My name is Fleming, Ian Fleming
Interview conducted by Cornelius Schregle, curator and author
Nicholas Shakespeare is the author of seven novels, including The Vision of Elena Silves (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and Betty Trask Award); The High Flyer, for which he was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 1993; and The Dancer Upstairs, which was chosen as the Best Novel of 1997 by the American Libraries Association, and in 2001 made into a film by John Malkovich. His non-fiction includes the critically acclaimed authorized biography of Bruce Chatwin In Tasmania, winner of the 2007 Tasmania Book Prize, Priscilla: the Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France (2013) and Six Minutes in May: how Churchill Unexpectedly became Prime Minister (2017). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Did you know that the father of James Bond studied at the University of Geneva? That Ian Fleming did an internship at the League of Nations? That he met his future fiancée at a student ball? That she became Bond’s mother in the books? That he was a regular at a famous restaurant in Geneva where part of Goldfinger’s action took place? With Ian Fleming: the complete Man (Harvill Secker, 2023), he will depict the Genevan life of 007’s creator.