornithologist. Fleming has a flash of inspiration and jots the name down. This event supposedly parallels real life in that Fleming stated that he got the idea for his fictional spy character's name after he saw it on "Birds of the West Indies", a book written by the real life James Bond.