Ian Fleming at 100

It's Ian Fleming's centenary today! He, of course, is the man who gave us the super-secret agent, 007, James Bond. He also gave us Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Fleming died in 1964, at 56, of complications from pleurisy after playing a round of golf in Oxfordshire... although he did have a heavy cold. The real culprits were years of smoking up to 80 cigarettes a day, and a fondness for drinking. Because of the difficulty he found in resisting life’s indulgences, he adopted a strict writing routine in his last 12 years, the period in which he wrote more than a dozen Bond novels that spawned the multibillion-dollar film franchise.

Fleming saw 40 million copies of his books sold in his lifetime but died before the Bond franchise exploded onto film screens.

!!!THANK YOU IAN FOR ALL THE FUN!!!