Dear Lord Beaverbrook, please serialise my book in the Daily Express, yours etc Ian Fleming
BOND creator Ian Fleming was quick off the mark with his book Moonraker, he hadn’t even finished it when he thought it was so good, he wrote a letter to Lord Beaverbrook to tell him so … and would he like to serialise it in his newspapers? That’s the way to do it, eh? Straight to the top.
The millionaire writer was no slouch promoting his own work, as his letter to Beaverbrook reveals. It’s another of the hundreds of nuggets tucked away in Beaver’s private papers and stored in the House of Lords.
The newspaper magnate’s personal and working documents include letters from politicians, world leaders and stars along with galley proofs; business and financial papers; and ownership documents of his houses, farms, yachts, caravans and racing stables.
There is even personal correspondence with family and friends, school records, engagement diaries, visitors’ and wine cellar books, petty cash books, medical records, even newspaper articles written by him.
The Fleming letter, pictured, written in 1954, the year the second book in the Bond series, Live and Let Die, was published, is fascinating. He says: “I was certainly surprised and delighted by Express critic, Malcolm Thompson’s review of Live and Let Die, which I am sure did the sales some good.”
He goes on to tell Beaverbrook about the new book he was working on which had been shown around the market. This would eventually be Moonraker, the third in the Bond series to be published the following year in 1955.
Moonraker features Bond investigating the hijacking of an American space shuttle. He and beautiful CIA agent Holly Goodhead find themselves locked in a struggle against Hugo Drax, a power-mad industrialist whose horrific scheme will destroy all human life on Earth.
“My publisher Jonathan Cape thinks that this will be the best of the three so far and there is already a bidding war between publishers,” he says.
“It is now with Curtis Brown and EVERYBODY’S [a popular weekly magazine] put in a first bid for it.
“Anyway, for countless reasons I would very much like the Express to put in for it, if you have any use for fiction these days?
“Anne sends her love. She’s just off to Ireland to roast an ox for her son’s 21st birthday.”
Fleming sold Moonraker
Fleming was married to Anne Charteris. She had divorced her husband, the 2nd Viscount Rothermere, because of her affair with the author.
The letter had an effect because in 1956 the Express began to serialise Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels in weekday instalments to coincide with their hardback publication. Adapted by staff writer Anthony Hern, Diamonds Are Forever, was the first novel to be serialised.
Beaverbrook had obviously played at being editor again, a role he always said he would not get involved in. The editor at the time was Edward Pickering.
But there were problems at the Express. Someone came up with the idea of making Bond a strip, something that at first angered Fleming, turning his creation into a comic hero was unthinkable, until the money flowed.
Executives on the Express agreed with him but in the end, Pickering offered payment of £1,500 per book, and a share in syndication rights. Worth around £45,000 today. And a deal was done.
Pickering guaranteed the author that the transition of Bond into a strip character would be handled as a ‘Rolls-Royce job’.
The man chosen to adapt the stories into a daily comic strip was Daily Express literary editor Anthony Hern, who was still providing the abridged text for the adaptations of Ian Fleming’s novels in the newspaper.
After seeing a proof of the first instalment of Hern’s adaptation of Diamonds Are Forever, Fleming sent a telegram to the writer which simply read: ‘SALUTE TO A MASTER BUTCHER!
Artist John McLusky (1923-2006) was engaged to draw the Bond strip.
It made its debut in the Daily Express on Monday July 7, 1958, accompanied by an introduction by Ian Fleming’s friend, the acclaimed American crime novelist Raymond Chandler.
*****
Rock on Beaver
ANECDOTES: Did you know that Lord Beaverbrook made his way into the rock poetry of the Kinks? Lead singer Ray Davies sings about the Beaver and Churchill in the war years on the album Arthur, (The Decline and Fall of the British Empire). He recites:
‘What Mr Churchill says, Mr. Churchill says
We gotta fight the bloody battle to the very end.
Mr Beaverbrook says gotta save our tin
And all the garden gates and empty cans are gonna make us win.’
*****
Beaver and that Blacklist
Noel Coward film that angered Beaverbrook

THE claims that Beaverbrook kept a blacklist of people who would never appear on the pages of the Daily Express because of his own personal dislikes, were widespread in celebrity circles back in the 1940s but the Beaver always denied them … until 1947, when he was cornered by the story that brought the Express shame with the most unfortunate headline in British newspaper history.
‘There will be no European war this year or next either!” the Express told the world and its readers in 1938. First published to mark the Munich Agreement and reprinted in various versions at regular intervals well into 1939, this phrase cast a shadow over the reputation of the newspaper and dogged Beaverbrook.
It became the contributing factor in the establishment of the Royal Commission on the Press in 1947. Its totally wrong headline prompted many historians of the British press to largely dismiss the Express from their analyses of the war years, or to ignore it altogether. Some say it was the result of a prediction by Express astrologer Richard Naylor, the man who invented the weekly horoscope column following the birth of Princess Margaret.
Testifying before a Parliamentary inquiry in 1947, former Express employee and future MP Michael Foot, alleged that Beaverbrook kept a blacklist of notable public figures who were to be denied any publicity in his papers because of personal disputes.
Foot said they included Sir Thomas Beecham, Paul Robeson, Haile Selassie and Noel Coward. Beaverbrook gave evidence before the inquiry and vehemently denied the allegations.
The Express management denied that Robeson had been blacklisted but admitted that Coward had been “boycotted” because he had enraged Beaverbrook with his war film ‘In Which We Serve’ with the opening sequence showing a copy of the Daily Express floating in the dockside rubbish bearing the headline “No War This Year”.
The war film was based on a script and music by Noel Coward who also produced it. It tells the story of the destroyer HMS Torrin and its crew in Crete. Beaverbrook left the inquiry still furious. But it didn’t deter him. Shortly after, that same year, he used his newspapers to campaign against Lord Mountbatten being appointed First Sea Lord on the grounds that he “gave away” India.
When Mountbatten was appointed First Sea Lord, the Beaverbrook press went out of their way to portray the Royal Navy under his leadership in a negative light, claiming he had deliberately launched the Dieppe raid of 19 August 1942 — in which the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division had taken heavy losses — knowing that it would fail to prevent a second front from being opened in 1942. Five thousand Canadian troops took part in the raid and they had 3,367 casualties.
When Beaverbrook, a Canadian, arrived at a London dinner party where Mountbatten was also a guest, the Beaver shocked other diners by angrily stabbing a finger in the air and shouting: “You murdered my Canadians to wreck my Second Front campaign!”
The Beaver never made the allegation again under the threat of libel but Mountbatten stayed on the so-called alleged blacklist. In the end, there were many others.
Later, the British historian Adrian Smith argued that the real reason for Beaverbrook’s feud with Mountbatten was because one of his mistresses at his stately home Cherkley, Jean Norton, had shared her affections with the Navy chief and the Beaver was possessive of his mistresses. Beaverbrook later left Norton for a Jewish ballet dancer named Lily Ernst, whom he had rescued from pre-war Austria. He left her too.
*****
What a load of kippers
Kippers keep popping up in the annals of the Daily Express and its fishy tales. The smoky fish even featured in a headline that made readers laugh and the editor angry, especially as it involved royalty and the paper was very big on the Empire back in the day.
A Page Three short put across by news editor Stanley Bishop, told of a royal visit to the seaside town of Yarmouth to honour the brave skippers of local trawlers. But the headline proudly read: ‘Yarmouth presents the prince with six kippers!’
The skippers were being presented to Prince Charles, but the letter ’s’ did not print through on Bishop’s typewriter. It went all the way to press.
Columnist and womaniser Lord Castlerosse, who had a reputation for sometimes not being particular about his washing habits, came in for some rough treatment. One morning editorial prankster, Jimmy Wentworth Day nailed two rotting kippers under his desk and the smell was awful over the following few days.
Castlerosse didn’t know where the pungent smell was coming from as people in the editorial avoided him. The kippers were later peeled off, but the womanising gossip writer was never told. (Didn’t that happen to a more recent unpopular Express Editor at their home following a party?) I think it did.
Later in life writer Jimmy, better known as James, could show an aggressive side. He was once reported to have thrown the cash till at the London Press Club barman. But then, nothing unusual there in the early hours over a bevy or two.
I can remember friendly but feared Billy Monty, bringing the bar flap down on the head of a PR man who tried to cut his tie as a joke. Silly fellah!
Last word on kippers. Our much-loved, by some, deputy editor Ted Dickinson was fired over his by editor Christopher Ward at the Savoy Grill, shortly after Ward had taken over the editor’s chair.
The kippers arrived at the table, Ted picked up his fork and Ward said: “Well Ted, this isn’t working is it?”
Ted came up trumps though. He got a massive loss of service payment and a job with John Junor on the Sunday Express the following week. I worked with him for a year after that every Saturday on the Backbench. His last words to me when he left the paper were … “remember Terry, tell everyone, never order the kippers at the Savoy!”
TERRY MANNERS
5 August 2024