The Life of Ian Fleming

by John Pearson

Publisher:

Bloomsbury Reader

, 2011

Overview

From the author of All the Money in the World and The Profession of Violence comes the definitive biography of James Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming.

It is now over fifty years since the premiere of Dr No, the very first Bond film, with Sean Connery introducing 007 as the glamorous secret agent who would become the single most profitable movie character in the history of cinema. But James Bond was invented by one man, Ian Fleming, a wartime intelligence officer and Sunday Times newspaper man who lived to see only the very beginning of the Bond cult.

Pearson, who worked with Fleming at the Sunday Times, based this biography on his own memories of Fleming, on Fleming’s private papers, and on a series of interviews with an extraordinary collection of Fleming’s contemporaries – family, friends, enemies, teachers, colleagues, mistresses, and former spies from around the world.

First published in 1966, John Pearson’s famous biography remains the definitive account of how only Ian Fleming could have dreamed up James Bond, for he led a life as colourful as anything in his fiction, which in turn became a covert autobiography. Charming, debonair and a ruthless womaniser, globetrotting from wartime Algiers to beachside Jamaica, Fleming was as elusive and opaque as his imaginary creation.

In his new introduction to this edition, Pearson examines the extent to which Fleming’s character informs the movie portrayals of Bond, from Sean Connery through to Daniel Craig, and how Bond himself has achieved immortality beyond Fleming’s wildest dreams.

Praise for The Life of Ian Fleming

An absorbing narrative, carefully constructed, elaborately documented.

Product Details

• Title: The Life of Ian Fleming
• Author: John Pearson
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Reader
• Print Publication Date: 2011
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 426
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781448207824, 9781448208067, 1448208068, 1448207827
• Resource ID: LLS:9781448207824
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T11:58:16Z

About John Pearson

John Pearson (1613 – 1686) was an English theologian and scholar. Born in Norfolk, he studied at Eton College and Queens' College Cambridge. He was elected as a scholar at King's College, Cambridgein 1632. After taking orders the church he served in Salisbury until 1640. Following the Engilsh Civil War, he served as the weekly preacher at St. Clement's in London. In 1659 he published his famous Exposition of the Creed. Appointed bishop of Chester in 1672, he died there fourteen years later in 1686 and is curied in the Cathedral.