Inventing James Bond - a podcast by BBC World Service

The author Ian Fleming created the fictional super-spy, James Bond, in the 1950s. Fleming, a former journalist and stockbroker, had served in British naval intelligence during the Second World War. Using interviews with Fleming and his friends from the BBC archive, Alex Last explores how elements of James Bond were drawn from Ian Fleming's own adventurous life.
Photo: Ian Lancaster Fleming, British author and creator of the James Bond character, in 1958. (Getty Images)

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