Ian Fleming was the creator of James Bond, the most popular hero of espionage fiction in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Bond, whose name still suggests a certain type of spy-hero--sophisticated, sexy, glamorously dangerous--is particularly well known because of the James Bond film series, which exaggerates the guns-gadgets-and-girls aspect of Fleming's original stories.

Ian Lancaster Fleming, the second son of Valentine Fleming and Evelyn Beatrice Ste. Croix Rose, was born in the elegant and expensive London district of Mayfair. His birth certificate describes his father's occupation as "of independent means"; his paternal grandfather, who had founded the prosperous London banking firm of Robert Fleming and Company, was a multimillionaire. Fleming's mother's family claimed descent from John of Gaunt, fourth son of King Edward III and founder of the royal house of Lancaster--hence Fleming's middle name.

Fleming was nine years old when his father, who was then a...