007

Today's the birthday of Ian Fleming, the author of twelve James Bond novels, born in the posh Mayfair neighborhood of London in 1908. He appears seven times in A Book of Ages. Being blackballed from a social club at Eton, engaging in adultery and espionage (sometimes simultaneously) purchasing a book about the birds of the West Indies by an ornithologist named James Bond, and finally inventing the elaborate and enduring male fantasy which finally made him rich. A suave, companionable but cold-blooded man, Fleming was known to write polite thank-you notes to the husbands he was cuckolding. He died at age 56 of a heart attack, thereby certifying that he had one. He only saw one Bond film: Dr. No. He didn't particularly like the casting of Sean Connery.