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first publication and, through some oversight, my correction never got into the cheaper edition.
    I suppose until I go to my grave sharp-eyed, sweet-scented women will continue to rap my bruised knuckles for this mistake, and I can only say that I rather enjoy the process!
    Again with many thanks for taking the trouble to write.
    Â 
    3
    Moonraker
    At the outset, 1954 boded well for Fleming. He had been awarded the post of Atticus, leading columnist for the
Sunday Times
, which gave him free rein to expatiate on anyone and anything that caught his fancy. It was an enviable position for a journalist and during his three-year tenure he made the most of it. Best of all, however, was a letter he received in January from film producer Alexander Korda 1 saying how much he had enjoyed a proof copy of
Live and Let Die
and asking Fleming if he would be interested in writing for films. Fleming replied that his forthcoming novel might be just what Korda was looking for. And with this glittering prospect in mind he departed London for Goldeneye.
    There were good moments. During his two-month furlough he inveigled Ann into the sea and taught her how to catch and cook an octopus. ‘I was sad about the octopus,’ Ann wrote in a letter to Evelyn Waugh. All the same, it made a very good lunch, fried with conch and lobster, served on saffron rice. When she looked at Fleming’s work she felt even sadder: ‘The heroine is a policewoman called Gala, she has perfect measurements. I was hopelessly ignorant about such important facts . . .’ Only when Noël Coward brought a corsetry saleswoman for drinks did she get her husband’s drift.
    And there were bad. Although Fleming worked with his habitual discipline, Ann’s guests were more than he could stand – among them a honeymoon couple who stayed for ‘twelve interminable days’. After a while he had had enough. ‘Ian said I was to tell them that they must notcall “Lion” and “Bear” to each other while he was writing,’ Ann recorded, ‘but I could think of no tactful approach; finally Ian whose tact is notorious said at luncheon “We should love you to continue using the house but we are going away for three or four days.” An appalling silence fell.’ Ann mollified as best she could, with the result that the honeymooners stayed a little longer. Fleming called her a traitor.
    Possibly the Flemings did decamp from Goldeneye because on 28 March, shortly after their return to Britain, Atticus condemned Jamaican hoteliers for ramped prices and bad service: ‘Ten days ago, in one of these hotels, a visitor rang three times and telephoned for the maid, finally to be told that the maid could not come until the rain had stopped.’ Furthermore, the same thinly disguised visitor was foolish enough to order a dry martini. ‘The level of the glass fell half an inch when he had removed the jumbo olive. It cost him 5s. 8d. and the lights in the bar fused while he was drinking it.’
    On their return from Jamaica, Ian and Ann visited the South of France where, at the Villa Mauresque, he persuaded Somerset Maugham to allow the
Sunday Times
to serialise a selection of his short stories. When published in June 1954, with gigantic posters and an invitation for readers to compare their ten favourite novels against Maugham’s own selection, it added another 50,000 to the paper’s already considerable circulation and prompted Kemsley to consider a separate entertainment section – which materialised eight years later as the ground-breaking
Sunday Times Magazine
.
    Whether for reasons of disruption or the fact he was trying to write for film, Fleming wasn’t happy with the manuscript. The plot was fine, and very much of its age: a millionaire industrialist, Sir Hugo Drax, had developed a missile that would serve as Britain’s unique nuclear deterrent – the trouble being that he and