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Ian Fleming

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:1,000.00 - 1,500.00 USD
Ian Fleming

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Auction Date:2018 Oct 10 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
ALS, one page both sides, 5.5 x 7, personal letterhead, no date but circa June 1964. Letter to Max, the son of British-Canadian politician and business tycoon Lord Beaverbrook, who died on June 9, 1964. In part: "We shall all miss him for our different reasons. I hope you & I will remain good friends as, I expect, he would have wished. If you need my help, private or public, at any time—call upon me. You have damnably hard work ahead of you. You have what it takes & more beside—so all I wish you is a fair wind for the enterprise." In fine condition.

Fleming's relationship with Lord Beaverbrook began in 1957, when the Daily Express, owned by Beaverbrook, approached Fleming about comic strip adaptations of the popular James Bond novels. Though Fleming was originally reluctant—he worried that 'unless the standard of these books is maintained they will lose their point'—he finally assented, and the first Bond strip, Casino Royale, was published in the following year. Friction between Fleming and Beaverbrook developed in 1962, when the latter discovered that Fleming had sold the rights to the novel The Living Daylights to one of Beaverbrook's biggest competitors, the Sunday Times. This seeming lack of loyalty incensed Beaverbrook so thoroughly that he broke off his business relationship with Fleming, even terminating the strip Thunderball while it was still in mid-story. The two ultimately mended their relationship, and the series resumed in 1964, the year of Beaverbrook's death, with On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Handwritten letters from Fleming, let alone fully signed examples with a personal association of such significance, take a place among the prized scarcities of modern fiction.