shower (then a rarity) and a special soap dispenser. A customised object added a special glamour: after Bond proved a commercial success, Fleming rewarded himself with a gold typewriter, and even had a gold top made for his Bic biro. When describing technology or modes of transport in his books, Fleming worked hard to get the details right, and when he got them wrong (as he not infrequently did), he was grateful to readers for pointing out his mistakes. âI take very great pains over the technical and geographical background to James Bondâs adventures,â he wrote. His notebooks were filled with jottings on machines and gizmos he had seen or heard about. Whenever possible, he consulted experts. âFacts,â he wrote, âare clearer than people.â Minute technical descriptions have since become a stock in trade of the thriller writer, but Fleming was among the first to realise that readers (particularly male readers) have an almost insatiable desire to be told the precise make, size, shape and structure of every machine â even if the details are forgotten the instant they are read. Fleming both shared and fed this hunger for detail: the boat owned by the villain in
Thunderball
, Emilio Largo, is no mere luxury yacht but rather a hundred-ton hydrofoil adapted from the Shertel-Sachsenberg system, with a hull of aluminium and magnesium alloy, twin Daimler-Benz four-stroke diesel engines with Brown-Boveri turbo superchargerscapable of fifty knots and costing £200,000. Some machines were imaginary; most were based firmly on reality, giving the reader the important sense of being told a fiction based on truth. Kingsley Amis called this use of real information in a fictional world âThe Fleming Effectâ, and it proved highly successful.
Secret service gadgetry â masterminded by the irascible Q â plays a crucial role in the James Bond films, reaching almost ludicrous levels of inventiveness with flame-throwing bagpipes, exploding toothpaste and invisible cars. But gizmos are also present in the books, courtesy of Q-Branch, the genuine wartime equipment unit under the extraordinary Charles Fraser-Smith. Based in a tiny office near St Jamesâs Park, Fraser-Smith commissioned some three hundred firms around London to make an array of ingenious gadgets. He called them âQ gadgetsâ, after the British warships disguised as merchant vessels known as âQ shipsâ in the First World War. None of the things created by Fraser-Smith was quite what it seemed: a hairbrush containing a map and a saw; magnetised matches that doubled as makeshift compasses; a pipe lined with asbestos that could be smoked without destroying the documents hidden inside (though it might well destroy the smoker); invisible ink; miniature cameras hidden in cigarette lighters; a shoelace that could also be a handy steel garrotte. Fraser-Smith was one of the great unsung lateral thinkers of the war: he devised chocolate laced with garlic so that agents dropped into France might swiftlyacquire pungent breath, the better to mix with the locals, and a screw-off button with a special left-hand thread in which miniature documents could be hidden. This, he believed, would take advantage of the âunswerving logic of the German mindâ, since no German would ever think of trying to unscrew something the wrong way.
Fleming worked with Fraser-Smith, and his books are peppered with references to ingenious kit. Technological wizardry is not confined to Bond and his allies: his communist and criminal enemies have an equal share of the elaborate gizmos. In
Casino Royale
, Le Chiffre conceals âEversharpâ razor blades in his hatband, shoe heel and cigarette case; a gun hidden in an innocent-looking cane is the first method employed to try to kill Bond; and a âsmall carpet of steel spikesâ is used to stop his car. When, in
Live and Let Die
, he heads to Mr Bigâs island, Bond has a full
Thunderball
, Emilio Largo, is no mere luxury yacht but rather a hundred-ton hydrofoil adapted from the Shertel-Sachsenberg system, with a hull of aluminium and magnesium alloy, twin Daimler-Benz four-stroke diesel engines with Brown-Boveri turbo superchargerscapable of fifty knots and costing £200,000. Some machines were imaginary; most were based firmly on reality, giving the reader the important sense of being told a fiction based on truth. Kingsley Amis called this use of real information in a fictional world âThe Fleming Effectâ, and it proved highly successful.
Secret service gadgetry â masterminded by the irascible Q â plays a crucial role in the James Bond films, reaching almost ludicrous levels of inventiveness with flame-throwing bagpipes, exploding toothpaste and invisible cars. But gizmos are also present in the books, courtesy of Q-Branch, the genuine wartime equipment unit under the extraordinary Charles Fraser-Smith. Based in a tiny office near St Jamesâs Park, Fraser-Smith commissioned some three hundred firms around London to make an array of ingenious gadgets. He called them âQ gadgetsâ, after the British warships disguised as merchant vessels known as âQ shipsâ in the First World War. None of the things created by Fraser-Smith was quite what it seemed: a hairbrush containing a map and a saw; magnetised matches that doubled as makeshift compasses; a pipe lined with asbestos that could be smoked without destroying the documents hidden inside (though it might well destroy the smoker); invisible ink; miniature cameras hidden in cigarette lighters; a shoelace that could also be a handy steel garrotte. Fraser-Smith was one of the great unsung lateral thinkers of the war: he devised chocolate laced with garlic so that agents dropped into France might swiftlyacquire pungent breath, the better to mix with the locals, and a screw-off button with a special left-hand thread in which miniature documents could be hidden. This, he believed, would take advantage of the âunswerving logic of the German mindâ, since no German would ever think of trying to unscrew something the wrong way.
Fleming worked with Fraser-Smith, and his books are peppered with references to ingenious kit. Technological wizardry is not confined to Bond and his allies: his communist and criminal enemies have an equal share of the elaborate gizmos. In
Casino Royale
, Le Chiffre conceals âEversharpâ razor blades in his hatband, shoe heel and cigarette case; a gun hidden in an innocent-looking cane is the first method employed to try to kill Bond; and a âsmall carpet of steel spikesâ is used to stop his car. When, in
Live and Let Die
, he heads to Mr Bigâs island, Bond has a full
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