He announced to the friend he was staying with, “When we have won this blasted war, I am going to live in Jamaica … just live in Jamaica and lap it up, and swim in the sea and write books.” He later elaborated: “I am going to write the spy story to end all spy stories.” And he did just that.Īfter the war, Fleming bought a 15-acre plot on the north coast of the island, almost directly above the capital, Kingston, where he built a small house overlooking the ocean – he called it Goldeneye.

Almost immediately after arriving on the Caribbean island, Fleming had fallen in love with the place. This was where he felt at his most creative.įleming had visited the island for the first time as a naval officer during the Second World War in July 1943 for a conference to address the destruction caused by German U-boats in the surrounding sea. From 1952 when he wrote Casino Royale, for the rest of his life, Fleming would start each year by sitting down at his gold-plated typewriter in his Jamaican house and tapping out a Bond novel. Much of the origins of James Bond can be traced back to Jamaica, where Fleming not only based many of his fictional adventures, but where the whole concept of his spy series was born. The immense success of the books have been shadowed by the spectacle of the film franchise, with the latest instalment No Time To Die grossing an eyewatering $774 million.

Beginning with a modest first print run of 4,728 copies, its author Ian Fleming went on to write a further 13 novels in the series, which have sold more than 100 million copies to date. On April 13 1953, the character of James Bond first hit the shelves of British bookshops, with the publication of Casino Royale.

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