James Bond creator Ian Fleming was wary of female drivers and suspicious of men with sideburns in his ’13 rules for life’ notebook
- Beneath the pages, former spy Fleming worked on iconic 007 lines for his novels
- He recommended “walking carefully” around people with mustaches or beards
- The book will be auctioned in Texas next month and could go up to £17,000
James Bond creator Ian Fleming was wary of female drivers and suspicious of men with sideburns, his notebook has revealed.
The ex-spy wrote his “13 Rules for Life” in a notebook he used when planning his novel You Only Live Twice.
One of the rules to live by was ‘beware of cars with two women in the front’. Others were “beware of people who smell” and “careful around mustaches, sideburns and beards.”
Ian Fleming, who was a spy himself, published You Only Live Twice in 1964. It was the last novel he wrote before he died
The author told himself to “don’t waste time on women who wear a bracelet on the left ankle” and to avoid “all politicians”
His last instruction simply says ‘Live until you’re dead’, with number 12 adding to ‘not to worry about chlorosis of the liver or cancer’
The notebook contains 39 pages and will be sold this month by a private collector at Heritage Auctions in Texas. It is expected to bring in up to £17,000.
Other notes in the book reveal the moments when Fleming creates iconic 007 lines, including a scribble that says, “You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you are about to die.’
In the last epigraph in Fleming’s novel, he adapted this and wrote: ‘You only live twice: once when you are born, and once when you look death in the eye’.
You Only Live Twice, published in 1964, was the last novel he published. He died of a heart attack that year after it was published and the book was later made into a movie starring Sean Connery as 007.
Joe Maddalena of Heritage Auctions said: ‘James Bond has become such an icon in literature, film and pop culture that we take the character and his creation for granted.
“But these handwritten documents straight from its creator give us an insight and perspective that often makes 007 seem brand new. We are allowed to enter the creative process. We’ll be over his shoulder when Bond is born.”