Under Cover: James Bond’s top-secret Kent connections

[Blowfeld]

Ian Fleming lived in Kent during the 1950s, and his lifelong passion for the Garden of England rubbed off on his most enduring character, James Bond. In the 1955 novel Moonraker, the Secret Intelligence Service agent stops to gaze at the cliffs of Margate and the Isle of Thanet. And the golf club where he pitches and putts with Goldfinger, in the 1959 novel of the same name, is based on a club in the Kent town of Sandwich of which Fleming was a member. Asked how he created his characters, Fleming once remarked that “I go out into Romney Marsh and hope to find one there”. Reflecting on this comment years later, the Bond historian Graham Rye, editor of 007magazine.co.uk, studied an Ordnance

Survey map of Kent and made some startling discoveries. In Romney Marsh was a place called Moneypenny Farm, which had surely given Fleming the name for 007’s boss’s secretary. Not far away was Honeychild Manor Farm, a likely source for Honeychile Rider, Ursula Andress’s Bond girl in Dr No. And there are many other curious connections between 007’s adventures and Fleming’s best-loved county. In the 1969 film

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diana Rigg’s character tells Bond that she looks forward to “living as Mr and Mrs James Bond of Acacia Avenue, Tunbridge Wells”. In 1997 a book of stories was published called Your Deal, Mr Bond, in which the secret agent plays bridge – and Deal and Bridge are both Kent towns. We find Sandwich mentioned discreetly in the novel Live and Let Die, when Bond eats a “western” sandwich. Rye points out that the National Express coach service from London Victoria to Deal is numbered SH-007. And The Sunday Times can now reveal that, down a lane in the Kent town of Bexleyheath, there is a business called Roger Moore Motor Repairs.

This story can be found at Did you know? Farrah Fawcett, James Bond and Superman

[carl stromberg]

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/.../ian_flemi ... ture.shtml