The Man with the Golden Typewriter by Bloomsbury Publishing Page B

attempt. An abstract design of pillars of flame, by Ken Lewis, it wasn’t as successful as the previous two.
    28th October, 1954
    I have now devised the enclosed and I think it’s on the right lines. Robert Harling also very much approves which, in case you don’t know him, is a considerable triumph.
    What do you think?
    I think the author’s name could be a bit larger or alternatively in a different type, and I think the motif of the background might be a little bit bolder and not quite so niggly.
    But it at any rate contains the red, yellow and black, which experts have always told me are the most striking for poster purposes, so it should show up well on the bookstalls.
    I await your verdict and I also enclose an alternative design on which Harling has turned his thumbs down.
    The colours are wrong but I still think something could be made of the idea if you don’t like the flaming one.
    TO E. B. STRAUSS, ESQ., 45 Wimpole Street, London, W.1.
    Eric Strauss (1894–1961) was an eminent psychiatrist who treated both Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. Fleming had sought his advice on megalomania and discovered in Strauss’s
Men of Genius
that childhood thumb-sucking could have baneful consequences – hence the gap-toothed Drax.
    5th January, 1955
    It is now exactly a year since I borrowed your “Men of Genius” and I have felt ashamed of myself for not having returned it to you before.
    The Hemmung [psychological inhibition] was undoubtedly created by my desire to keep the book in my possession. It appears to be quite unobtainable and it has given me so much pleasure that even now I am loath to let it go.
    However, please forgive me for the delay and thank you most warmly for your kindness in lending it to me, and in being so patient with the borrower.
    A perfectly horrible man whose diabolical schemes for the destruction of this country stem, I have maintained, directly from a pronounced diastema of the centrals has resulted from your loan and will appear in my next thriller, THE MOONRAKER, of which I will send you a copy on its publication in April.
    I hope you will then approve of the motivation I have provided for my villain.
    Again with many apologies and my warmest thanks and very best wishes for 1955.
    TO MICHAEL BODENHAM, ESQ., Director, Floris Ltd., 89 Jermyn Street, London, S.W.1.
    Floris
, perfumiers and soap makers to the gentry, were ‘most interested to read your kind mention of “Floris” in your new book “The Moonrakers”’. They sent their appreciation, plus a sample of their products and ‘thanks to you for this association in a most excellent and entertaining novel’. Fleming was an enthusiastic endorser of the products used.
    23rd August, 1955
    Having been a life-time consumer of your products the least I could do was to pay tribute to your firm in enumerating the luxurious appointments of Blades Club, and it was quite unnecessary though very nice of you to have sent me such a fragrant bouquet in return.
    My books are spattered with branded products of one sort or another 9 as I think it is stupid to invent bogus names for products which are household words, and you may be interested to know that this is the first time that a name-firm has had the kindly thought of acknowledging the published tribute.
    Again with many thanks.
    TO GEOFFREY M. CUCKSON, ESQ., Nottingham
    19th September, 1955
    Thank you very much for your kind letter of September 7th which greeted me on my return from Istanbul.
    I am so glad you like the adventures of James Bond. They also give me much pleasure but you are one of the few of my readers who has suggested that the background work does require a great deal of trouble.
    All your comments are, as a matter of fact, very much to the point and I agree that perhaps Gala should have been gagged. On the other hand the effects of the bang behind the ear she got would not, I think, have worn off within the three-quarters