, Fleming's superior at the
Naval Intelligence Division and a basis for the character
M Ian Fleming, born in 1908, was a son of
Valentine Fleming, a wealthy banker and MP who died in action on the
Western Front in May 1917. Educated at
Eton,
Sandhurst and, briefly, the universities of
Munich and
Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he was recruited by
Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the
Director of Naval Intelligence, to become his
personal assistant. Fleming joined the organisation full-time in August 1939, with the codename "17F", and worked for them throughout the war. Early in 1939 he began an affair with
Ann O'Neill ( Charteris), who was married to the
3rd Baron O'Neill. In 1942 Fleming attended an Anglo-American intelligence summit in Jamaica and, despite the constant heavy rain during his visit, he decided to live on the island once the war was over. His friend
Ivar Bryce helped find a plot of land in
Saint Mary Parish where, in 1945, Fleming had a house built, which he named
Goldeneye. The name of the house and estate has many possible sources. Fleming mentioned both his wartime
Operation Goldeneye and
Carson McCullers' 1941 novel
Reflections in a Golden Eye. Upon Fleming's
demobilisation in May 1945, he became the Foreign Manager in the Kemsley newspaper group, which at the time owned
The Sunday Times. In this role he oversaw the paper's worldwide network of correspondents. His contract allowed him to take two months holiday every winter in Jamaica. In 1948 Charteris gave birth to Fleming's daughter, Mary, who was
stillborn; Charteris and Fleming became engaged shortly in 1951. Fleming had previously mentioned to friends that he wanted to write a spy novel, but it was not until early 1952, to distract himself from his forthcoming nuptials, that he began to write
Casino Royale at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica on 17 February; he typed out 2,000 words in the morning, directly from his own experiences and imagination, and finished work on the manuscript in March 1952. It was a pattern he retained for future Bond books. In May 1963 he wrote a piece for
Books and Bookmen magazine in which he said: "I write for about three hours in the morning ... and I do another hour's work between six and seven in the evening. I never correct anything and I never go back to see what I have written ... By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day." Back in London, Fleming had his manuscript—which he described as his "dreadful oafish opus"—retyped by Joan Howe, his red-haired secretary at
The Times on whom the character
Miss Moneypenny was partly based. Clare Blanchard, a former girlfriend, advised him not to publish the book, or at least to do so under a pseudonym. During the book's final draft stages, Fleming allowed his friend, and later editor,
William Plomer to see a copy, and remarked "I really am thoroughly ashamed of it ... after rifling through this muck you will probably never speak to me again, but I have got to take that chance." Despite this, Plomer thought the book had sufficient promise and sent a copy to the publishing house
Jonathan Cape. At first they were unenthusiastic, but were persuaded to publish on the recommendation of Fleming's older brother,
Peter, an established travel writer whose books they managed. Although Fleming provided limited information regarding dates within his novels, two writers have identified different timelines based on events and situations within the
novel series as a whole. John Griswold and
Henry Chancellor—both of whom have written books on behalf of
Ian Fleming Publications—put the events of
Casino Royale in 1951; Griswold allows a possible second timeframe and considers the story could have taken place in either May to July 1951, or May to July 1952. Griswold noted that in
Goldfinger, Fleming identifies that the events took place in 1951. ==Development==