The bounder who created Bond: Ian Fleming’s golden life

He was the ‘Martini-sluicing ladies’ man and louche lounge lizard, who liked a little sado-masochistic sex on the side. And we’re not talking about 007. Robert McCrum is shaken and stirred by an engrossing new biography of Ian Fleming, the enigmatic creator of James Bond

Respected novelist and former literary journalist Nicholas Shakespeare takes on Ian Fleming in his latest biography ‘Ian Fleming: The Complete Man’ (Getty Images)

Apart from its length (more than 800 pages), this biography, which cheekily declares its subject “the complete man”, would have pleased Ian Fleming, a master of ruthless brevity and peerless storytelling. Nicholas Shakespeare’s Ian Fleming: The Complete Man is a sustained and engrossing homage to the Olympic icon of a beleaguered Britain, and a writer damned to fame. With scarcely a dull page, it’s a chip off the old block.

WH Auden, who was almost Fleming’s exact contemporary – they are both Edwardian boys – famously observed that “a shilling life will give you all the facts” (how Father beat him, how he ran away...). In that insouciant spirit, Shakespeare embarks on his autopsy of Ian Fleming’s career and reputation by acknowledging how many others have already inspected these remains, a fervent mini-library of books devoted to this author and his alter ego, the British agent with a licence to kill, Commander Bond.

In a crowded morgue, Shakespeare fulfills his claim as the seasoned anatomist with brio. He is a respected novelist, a former literary journalist and biographer of Bruce Chatwin, well-read in the mysteries of press-cuttings and the black arts of biographical interpretation. On this assignment, he does not merely wield the scalpel, but invites an impressive cast of expert witnesses to view the body in question. This post-mortem is steeped in exceptional research, and stitches up the loose ends of Fleming’s story into a satisfying 21^st-century biography after a flying start – the shilling life of Fleming’s early years.