The Man with the Golden Typewriter by Bloomsbury Publishing Page B

with avid interest your speleological expedition. I know there were high elements of disappointment attached to it: as Kinsey could have told you it is a hell of a lot more fun to take a girl to a hotel than to go off into a cave by yourself. All of this you will learn as you grow older.
    I agree completely with your thesis on payment. Schell is on vacation and I shall call it to his attention when he returns. I find it aestheticallyrevolting to ask a man to do something, which perforce must be of excellent quality, and then ask him to accept shabby compensation which is as much a burden on your self-respect as it is on his.
    On the same date Fleming sent Cuneo a long list of topics that might interest NANA that included the following:
‘
I have only one more thought and that is to do with “Scrabble”, a word-making game which, I gather, is being a great success in the States. Is there any strip or pictorial representation that could be built out of this game with the same name?’
    TO ERNEST CUNEO
    In December 1953 Fleming paid a fleeting visit to New York, where he stayed in Cuneo’s apartment. It was at the height of McCarthyism, and although Fleming may or may not at that time have met either Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, or the newly elected President Dwight Eisenhower, he appreciated that Senator McCarthy’s persecution of perceived Communists was newsworthy and that advantage could be gained by interviewing two ‘turned’ spies, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers.
    3rd December, 1953
    Dear Ernie,
    Life seems very quiet and humdrum without you, but without any effort I can hear a steady roar coming from your room in NANA punctuated by Ivar’s racking cough.
    As usual, it was heaven to stay in your apartment and renew acquaintance with Caractacus, my favourite of all cockroaches, and be lulled by the sweet music of the house next door being pulled down, as I sipped your pre-McCarthy Bourbon.
    I long for you to come over here so that I can provide you with a pale shadow of these delights. Perhaps one day you will condescend to leave your kingdom.
    I spoke severely to the White House before leaving and I am glad to see that Dulles and the President have acted so promptly on my advice.Last night I went into the whole situation with Rebecca West 6 and she would very much like to go over and have a look at it all. I suppose it won’t be worth your while to have her do a series for NANA? She sees a Communist under every single bed and to have her interviewing Bentley and Chambers would surely be a great feather in your cap.
    Also on business, I am trying to get an offer of the American rights of Ribbentrop’s memoirs which are being published next week in Berlin, but there are so many vultures sitting round the carrion that I am not optimistic.
    I don’t think that we shall be coming through New York in January but flying direct to Jamaica to save money and days. Would you please tell Ivar this. But I shall be with you on my way back in March and perhaps I could pick up Ivar in Nassau and bring him along. [. . .]
    I long to hear news of the book 7 and I hope you will drop me a line directly there is anything solid to tell.
    I must go along to Scott’s 8 now and toy with some oysters and a roast grouse and discuss matters with a disreputable spy of my acquaintance.
    Fleming later wrote to ask if Cuneo could lean on his legal client and journalist acquaintance Walter Winchell to review
Live and Let Die.
    TO ERNEST CUNEO (undated)
    Your old friend James Bond would be vastly obliged if his sub-agent Cuneo could persuade that delicate source W.W. to give this volume of his autobiography nationwide publicity.
    Pray fail me not!
    The next year Fleming was on his way to America to research
Diamonds are Forever.
He sought Cuneo’s company for a trans-continental rail trip that would take in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Chicago.
    TO ERNEST CUNEO
    29th September,