The Tragically Failed Ian Fleming: Bond’s Cynical Seduction Was The Author’s Revenge On Women | Magazine

Every Englishman (if he is honest) would like to be a fearless – and irresistible to girls – spy in the service of the monarch. But even more, he longs to be a writer who, in a villa in the Caribbean, weaves the details of his adventurous life into books and scripts, which he then wittily discusses with the half-naked Ursula Andress.

But Fleming’s latest biography proves that the first 44 years of his life were just an endless series of failures. He dropped out of Eton early, ran away from Sandhurst (a prestigious military academy), failed a Foreign Office exam, gave up a promising career as a journalist to become an unhappy bank employee. He had a series of love affairs but was almost incapable of maintaining a relationship.