Ian Fleming: A Personal Memoir (2015)

Forged on the front line of the Second World War, the friendship between Ian Fleming and Robert Harling would shape the lives and literature of both men. This is Harling's intimate memoir of his enduring relationship with one of the twentieth century's most iconic writers.

As part of ‘Fleming's Secret Navy’, Harling was Ian Fleming's second-in-command, capturing enemy equipment, intelligence and codebooks. The war made the men fast friends, and Fleming would later write Harling into his Bond novels Thunderball and The Spy Who Loved Me.

Despite the pair's closeness, this is Fleming warts and all, his magnetism and charm tempered by bouts of depression and deep-rooted misogyny that doomed his relationships with women to end in failure and recrimination.

This extraordinary memoir offers an unprecedented insight into the life and mind of Ian Fleming, from one of those who knew him best.