Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 - 12 August 1964) was an English author and journalist. Fleming is best remembered for creating the character of James Bond and chronicling his adventures in twelve novels and nine short stories. Additionally, Fleming wrote the children's story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and two non-fiction books.
Ian was born in Mayfair, London, to Valentine Fleming, a Member of Parliament, and his wife Evelyn St. Croix Rose. Ian was the younger brother of travel writer Peter Fleming and the older brother of Michael and Richard Fleming (1910-77). He also had an illegitimate half-sister, the cellist Amaryllis Fleming. He was the grandson of Scottish financier Robert Fleming, who founded the Scottish American Investment Trust and merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. (since 2000 part of JP Morgan Chase.) He was cousin to actor Christopher Lee and actress Dame Celia Johnson was his sister-in-law (wife of his brother Peter), and great-uncle to the composerAlan Fleming-Baird.[1] His nephew Matthew Fleming played cricket for England.[2]
Fleming was educated at Durnford School, a Public School on the Isle of Purshore, in Dorset, which was next to the estate of the Bond family whose motto is The World Is Not Enough[3]. He also attended Sunningdale School in Berkshire, Eton College, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He was Victor Ludorum at Eton two years running, something that had been achieved only once before him. He found Sandhurst to be uncongenial, and after an early departure from there, his mother sent him to study languages on the continent. He first went to a small private establishment in Kitzbh?el, Austria, run by the Adlerian disciples Ernan Forbes Dennis and his American wife, the novelist Phyllis Bottome, to improve his German and prepare him for the Foreign Office exams, then to Munich University, and, finally, to the University of Geneva to improve his French. He was unsuccessful in his application to join the Foreign Office, and subsequently worked as a sub-editorand journalist for the Reuters news service, including time in 1933 in Moscow, and then as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, in Bishopsgate. He was a member of Boodle's, the gentleman's club in St. James's Street, from 1944 until his death in 1964.[4]
His marriage in Jamaica in 1952 to Anne Charteris, grand-daughter of the 11th Earl Wemyss and former second wife of the second Viscount Rothermere and widow ofthe third Baron O'Neill, was witnessed by his friend, playwright Noel Coward. This made him a brother in law of the Scottish novelist, Hugo Charteris.