FLEMING, Ian.

£35,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Thunderball. First edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: "To Noël, In exchange for the copy of P & C he didn't send me! With love Ian".The inscription refers to Noël Coward's first and only novel, Pomp and Circumstance (1960), at the centre of which is a thinly veiled account of Fleming's affair with Ann. Set on the fictional island of Samolo - a close match for Jamaica - it concerns the secret relationship between the aristocratic Eloise and her lover, Bunny, whose character mirrors Fleming's almost exactly. "In the character of Bunny... we have a remarkably unflinching portrait of Ian Fleming's time on the island in 1949-51, the years immediately preceding his marriage to Ann and the simultaneous launch of James Bond... It's astonishing how little Coward bothered to make up" (Parker, p. 91).Noël Coward (1899-1973) was one of Fleming's closest friends. In 1948 Coward visited Jamaica where he rented Goldeneye from Fleming for a week: "On arrival, a boyish, teasing friendship and good-natured rivalry over Jamaica began between Coward and Fleming. During his visit, Coward celebrated Goldeneye with a song that complained about the airless rooms and the hardness of Fleming's furniture... Sardonically he referred to his host's home as 'Golden Eye, Nose and Throat' because it reminded him of a hospital. Fleming, too, enjoyed the sparring and wrote about the outcome of Coward's first visit... 'He [Coward] then went off, and

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