I am delighted that you enjoyed it and I hope one day James Bond may find himself being borne to adventure on your wings.
TO F. ENGALL, ESQ., 4/28 St. John’s Park, London, S.E.3.
A traveller who knew his trains said that Fleming had got Bond’s route on the Orient Express wrong. On leaving Turkey the train split south through Greece and north through Bulgaria. Bond, who was on the northern part, would have entered the Eastern Bloc via Svilengrad, rather than Dragoman, which was on the border between Greece and Yugoslavia.
19th July, 1957
Thank you very much for your letter of yesterday’s date and I do see that I have slipped up badly over Dragoman. I can’t think how this happened. I must have muddled the inward frontier town with the outward one, and I will correct to Svilengrad in future editions.
But I think you are mistaken about the two halves of the train. Certainly when I made the journey a couple of years ago the back portion of the train was detached at the Turkish frontier and took the route through Bulgaria. I happen to be fairly certain about this because Cooks issued me a ticket via the Bulgaria section instead of the Greek, although I had no Bulgarian visa, and in consequence I had quite a lot of trouble on the train.
Your quick eye has missed one grievous error pointed out by another train enthusiast. I gave the Orient Express hydraulic brakes instead of vacuum!
Again with many thanks for your helpful criticism.
TO JAMES KEDDIE, JR., ESQ., 28 Laurel Avenue, Wellesley Hills 81, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
On behalf of the Boston Chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars, his notepaper headed The Speckled Band (Office of the Cheetah), James Keddie wanted to know if Jimmie Bond was still alive and kicking as reported by the Herald Tribune.
24th September, 1957
How very kind of you to have written – and on such very exciting note-paper.
I am delighted that you are enjoying the adventures of James Bond but I am perturbed to learn that, through some slip-up in Security, a notice on the bulletin Board in the Secret Service should have reached the public in America.
However, for your confidential information, the details of the leakage published in the Herald Tribune are correct and James Bond has returned to duty.
The next chapter of his biography will appear in England, under the title “Doctor No”, in March of next year – to coincide with the daffodil season.
TO DAVID WOOD, ESQ., 75 Kensington Gardens Square, London, W.2.
From Russia with Love included a great deal of information about the Soviet Union that Fleming knew would be of interest to his Cold War readers. Unfortunately, Mr Wood wrote to say that he had got Moscow quite wrong. A street he described as wide and dreary was in fact narrow and more fun than most, containing as it did two of the city’s best cinemas. And no. 14, which Fleming mentioned as being opposite KGB headquarters, was in fact a baker’s. As an aside, and with reference to a remark Fleming had made in a recent article, he recalled meeting the spy Alexander Foote, possibly by this time dead, whom he remembered as a bluff-spoken Yorkshireman who distributed Communist leaflets.
24th September, 1957
Thank you very much for your extremely interesting letter, which I was delighted to have.
I was very interested to read what you have to say about Sretenka Ulitsa. My own information came from a Russian spy who came over to our side and if I ever see him again I shall raise your points with him. For the time being, I can only suppose that the inoffensive baker has been installed as a “front”!
If Alexander Foote is dead it is news to me and, here again, your remarks are most interesting. He was certainly a first-class spy and I was glad to have an opportunity to raise my hat to him.
Again with many thanks for your helpful and factual letter and I am delighted that I have such a perceptive observer amongst my readers.
TO MISS A. D. STEWART, 24 Eglinton Crescent, Edinburgh
25th September, 1957
Thank you very much indeed for taking the trouble to write to me and I am glad that some of the James Bond stories have given you pleasure.
I appreciate what you say about the last book and I agree that Bond made a fool of himself. The trouble is that people do make fools of themselves in real life and unless Bond were some kind of cardboard hero, which he is not, my serious accounts of his adventures must contain the whole portrait – warts and all.
I think you will find, if you have not cast him aside completely, that in the next chapter of his life story, which will be published next March under the title of “Doctor No”, James Bond will have benefited by the sharp lesson he learned on his previous case.
Again with many thanks for having taken the trouble to rebuke me so charmingly.
TO DOCTOR G. R. C. D. GIBSON, Chapel Road, Wisbech, Cambs.
Dr Gibson, with whom Fleming had previously discussed cars, announced that, ‘Being a Scot, I retain a certain disapproval, probably Calvinistic, of authors and books and such works of the devil’. Nevertheless, he was disappointed that his local library had banned From Russia with Love as being pornographic and hoped to see Bond back on the shelves soon. He had one motoring complaint, though: ‘vintage Bentleys are really a bit vieux jeu these days’, and if Bond was to be resurrected maybe it could be with an Aston Martin? As to a literary means of restoring Bond to health, ‘how about “with one mighty leap he threw off the effects of the poison?”’.
26th September, 1957
Dear Doctor Gibson,
How very kind of you to have written. [. . .] As to James Bond’s motor car, he is in fact in the process of being re-equipped, and the body-builders are now at work on the chassis. For security reasons I’m sure you will appreciate that neither the make of the car nor its speed can at this date be revealed.
To which Gibson replied, ‘obviously the fellow can’t be making a large salary, which rules out the exotic stuff like Uhlenhaut’s special Merc on a 300 SLR chassis – what about an Aston Martin DB 2 with a 3 litre engine.’ Two books later Bond would indeed be driving an Aston.
TO DAVID CHIPP, ESQ., Reuters’ Representative in Peking, c/o Reuters, 85 Fleet Street, E.C.4.
David Chipp, a journalist based in China, wanted to know why Fleming had killed Bond. Also, how did the Soviet cameramen know that JB would leave the lights on while making love to Romanova? ‘Not everyone does!’
10th December, 1957
How faithless my readers are. Surely they should assume that if James Bond must one day die it will not be as a result of a kick on the shin. [. . .]
As for your very perceptive P.S., the voyeurs did not expect such rich pictorial fruit. The best they hoped for were one or two pre-prandial, so to speak, snaps which would have been sufficient for their purpose. They could not know, but could conceivably have guessed, that Bond would never be so unwise as to embrace a confessed Russian spy in the dark.
No, the cardinal error in this book was to furnish the Orient-Express with hydraulic instead of vacuum brakes – a gross mistake which the Black Belt grade amongst James Bond’s audience have been quick to seize upon.
Incidentally, some of my happiest years were spent in Reuters and I only resigned when I was offered an appointment as Chief Representative in the Far East on a salary, with expenses, of £800 a year – barely enough to cover my opium consumption.
TO H. B. KLUGMAN, 23 Clovelly Road, Greenside, Johannesburg, South Africa
A South African fan felt that James Bond should not have suffered such an ignominious end. These things might happen in real life, but surely a fiction writer could ensure that justice prevailed? That’s what most people wanted.
28th October, 1958
Dear Mr., or possibly Miss, Klugman,
Thank you very much for taking the trouble to write to me about “From Russia, With Love” and I entirely see your point.
The trouble is that James Bond has had it all too easy in his previous four adventures and it was time for him to suffer a rebuff and even a ra
ther ignominious one. Even more so as he was altogether too cock-a-hoop about his victory over Red Grant and it was criminally foolish of him to have gone alone to the Ritz.
However, if you would care to read his next adventure, “Doctor No”, you will see that he managed, but only just, to survive Rosa Klebb’s poison, though incurring the wrath of M.
It is most encouraging when readers take the trouble to write, as you have done, even if on a mildly critical note, and I greatly enjoyed getting your letter.
TO W. ROSS NAPIER, ESQ., Findhorn, Gladney Road, Ceres, Cupar, Fife
Having fielded one criticism about his description of Moscow, Fleming hit a more serious obstacle when a Scottish fan provided pictures of No. 13 Sretenka Ulitsa, where the headquarters of SMERSH were meant to be placed. It looked perfectly ordinary, not at all as Fleming had described it, and definitely not the headquarters of anything.
11th October, 1961
Thank you very much for your fascinating letter of September 30th which has just reached me.
It was wonderfully zealous of you to do this detective work, and I am fascinated by your account, from which it is quite clear, and from your photograph, that no such building as I described could have existed at No. 13.
This upsets me very much.
The position is that Smersh, as an organisation, did very much exist and for the purposes I described, but I am under the impression that it has been closed down by Khrushchev, though obviously, vide the Khoklov9 case, some department of M.W.D. [Ministry for the Interior] still carries on its duties.
When I was writing “From Russia with Love” I was fortunate enough to be in touch with a Colonel of the M.W.D. As a result of his description of the headquarters of Smersh I boldly put in the authentication note at the beginning of the book, and I can only hope he didn’t also misinform me regarding the individuals whose real names I used, though the interior of the department doesn’t matter so much.
So, all I can plead in view of your evidence, is that I was not being intentionally misleading.
Anyway, thank you very much indeed for your fascinating letter and for the photograph, both of which I shall keep in my files.
7
Conversations with the Armourer
‘Some reviewers of my books about James Bond have been generous in commending the accuracy of the expertise which forms a considerable part of the furniture of these books. I may say that correspondents from all over the world have been equally enthusiastic in writing to point out errors in this expertise, and the mistakes I have made, approximately one per volume, will no doubt forever continue to haunt my In-basket.’
Ian Fleming: ‘The Guns of James Bond’, 1962.
From out of the blue in May 1956 a letter arrived from Geoffrey Boothroyd, a gun expert living in Glasgow. It contained a critique of James Bond’s sidearms that caused Fleming a small amount of alarm. Hitherto, he had armed Bond with a .25 Beretta, a slim weapon little larger than a man’s hand, which he wore in a chamois leather holster under his left armpit. Given a clear eye and a steady hand it could send a nugget of lead to deadly effect. The concept was stylish but, as Boothroyd pointed out, completely impractical. Nobody with any sense – not to mention a licence to kill – would use such a puny thing. And he went on to explain why. From holster to grip, chamber to bullet, he parsed the mechanics of short-range death.
It was disheartening for Fleming, who prided himself on the accuracy of his research, to have such a hole blown in his credibility. All the same, he was fascinated by Boothroyd’s lore. He himself had handled a number of guns in his time and for a journalist owned a surprisingly large arsenal. He had a .25 Browning automatic, left over from his time in Naval Intelligence, plus a .38 Police Special Colt revolver given to him as a memento by General Bill Donovan, head of the American Secret Service. In a cupboard somewhere he kept a pair of Holland & Holland 12-bore shotguns, as well as a .275 Rigby for larger game. In addition he used a .22 Browning rifle for pest control at Goldeneye. But he was a novice compared to Boothroyd.
Their correspondence started in 1956 while Fleming was correcting the manuscript of From Russia with Love, and continued intermittently until his death. It was an unusual relationship. Boothroyd kept Fleming informed about his personal circumstances, while advising him on a variety of weapons that Bond might find useful. Fleming, meanwhile, anointed Boothroyd as Bond’s fictional armourer and charged him, in real life, with answering the many queries that came in about his guns. Strangely, they did not meet until March 1961, when a public relations event brought them together in Glasgow.
In 1962, when their letters were published under the title ‘The Guns of James Bond’, it caused a minor sensation. Nowadays it is de rigueur for writers to specify a particular agent of mayhem: Glock, Sig Sauer, Ithaca – the names resound to anyone familiar with the formulaics of thrillerdom. In the 1950s, however, the world was more innocent. When British policemen chased a suspect they blew whistles or, more dashingly, rang a little bell at the front of their car. Guns were uncommon currency and if they were fired in anger it was a major event. All of this has changed, and the transition – at least in literary terms – can perhaps be traced to, or at least mirrored by, the correspondence between Ian Fleming and Geoffrey Boothroyd.
FROM G. BOOTHROYD, 17 Regent Park Sq., Glasgow, S.1.
May 23rd, 1956
I have, by now, got rather fond of Mr. James Bond. I like most of the things about him, with the exception of his rather deplorable taste in firearms. In particular I dislike a man who comes into contact with all sorts of formidable people using a .25 Beretta. This sort of gun is really a lady’s gun, and not a really nice lady at that. If Mr. Bond has to use a light gun he would be better off with a .22 rim fire and the lead bullet would cause more shocking effect than the jacketed type of the .25.
May I suggest that Mr. Bond is armed with a revolver? This has many advantages for the type of shooting that he is called upon to perform and I am certain that Mr. Leiter would agree with this recommendation. The Beretta will weigh, after it has been doctored, somewhere under one pound. If Mr. Bond gets himself an S. & W. .38 Special Centennial Airweight he will have a real man-stopper weighing only 13 ozs. The gun is hammerless so that it can be drawn without catching in the clothing and has an overall length of 6½”. Barrel length is 2”, note that it is not ‘sawn off.’ No one who can buy his pistols in the States will go to the trouble of sawing off pistol barrels as they can be purchased with short 2” barrels from the manufacturer. In order to keep down the bulk, the cylinder holds 5 cartridges, and these are standard .38 S&W Special. It is an extremely accurate cartridge and when fired from a 2” barrel has, in standard loading, a muzzle velocity of almost 860 ft./sec. and muzzle energy of almost 260 ft./lbs. This is against the .25 with M.V. of 758 ft./sec. but only 67 ft./lbs. muzzle energy. So much for his personal gun. Now he must have a real man stopper to carry in the car. For this purpose the S. & W. .357 Magnum has no equal except the .44 Magnum. However with the .357, Bond can still use his .38 S.W. Special cartridges in the Magnum but not vice versa. This can be obtained in barrel lengths as follows: 3½”, 5”, 6”, 6½” and 8¾” long. With a 6½” barrel and adjustable sights Bond could do some really effective shooting. The .357 Magnum has a MV of 1515 ft/sec. and a ME of 807 ft./lbs. Figures like these give an effective range of 300 yards, and it’s very accurate, too, 1” groups at 20 yards on a machine rest.
With these two guns our friend would be able to cope with really quick draw work and long range effective shooting.
Now to gun harness, rigs or what have you. First of all, not a shoulder holster for general wear, please. I suggest that the gun is carried in a Berns Martin Triple Draw holster. This type of holster holds the gun in by means of a spring and can be worn on the belt or as a shoulder holster. I have played about with various types of holster for quite a time now and this one is the best. I took some pictures of the holster some time ago and at present can only find the proofs but
I send them to you to illustrate how it works. I have numbered the prints and give a description of each print below.
‘A’ Series. Holster worn on belt at right side. Pistol drawn with right hand.
1.Ready position. Note that the gun is not noticeable.
2.First movement. Weight moves to left foot. Hand draws back coat and sweeps forward to catch butt of pistol. Finger outside holster.
3.Gun coming out of holster through the split front.
4.In business.
This draw can be done in 3/5ths of a second by me. With practice and lots of it you could hit a figure at 20 feet in that time.
‘B’ Series. Shoulder holster. Gun upside down on left side. Held in by spring. Drawn with right hand.
1.First position.
2.Coat drawn back by left hand, gun butt grasped by right hand, finger outside holster.
3.Gun coming out of holster.
4.Bang! You’re dead.
‘C’ Series. Holster worn as in A, but gun drawn with left hand.
1.Draw commences. Butt held by first two fingers of left hand. Third finger and little finger ready to grasp trigger.
2.Ready to shoot. Trigger being pulled by third and little finger, thumb curled round stock, gun upside down.
This really works but you need a cut away trigger guard.
‘D’ Series. Holster worn on shoulder, as in ‘B’ Series, but gun drawn with left hand.
1.Coat swept back with left hand and gun grasped.
2.Gun is pushed to the right to clear holster and is ready for action.
I’m sorry that I couldn’t find the better series of photographs but these should illustrate what I mean. The gun used is a .38 S.W. with a sawn off barrel to 2¾”. (I know this contradicts what I said over the page but I can’t afford the 64 dollars needed so I had to make my own.) It has target sights, ramp front sights, adjustable rear sight, rounded butt, special stocks and a cut away trigger guard.
If you have managed to read this far I hope that you will accept the above in the spirit that it is offered. I have enjoyed your four books immensely and will say right now that I have no criticism of the women in them, except that I’ve never met any like them and would doubtless get into trouble if I did.
The Man with the Golden Typewriter Page 14
