London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And a very good morning to you, London Walkers, wherever you are. It’s Wednesday, May 28th, 2025.
This one’s going to be the third outing in our new occasional series: Literary London – Lest We Forget. Famous phrase, that, it means of course “it should not be forgotten.”
So back down the May 28th Literary Memory Lane we go. Back to May 28th, 1908. The birth of James Bond creator, Ian Fleming. In, yes, London. Posh London, as you might well expect. Ian Fleming was born at 27 Green Street, in Mayfair. The family home. Now where do we go with this? Rhetorical question of course. But I’m playing that card because – and I’m owning up here – I’m not personally overfond of Ian Fleming and his creation. So I think we’re going to start with a couple of sidebars that aren’t particularly well known. And, then, yes, a few Ian Fleming factoids. Warts and all factoids.
Turns out, Ian Fleming wasn’t the only baby boy born in London on May 28th, 1908 who deserves a place in our mental Hall of Remembrance. Across town, in Islington, that same day, there arrived a bouncing baby boy named Hugh Joseph Wilson. Like Ian Fleming, Hugh Wilson – known as Willie – had a military career. A rather different military career from Ian Fleming’s. Ian Fleming was in the Navy. He was in the naval intelligence division. Personal assistant to Admiral John Godfrey, the director of naval intelligence. In other words, he was what was called a chocolate sailor. He was desk-bound. Unlike his literary creation, James Bond. And unlike Hugh Wilson. Wing Commander Hugh Wilson was in the RAF. He may have been the finest pilot in the RAF. He was the RAF’s main test pilot on all captured enemy aircraft. And for that matter, he was a world beater. After the war, he set a World Speed Record – he was the first person to break the 600 mph barrier. Wing Commander Hugh Wilson had the right stuff. He was the British equivalent of the American flying ace and test pilot Chuck Yeager. So that’s right, May 28th isn’t owned entirely by the creator of James Bond.
What else? Well, turns out that May 28th is the Feast Day of St Bernard, the patron saint of mountaineers. The St Bernard dog is named after him. As are two Alpine passes. And of course that makes for a nifty connection because Ian Fleming was a keen Alpinist.
Ok, let’s close with Ian Fleming. London connections first. We know about his Mayfair birthplace. You’re on an Ian Fleming pilgrimage your next stop should be 22B Ebury Street. When Ian Fleming moved out of his mother’s house – this was in 1936 – the next roof over his head was 22B Ebury Street. And get this, he took over the flat from one Oswald Mosley. Yes, that’s an eyebrow raiser isn’t it. Next stop, well to save yourself ricocheting back and forth, I’d go from Ebury Street to 16 Victoria Square. Ian Fleming bought the house in 1953. It was his London residence until his death in 1964. Mayfair – Pimlico – Whitehall – that’s a jaunt that you can do in a morning. Whitehall to see the Old Admiralty Building. Where – in Room 39 – Fleming was the personal assistant of Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence for the Royal Navy. What’d he do there? Well, as he himself put it, Fleming’s role was ‘a convenient channel of confidential matters connected with subversive organisations’.
Ok, now let’s head out onto the thin ice. Ian Fleming’s father, Valentine, was one of 23 Members of Parliament slain in World War I. He was killed in action at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
Ian Fleming was eight years old when his father died. Valentine Fleming’s obituary in the Times was written by his friend Winston Churchill.
You want a good measure of Valentine Fleming? Try this: a clause in his will cut his wife, Eve, Ian Fleming’s mother, off from his family’s enormous wealth if she ever remarried. She didn’t. Though she did have an out-of-wedlock child by the famous painter Augustus John. What her husband did to Ian Fleming’s mother she passed on to her son. In his early 20s he fell in love with – and got engaged to – an Austrian girl. The Austrian girl didn’t meet with his mother’s approval. Eve Fleming laid down the law. Either split from her or I’ll cut you off from the family money. Ian Fleming chose wealth over love. You could also mention here the boarding schools Ian Fleming attended in his formative years. Fleming’s friend and biographer Andrew Lycett described the first school Durnford as ‘a harsh and often cruel establishment.’ Then it was on to Eton. Which if anything was worse. One of its time-honoured traditions was beating the boys at noon. In his official history of Eton Tim Card described Fleming’s housemaster as a sadist. And so the die was cast. Or, if you prefer, the child is the father of the man. Ian Fleming’s friend Robert Harling said Fleming’s time in English boarding schools forged his ‘imprisonment of emotion.’ Out of that arrested emotional development and skewed view of other people – women in particular – and other peoples came Ian Fleming’s avatar, James Bond. And truth be told, you wouldn’t like him for your daughter, nor as a role model for your son.
And now we look at the charge sheet. To James Bond, women are for recreation. Make no mistake, James Bond is a misogynist. In Casino Royale, Bond complains about “these blithering women who thought they could do a man’s work. Why the hell couldn’t they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men’s work to the men.” Vesper Lynd is the agent sent to assist him. Bond sizes her up and decides he wants to sleep with her, but only after the job is done. Shagging Vesper would be “excitingly sensual” Bond decides because it would have “the sweet tang of rape.” Ian Fleming wrote those words – and James Bond thought them – in the 1950s. And neither one of them saw anything amiss about that.
Well, one could go on. For one, Ian Fleming’s tolerance of fascism. And his opposition to the NHS and the welfare state. And his racism and homophobia. And his coldness and cruelty and sadism. BDSM – bondage, dominance, submission, sadism and masochism – was a cornerstone of his messed up marriage with his wife Ann. And then there’s their only child, their son Caspar, taking his own life when he was 23. Last but hardly least considering how poor Ian Fleming’s health was – leading to his early death at age 64 – last but not least James Bond’s smoking and drinking. A few years ago the British Medical Journal reported that Bond drinks an average of 92 units of alcohol a week. Nearly seven times the recommended 14 units. In Casino Royale were told that Bond is puffing away on his ‘70th cigarette of the day.’ James Bond could get away with that. Not so his creator Ian Fleming.
But there is, for lack of a better word, the franchise. Ian Fleming sold 30 million books during his lifetime. Those chart-topping sales were greatly assisted by the influencer in the White House, President Kennedy. Asked about his reading, the president said the James Bond novels were among his favourites. Indeed, both JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald were said to be reading a James Bond novel the night before those three shots rang out in Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963. And incidentally that figure of 30 million books sold doubled in the two years after Ian Fleming’s death in 1964.
And the book sales pale in comparison with the gold rush of the films.
So there you go, some food for thought for you on Ian Fleming’s birthday.
Now for our flambé. And I’m just going to come right out with this. I don’t think Ian Fleming was a particularly good prose stylist. Every winter he spent three months at Goldeneye, his house on the north shore of Jamaica. That’s where he wrote the 14 James Bond novels. Three months per novel. He churned them out. And they all bear the blemishes of having been dashed off.
So for a passage, well, try the opening of Casino Royale. I don’t think it’s deathless prose. But it is representative – it’s signature Ian Fleming. ”The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling — a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension — becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it. James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired.”
James Bond will be in his 90s now. I wonder what happened to him. Is he still alive? Perhaps being cared for in some geriatric ward by women nurses who fortunately for him chose not to stay at home – aren’t in the kitchen minding their pots and pans.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –
home of London Walks,
London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do
to attract and keep the best guides in London –
you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating:
the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative –
is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor
(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former London Museum archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors, a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…
well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar
and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note…
come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.