Nice writeup in the gray lady today on the Fleming exhibit in the Imperial War museum.

Of his Bond plots, Fleming, ever prosaic about his talent, said, “I extracted them from my wartime memories, dolled them up, attached a hero and a villain, and there was the book.” For M, Bond’s irascible, domineering secret service overseer, he had as a model Rear Adm. John Godfrey, his wartime intelligence chief; old school friends, golfing partners, and girlfriends also metamorphosed into Bond characters. Even his villains had real-life antecedents.

Auric Goldfinger, “a misshapen short man with red hair and a bizarre face” in Fleming’s description, had the author’s “flat golf swing” and the surname of a prominent Hungarian-born British architect, Erno Goldfinger, whose penchant for concrete tower blocks Fleming abhorred. Rosa Klebb of Smersh, “a dreadful chunk of a woman” and “a toadlike figure” to Fleming, had her likeness in Maj. Tamara Nikolayeva Ivanova, a notoriously sadistic K.G.B. agent. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, “with lips that suggest contempt, tyranny and cruelty,” got his name from a Fleming schoolmate at Eton. Odd Job, Goldfinger’s enforcer and “a uniquely dreadful person,” drew his deadly missile of a bowler hat from Fleming’s knowledge of the nefarious uses to which British intelligence services made of everyday headgear.

If you know about Fleming, there’s nothing all that new in the article, but it’s a respectful and entertaining summation.