1945-1952
16. Ian went to work for The Sunday Times as foreign manager.
Many of the journalists he worked with, such as Antony Terryand Henry Brandon, had links to the intelligence services.
According to Anthony Cavendish, a former British agent, the newspaper group for which Ian worked was happy to take on MI6 people as foreign correspondents. (Lycett).
17. In 1946, aged 38, Ian was smoking 70 cigarettes and drinking a bottle of gin each day. (Lycett)
Ian Fleming created the character of the Child Catcher, in his book Chitty Chitty Bangbang. The film script is by fellow spy Roald Dahl.
18. On Jamaica, Ian built a house called Goldeneye.
Ian employed a houseboy and other staff for this bachelors' paradise.
When Ivar Bryce and John Fox-Strangeways came to stay with Ian, the three of them would swim naked before breakfast. (Lycett)
Ian's first tenant at Goldeneye was his gay friend Noel Coward.
Ralph, the leading boy in Lord of the Flies, was found "in a swimming pool in an army camp in Jamaica." (Lord of the Flies - From the Current )
19. Around 1948, Ann O'Neill wrote a fictionalised account of her relationship with Ian.
In this story, Ian is called Gervase.
Ann explained that Gervase (Ian) was attractive to both men and women and his services were solicited by "middle-aged men of medium eminence."
Ann once told Evelyn Waugh that Ian's "only happiness is pink gin, golf clubs and men." (Lycett)
20. Ann divorced her husband Viscount Rothermere. In 1952, she became pregnant. Ian, aged 43, decided to marry her.
1952 - 1964
21. Marriage led Ian to start writing his Bond books. It was a form of escape.
22. Ian and Ann often took separate holidays.
23. Ian traveled to Jamaica as often as possible.
Among the guests at Goldeneye at this time was Angus Wilson who lived in Jamaica with his companion Odo Cross, a former Guards officer who liked to wear his mother's pearls. (Lycett)
24. Ann and Ian were friends of the reportedly gay writer Somerset Maugham and they visited him at his villa in the South of France.
Ian adopted a 'fawning role' with Maugham and Ann was struck by the similarities between the two writers.
Both liked exotic-smelling soaps in their bathrooms. Ann had "a curious feeling that they both regarded 'women' with mistrust". (Lycett)
25. Truman Capote stayed at Goldeneye and Ian described him as being a 'fascinating companion'.
Errol Flynn was another visitor to Goldeneye.
The north coast of Jamaica was seen as having a growing gay enclave. (Lycett)
26. Ann began a long relationship with Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the United Kingdom's Labour Party, and seen as being a possible future Prime Minister.
Ann reported to her friend Beaverbrook that Gaitskell was a "changed man - all he wants is wine, women and song". (Lycett)
Meanwhile, Ian was having a relationship with a wealthy Jewish woman in Jamaica, called Blanche Blackwell.
Gaitskell, leader of the UK Labour party, was reportedly murdered.
27. When Ian's four-year-old son Caspar came out to Jamaica, Ian noted that Caspar wore a hibiscus flower in his ear and called himself Mary.
When the family went to Austria, Caspar was dressed in lederhosen. (Lycett)
28. In 1957, Ian found himself in a Dean's Bar.
This was a gay bar, in Tangier in Morocco.
Ian had chosen Tangier as a place to meet retired MI5 agent John Collard who was based in South Africa.
Ian wanted to talk to Collard in connection with research for a book. (Lycett)
Tangier
29. Ian liked Venice and when he traveled there with Ann he gave her a copy of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, the story of a man's love for a boy. (Lycett)
30. In Dr No, we read of Honeychile: "It was a beautiful back. The skin was a very light uniform café au lait with the sheen of dull satin. The gentle curve of the backbone was deeply indented, suggesting more powerful muscles than is usual in a woman, and the behind was almost as firm and rounded as a boy's."
In 1963, Cyril Connolly wrote a parody of Bond for the London Magazine.
This was called Bond Strikes Camp and it seemed to suggest that most British spies were secretly gay.
31. In the early 1960s, Ian would spend evenings with John blackwell.
Blackwell was a bachelor school teacher who had a house in the grounds of Wellesley House school at Broadstairs in Kent.
Broadstairs was the home of Edward Heath.
The school takes boys up to the age of thirteen.
On Sunday afternoons Ian and Blackwell would take some pupils from the school on a car outing to a local golf course.
Ian would give the boys Bond memorabilia. (Lycett)
32. Hugh Gaitskell died rather mysteriously in 1963.
33. Ian Fleming died in 1964, aged 56.
34. His son Caspar died in 1975, aged 22.
~~
