Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica by Matthew Parker Page A
Authors: Matthew Parker
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attractions of the Bond stories is that Fleming takes his readers to faraway locations, which in the days before cheap air travel were beyond the reach of most. The only novel not to feature foreign adventure is Moonraker, and this would lead to complaints, including a letter to Fleming from an elderly couple: ‘We want taking out of ourselves, not sitting on the beach in Dover.’
Often Bond is simply a tourist, or, more exactly, engages with the world he is defending in a touristic way. For one thing, he loves travelling, particularly by air, the experience of which he feels almostsensually. Indeed, at the beginning of the short story ‘Quantum of Solace’, he announces that ‘I’ve always thought that if I ever married I would marry an air hostess.’ Bond enjoys journeying by train as well, particularly the ‘melancholy’ rhythmic sound of the wheels on the tracks, and many climactic scenes in the novels occur in the glamorous but precarious carriages and cabins of trains or airliners.
Fleming was to become an accomplished travel writer, and he was not shy of inserting large chunks of travelogue into the novels and stories. His touristic eye takes in details of restaurants, beaches, hotels and bars, even commentating, often in a grudging way, on value for money and standards of decor and service.
Furthermore, where he sends Bond – and where he doesn’t – is an important part of the success of the books. Fleming knew that his readers didn’t want ‘taking out of themselves’ to some gritty impoverished destination. Writing in 1963, he pointed out that the ‘sun is always shining in my books – a state of affairs which minutely lifts the spirits of the English reader [taking] him out of his dull surroundings into a warmer, more colourful, more luxurious world’. Apart from a flying visit to Sierra Leone 011 the last four pages of Diamonds are Forever, Bond never goes to Africa or South America – both at the time associated with poverty. Three of the novels are set largely in the United States ( Diamonds are Forever, Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me), an acknowledgement of the mystique that American wealth and modernity held for his readers, as well as a nod to the US market for his books. In another three the main action occurs in Jamaica ( Live and Let Die, Dr No, The Man with the Golden Gun), with the Caribbean again making an appearance in Thunderball (allowing Fleming to indulge once more his love of underwater scenes inspired by Goldeneye). The short stories also feature Bermuda, the Seychelles, and Jamaica again twice. Fleming, sitting at his typewriter in Goldeneye, frequently delights in comparing the sunshine enjoyed by Bond in the Caribbean with the miserable weather back in England.
But his attitude to tourism is more than simply escapist, and in the course of his time in Jamaica it would alter, shaped by his experience of the rapidly expanding tourist scene on the island and his changing relationship with it.
The success of Sunset Lodge and everything that came in its wake owed a great deal to a storm off the coast of Jamaica in mid 1946. In its midst, on board his yacht the Zaca , was Hollywood superstar Errol Flynn.
‘After four days of storm I could not make out the nature of a curious body of land that rose from the sea,’ wrote Flynn in his autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways. ‘What was it? Where were we? Suddenly thesky cleared sharply. Winds howled the clouds out, and a powerful sun illuminated the greenest hills I’d ever seen.’ The Zaca was steered to safety, and Flynn, who had made his name in the film Captain Blood, set in Jamaica, was ashore on the island for the first time. It was, he said, a ‘paradise’ more beautiful than any woman he had ever known. According to his widow, Patrice, it was Jamaica’s similarity to New Guinea, where Flynn had lived as a teenager, that was the secret of the attraction. Flynn quickly decided that ‘here I would buy property and
Often Bond is simply a tourist, or, more exactly, engages with the world he is defending in a touristic way. For one thing, he loves travelling, particularly by air, the experience of which he feels almostsensually. Indeed, at the beginning of the short story ‘Quantum of Solace’, he announces that ‘I’ve always thought that if I ever married I would marry an air hostess.’ Bond enjoys journeying by train as well, particularly the ‘melancholy’ rhythmic sound of the wheels on the tracks, and many climactic scenes in the novels occur in the glamorous but precarious carriages and cabins of trains or airliners.
Fleming was to become an accomplished travel writer, and he was not shy of inserting large chunks of travelogue into the novels and stories. His touristic eye takes in details of restaurants, beaches, hotels and bars, even commentating, often in a grudging way, on value for money and standards of decor and service.
Furthermore, where he sends Bond – and where he doesn’t – is an important part of the success of the books. Fleming knew that his readers didn’t want ‘taking out of themselves’ to some gritty impoverished destination. Writing in 1963, he pointed out that the ‘sun is always shining in my books – a state of affairs which minutely lifts the spirits of the English reader [taking] him out of his dull surroundings into a warmer, more colourful, more luxurious world’. Apart from a flying visit to Sierra Leone 011 the last four pages of Diamonds are Forever, Bond never goes to Africa or South America – both at the time associated with poverty. Three of the novels are set largely in the United States ( Diamonds are Forever, Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me), an acknowledgement of the mystique that American wealth and modernity held for his readers, as well as a nod to the US market for his books. In another three the main action occurs in Jamaica ( Live and Let Die, Dr No, The Man with the Golden Gun), with the Caribbean again making an appearance in Thunderball (allowing Fleming to indulge once more his love of underwater scenes inspired by Goldeneye). The short stories also feature Bermuda, the Seychelles, and Jamaica again twice. Fleming, sitting at his typewriter in Goldeneye, frequently delights in comparing the sunshine enjoyed by Bond in the Caribbean with the miserable weather back in England.
But his attitude to tourism is more than simply escapist, and in the course of his time in Jamaica it would alter, shaped by his experience of the rapidly expanding tourist scene on the island and his changing relationship with it.
The success of Sunset Lodge and everything that came in its wake owed a great deal to a storm off the coast of Jamaica in mid 1946. In its midst, on board his yacht the Zaca , was Hollywood superstar Errol Flynn.
‘After four days of storm I could not make out the nature of a curious body of land that rose from the sea,’ wrote Flynn in his autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways. ‘What was it? Where were we? Suddenly thesky cleared sharply. Winds howled the clouds out, and a powerful sun illuminated the greenest hills I’d ever seen.’ The Zaca was steered to safety, and Flynn, who had made his name in the film Captain Blood, set in Jamaica, was ashore on the island for the first time. It was, he said, a ‘paradise’ more beautiful than any woman he had ever known. According to his widow, Patrice, it was Jamaica’s similarity to New Guinea, where Flynn had lived as a teenager, that was the secret of the attraction. Flynn quickly decided that ‘here I would buy property and
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