Barmier than Bond: Ian Fleming's extraordinary wartime escapades

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Bogus sex parties, fake corpses, exploding tin cans, and belligerent pigs. If you thought that James Bond's fictional escapades were outrageous, then the real life experiences of his creator Ian Fleming are arguably even more extraordinary. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Edward Abel Smith reveals how Fleming's work as a wartime intelligence officer inspired the plot lines in his world-famous spy novels. James Bond's been back in the news with the announcement that longtime controllers of Broccoli dynasty have handed over control of the franchise to Amazon.

And there's also been a fair bit of speculation flying around as to who the next James Bond might be. Now, I guess We on the uh History Extra podcast aren't in a position to reveal the identity of the next 007, but what we can do is dissect the extraordinary wartime career of Bond's creator, Ian Fleming. Now, you've obviously spent a lot of time researching Fleming's life and You've also written a book about him.

What is it about Fleming that you, as a historian and an author, find so fascinating? Well, I think Ian Fleming is a real enigma of an individual. He had unsuccessful career up to the point of becoming a writer, uh or up to the point of joining uh the naval intelligence. And he lived his whole life Feeling like he wasn't a success.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (36 minutes, 5,136 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.