It is a little known fact that long before he had written his first James Bond book, Ian Fleming had been a keen book collector. With the expert guidance of bibliophile Percy Muir, he was to build up an original and distinctive book collection of first editions – in all about 1000 titles.

He had a specific theme and that was ‘milestones in human progress’. He looked for books which ‘started something’ or ‘which made things happen’ – that is to say the primary printed sources for the great discoveries, inventions and scientific theories of modern times. He was interested, too, in new philosophical or political ideas, and handbooks on sports or pastimes.

Each book was preserved in a fleece-lined, buckram box, whose label was colour-coded to indicate the section to which it belonged: red for sociology, orange for pure science, green for medicine etc. The collection, part of which once occupied a wall of his country home (see above), was considered of such national importance that it was evacuated from London during the Blitz.

When the seminal exhibition Printing and the Mind of Man put on in London in 1963, Fleming was the largest private lender. Percy Muir later said of his part in the formation of Fleming’s collection that it was amongst the proudest achievements of his life.

Little did Ian Fleming imagine when he spent a few pounds and shillings on the odd volume in his early days of book collecting, that he would one day become a writer himself, or that his own novels would become highly sought after; the collector collected.

The collection now resides in the Lilly Library, Indiana University.

In 1952 Ian Fleming, Percy Muir and John Hayward (associate and muse of T.S. Eliot) jointly founded The Book Collector, a British antiquarian quarterly. It was owned by Fleming, and initially published by Queen Anne Press.

Ian Fleming often had books specially bound, and almost always by the firm of Sangorski and Sutcliffe. The firm’s successor, Shepherds, Sangorski and Sutcliffe (known generally today as Shepherds), is responsible for much of the present binding for Queen Anne Press.

A limited edition of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service bound in quarter vellum on black cloth was produced under Ian Fleming’s instructions in 1963. Queen Anne Press has followed his original design for the vellum sets of the complete works.

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