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The Love Story of Ian Fleming and Blanche Blackwell
The Jamaican heiress was nothing like any of the Bond Girls
The life of writer Ian Fleming has fused somewhat with the lethal swagger of his overwhelmingly successful fictional character, James Bond, and that assumption carries over to those who were close to him. When Blanche Blackwell, his longtime mistress, died on August 8, 2017, certain obituaries suggested she had been the ultimate Bond girl, even claiming she was the inspiration for Pussy Galore of Goldfinger.
The truth was Blackwell personified a Bond girl no more than Fleming did a British secret agent with a license to kill. Her life, and their love affair, was much more subtle than that.
Fleming bought property in Jamaica in 1946 and rehabilitated a house that he dubbed Goldeneye. “As has been the case since the days of the sugar barons, Jamaica provided a home for British aristocrats, second and third sons of the aristocracy and rich misfits,” wrote Matthew Parker in his book Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming’s Jamaica.
The category Fleming belonged in was perhaps the third, though he was not as yet rich. The middle son of a prosperous banker and politician, Fleming had floundered after Eton, overshadowed by a brilliant older brother. He poured his energy into the playboy life, drinking and seducing as many women as possible.
After trying various careers, including being as he put it “the world’s worst stockbroker,” he found his calling in World War Two, as personal assistant to Admiral John Godfrey, director of intelligence of the Royal Navy. Commander Fleming functioned as an “ideas man and fixer,” according to the documentary The Real Casino Royale. He bought a home in Jamaica while working as a journalist, eager to escape the grimness of postwar Britain.
Blanche Blackwell came from a far different background. She was born a Lindo, one of Jamaica’s richest families and part of the “plantocracy.” They were Sephardic Jews from Portugal who had come to Jamaica in 1743 to make money from sugar, rum, and coconuts. Family lore has it that the Lindos made a large loan to Napoleon Bonaparte that was never repaid. Their fortune had decreased by the dawn of the 20th century, but the booming banana trade brought it back, and the family bought the…
