What do we REALLY know about James Bond and Jamaica?

Author of Jamaica: On the Tracks of James Bond, author Simon Firth has chronicled the locations of James Bond in Jamaica. He has also uncovered and documented some of the provenance of the fictional spy’s creator Ian fleming. As part of a sit down interview for the There Will Be Bond podcast, Simon divulged some of his findings, and revealed What do we REALLY know about James Bond in Jamaica.

How was the process for this book? Was it any different to all the others that you've written previously?

It was fairly similar in the sense that I started off with the scope. So a long list of all of the locations. The films, the books where people close to the history of Bond lived.

At that point I then go put them all into Google Maps to create let's say a driving tour or a walking tour. So if someone finds themselves only up in Northeast Jamaica, then they can go from point A to point B, and then they'll cover everything that they have in that part of the world.

We are in geographical sequence, but we are not in film sequence or book sequence. That makes it easier for people that go there to go from step to step without going back and forth, back and forth from one side of the island to the other.

Were there moments in this. Book where you perhaps stumbled upon things that weren't previously discovered?

You get known knowns. We know that James Bond met Honey Child Rider on a beach. And we know that that beach was called Laughing Waters. A known unknown example is Roger Moore's Bond with Quarrel Junior lept onto a beach for the island of Sam Monique.

But at the point of which I started writing it, I didn't know where that was. But then the most exciting parts of these books are the unknown unknowns, which can only really sort of come about by asking random questions, open questions, keeping in touch with people.

There certainly were a couple of absolutely eureka moments.

And I was gonna ask in the midst of that as well, Jamaica's known for being the Ian Fleming hub as well. Did you appreciate going in that this would be a lot of Fleming there'd also be a lot of literature, film location and real life Fleming locations?

One of the people that was important was Olivia Morrow of the Jamaica Inn. The Jamaica Inn is a beautiful family run hotel. It is named in the short story Octopussy. But it was one of Flemings' most favorite places to drink. This is very much a way of looking at the history of Bond from the 1940s through to present day.

I wanted to find what motivated Fleming to even consider Jamaica as being somewhere to live, and the thrust of these books.

So, I mean, 1943, Ian Fleming was sent to Jamaica to attend a conference. He went along with his best friend Ivar Bryce. The conference was to look at the German U-boat situation that was making a mess of the trade route from that part of the world and Europe.

The conference was at the Myrtle Bank Hotel in Kingston that no longer exists, but where they stayed was Ivar Bryce's wife’s house. And it's well documented within a couple of books that that house is called Bellevue. I wanted to find out about Bellevue.

Bellevue was the reason why Fleming considered Jamaica as being a possible place to live. And why Indeed Goldeneye came to be.

Is Bellevue still there?

The Bellevue House unfortunately is in a little bit of ruins and it has been sort of fortified and made as a central garden construct around which cottages have been built.

The area, the scene, the view, the part of the island which first inspired Fleming to live in Jamaica, that can be seen.