My son is named after Ian Fleming, who died 50 years ago yesterday.

They both were lousy high school students. For that matter, so was I.

Fleming dropped out of Eaton College before they could kick him out and moved on to military officers’ training at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, southwest of London. He had no more unpacked his things then he was in his Major’s office on a “conduct unbecoming” rap. It was hard to sit still with the painful case of Gonorrhea he picked up from a London hooker. He bounced to a college for rich asshole English kids in Austria.

The Dean of the college was Ernan Dennis, a retired agent of MI6. The Dean’s wife was novelist Phyllis Bottome, And the rest, as they say, is history. His long pachinko ball fall through the pins of English propriety dumped him into The Tennerhof University. In this academic refuge for spoiled twits, he met both James Bond and the woman who would mentor Fleming in learning to write.  All this in the shifty, prewar uncertainty of Kitzbühel, Austria.

Fleming, was not exactly a looker by the standards of any era. He was toothy in the English manner and somewhat rat faced. But he had a charm about him. He was fond of women, especially those married to other men. From his love letters we learn that he was a spanking enthusiast. You can almost hear Judy Dench as M saying, “Oh, how drollfully English, Mr. Fleming.”

Speaking of M… After college, Fleming did a stint as an officer (finally) in the British Navy, eventually rising to the personal assistant of the Director of Naval Intelligence and the rank of Commander (Bond’s rank). Director John Godfrey’s precision and subtle respect for the subversion of military code that got in the way of results is said to have made him the model for M.

After returning to civilian life, Fleming married, for all that meant. He moved to a small swath of land in Jamaica. He cranked out Casino Royale. It went nowhere. Fleming eventually sent it to Johnathan Cape publishing house, the same publisher who printed his brother Peter’s travel books. They were not impressed. Peter begged them to publish Casino Royale as a favor to him. They relented.

And…

Absolutely nothing happened. Sales of the book were virtually non-existent.

…Until JFK answered a reporter’s question about what he read for pleasure. He said he had Casino Royale on his nightstand and was loving it. Imagine that.

Sales went through the roof. An iconic character was born. An iconic writer died, fifty years ago yesterday, at the gin-soaked and nicotine-addled age of 56.

Small bit of trivia, Fleming’s war buddy Roald Dahl challenged Fleming to write a children’s book, and he did: Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang. Even his kids’ book managed an overtone of gunfire in the title.