Who would have guessed that the creator of James Bond might issue from the world of Bertie Wooster? Yet if you read Nicholas Shakespeare’s prodigiously researched biography of Ian Fleming, you find yourself in a world of toffs-about-town and boarding-school pranks worthy of the Drones. Britain’s head of intelligence in Paris in 1940 rejoiced in the name of “Biffy” Dunderdale. At the embassy in Lisbon, Fleming was pals with “Boofy” Gore.
Loelia Westminster (née Ponsonby)—one of the writer’s many old flames—recorded in her diary one day in 1940, “Hitler invaded Holland & Belgium. Bombed Brussels also many towns in France. Spent my time playing tennis at Selfridges.” No wonder Fleming’s fellow Old Etonian and man of letters Cyril Connolly likened the friend many took to be a devil-may-care bounder to “the hero of a Wodehouse novel.”
