The Man with the Golden Typewriter

What the book covers

The correspondence brings together the business of publishing and the personal exchanges around Bond. Editors and publishers appear alongside fellow writers such as Raymond Chandler, while readers raise questions about the details in the novels. Fergus Fleming supplies context so that individual letters can be read as part of the writing life.

The selection gives you a public-facing Fleming, responding to other people and managing the books’ reception. It can illuminate his humour or uncertainty, but it is not the complete record of his private life. In the editor’s interview, Fergus explicitly distinguishes the character he encountered in the letters from what a fuller biography might reveal.

Can I start here?

Yes, especially if you like short entries that can be read a few at a time. Familiarity with the novels helps when a letter discusses a specific Bond detail, but a full reading of the series is not a prerequisite. Choose Shakespeare or Lycett instead if you want continuous chronology and fuller treatment of the life outside writing.

What stands out

The pleasure is in hearing a writer handle the small practical problems behind an enduring fictional world. Read the letters with the editorial passages rather than stripping out every anecdote as an isolated fact. For a broader selection of journalism and early fiction, Talk of the Devil is a different anthology; this book concentrates on the Bond correspondence.

Who wrote it

Ian Fleming wrote the letters; Fergus Fleming selected and edited the collection. In his interview with Ian Fleming Publications, Fergus says that he proposed a long-overdue book of his uncle’s correspondence. His role provides the reader with a route through the material, rather than replacing the letters with a newly written life.

Fleming connection

The title refers to Fleming’s real gold-plated Royal Quiet De Luxe. The publisher dates his purchase to 1952, after finishing Casino Royale. Fergus’s interview cautions that he does not know whether Ian used it for the novels, so the title should not be taken as evidence that every Bond manuscript was typed on that machine.

Content notes

Our reading guidance: adult correspondence containing attitudes from Fleming’s period and discussion of the Bond books. Letters may mention story details, so read an individual novel first if you want to keep every plot development a surprise.

Setting

The working correspondence around the Bond novels, rather than a single location or fictional mission.

People in the book

Ian Fleming, his publishers and editors, fellow writers including Raymond Chandler, and readers who wrote to him.

The collection was first published in 2015. The current Bloomsbury paperback appeared in 2016 and has 400 pages. Julian Rhind-Tutt narrates the UK audiobook. Fergus Fleming is the editor of Ian Fleming’s correspondence, not the author of a new Bond story.