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It began just ahead of the portrait sittings. What was the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang connection? Nita told a researcher who worked on John Pearson’s The Life of Ian Fleming, ‘We both loved him and the world will always be less for us without him.’ Fleming liked the portrait so much that it became the frontispiece to a limited edition of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.Īmherst and Nita were living in California when they learned Fleming had died. There was plenty of conversation during the sittings, and Amherst sometimes had to banish his wife Nita from the studio when she made Fleming laugh.
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Each session began with his favourite lunch of scrambled eggs and sausages, washed down with red wine, and then work began. They saw plenty of each other during the spring of 1962 when Fleming visited Amherst’s Kensington home regularly to sit for the portrait. Fleming dedicated a copy of You Only Live Twice to him with the words, ‘To Amherst. Amherst was seven years older and his cars had been at the forefront of British motorsport for several years, yet they revelled in each other’s company and often met up if they were both in London.įleming told Playboy magazine that he gave Bond a Blower Bentley to drive because ‘Amherst Villers was and is a great friend of mine and I knew something about it from my friendship with him.’ It was a regular joke between the pair that Amherst only read books on engineering and art, never fiction. Fleming was not yet 20 and still finding his way in life. Ian Fleming by Amherst Villiers | Copyright © 2012 Brad Frank What was Villiers’ relationship with Fleming like? In the end, I stopped being surprised by his capacity to trip himself up! He often spoke of having the rug pulled from under him, blind to the fact that he was the common link in what he saw as the all the misfortunes that befell him. But he was also easily offended and preferred to walk away or sue someone rather than reason things through. That’s partly because he was the ultimate ‘projects guy’ – there was always something else to be inspired by, and he rarely benefited as much as he should from his current venture. What surprised you most about Villiers and his life?įor all the breadth and depth of his many skills, Amherst was not a great decision-maker. Much of the collection dates back to Ian’s grandfather Robert, the founder of the eponymous bank. It was, of course, a thrill and a privilege to read through the great man’s correspondence – while researching the conclusion of the car chase in Moonraker, he introduced himself to a marketing exec at Bowater Paper as ‘a spare-time writer of thrillers’! But I was most taken with the art displayed on the walls there. Both men have died since, sadly.īut perhaps the most agreeable visit of all was to the Ian Fleming Archive in London. I stayed with Amherst’s nephew, Desmond Fitzgerald, the Knight of Glin, at Glin Castle by the River Shannon. I was fortunate enough to enjoy the support of Edward, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu from the outset, and he not only invited me to Beaulieu House, but he very kindly wrote the foreword to the book. That night in the Brooklands bar after the talk it was clear that a book was the logical next step. I had so much material on Amherst by then. I clearly had my interesting story, Paul agreed, and my Motor Sport article on Amherst led to an invitation to speak at Brooklands. The blurbs on the artist spoke of his lifelong friendship with Fleming, supercharging the Bentley driven by James Bond in the early novels, designing Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and the engine which powered Hill to his first world championship, and being fortunate not to be on the flight which killed Hill and five of his team. He agreed to publish an interesting story if I found one, and a week later I was in the National Portrait Gallery and my eyes alighted on portraits of Ian Fleming and racing driver Graham Hill. It all started after a conversation with Paul Fearnley, who was editing Motor Sport magazine at the time.