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[FLEMING IAN]: (1908-1964) British writer, author of the James Bond series of spy novels. An interesting collection of twenty

International Autograph Auctions Europe S.L.

Lot 1022

[FLEMING IAN]: (1908-1964) British writer, author of the James Bond series of spy novels. An interesting collection of twenty-one original unsigned carbon typed copies of letters and other documents addressed to Ian Fleming by the journalist Antony Terry, and one copy of a letter from Fleming to E.A. Seal of the Foreign Office, forty-three pages, mainly 4to, various places (Bonn, Berlin, Vienna etc.), November 1949 - September 1963. Terry discusses a variety of subjects with Fleming, some concerning Cold War relations between West and East Germany and other countries, in part, 'It has been an interesting time here and I think will become more so as the Eastern election campaign gets going…..The Allies in Germany have got no clear picture yet as to what the Communists are going to do during their May Day and Youth parades. As a result official opinion is divided as to what should be done to counter them……Personally I do not think the Communists will start any rows on a large scale, though there will probably be a few fights when the more aggressive youngsters come up against the West-Berliners. It is doubtful whether the West Berlin police are capable of coping with a large scale situation, should it arise……[Deputy British High Commissioner] Steel made no bones of the fact that the British do not trust Premier Adenauer, whom he called an “old snake”…..the impression one gets in Bonn is that the German government could not care less about the British. Politically, Adenauer's eyes turn to France where Ruhr coal and French iron can do business and to America for as long as the dollars last' (22nd February 1950), 'Parachute General “Papa” Ramcke, who has recently been in the news for his build up of the “Green Devils” (the former German paratroop corps) into a new association with neo-Nazi leanings, is publishing a new book……Ramcke is said to refer to his interrogations in London and attacks Lt. Col. Scotland of the War Office war crimes staff…..Ramcke is one of the new vintage of German generals who has ambitions to be a Fuhrer. He is frowned on by some of the more “respectable” generals for being too outspoken' (21st September 1951), 'Enclosed some material - authentic - on “escape routes”……Most of the routes to the West run nowadays through Hungary and Czechoslovakia to Austria, and most of the agents are Russians or Czechs. When they arrive in Hungary and Czechoslovakia on the first stage of their journey Soviet authorities provide the agent with a Propusk (frontier-crossing identification)…..With this document the agent can travel unmolested from the Soviet zone by normal civilian transport across the demarcation line into the British or US zone of Austria…..the agent has to pass a short test in the language of the country whose nationality he has temporarily adopted, and also in the language of the country to which he is travelling……Between one and two hundred Soviet agents are sent in and out of Austria monthly in both directions from the surrounding Soviet satellites. The names of about one percent are known to the Austrian secret police…..An alternative method is for the agent to be escorted through the no-mans land of barbed wire and mines along the frontiers between Austria and Czechoslovakia and Hungary. He then crosses the border on foot and gives himself up to the nearest Austrian frontier guard, claiming that he is a refugee from Communism. His story is designed to be foolproof enough to stop the Austrian official handing him over, as they are legally bound to do, to the Soviet occupation authorities in Austria……Many of these “foot sloggers” are sent over to gain information or to penetrate “Radio Free Europe”. One agent sent for this purpose recently had memorised the names of 350 persons whom he claimed had been with him in a labour camp for political prisoners in Hungary. Repeated questioning failed to shake his story and the names were checked and found correct. He was arrested in Vienna while on his way back to Hungary “on foot”, his assignment completed' (2nd February 1954), 'Enclosed are photos (no longer present) of the Spanish Riding School, including the special one you wanted. We are still struggling in Berlin to get photos of the transvestites and I think I now have a photographer who is prepared to brave their charms, either to take some pictures of them himself, or to obtain what he calls “portraits” of them, whatever that means……I tried the Nazi treasure hunt on them [The Sunday Times] as well but it never made the grade. I am sorry, as I feel this whole story of the missing Nazi gold which…..is still buried somewhere in the Salzkammergut, is a splendid subject for a feature. I talked to the man who says he knows where it may be located but has been forbidden to do anything by the Styrian authorities because the buried boxes may also contain material about Jewish property expropriations which involves a number of people still alive. All this I should have thought would make a good dramatic story for our younger and not-so-younger readers…..I cannot help feeling that the story of those last sinister days of the war in the Alpine valleys of the Salzkammergut, with scores of SS and Quisling governments and Gestapo officials from Berlin (Kaltenbrunner was captured by the Americans in this area) wandering about with their cases of gold bars melted down from the gold teeth and jewellery of the Jews gassed in the concentration camps and looking for somewhere to bury them so that no-one else knew, and all suspecting each other, with the end drawing in and the Americans only a few miles away, should make a grisly and macabre framework for the story of the now-forbidden search…..I can't help thinking that the SunTimes doesn't know what they are missing!' (17th May 1960), 'Enclosed are the pictures (no longer present) taken of the Berlin Transvestists, together with a leaflet on the place they were taken. “Rickey Renee”, the figure in the photos in women's clothes, is an American (male), aged 25, born in Miami, Florida…..tried a tapdancing act which failed, decided being a woman was more profitable…..now finds this line in Berlin suitable to local tastes…..' (25th May 1960), 'I was so disappointed to hear that you had been here again and that I missed you only by hours. I was told to take a few days off last week, as the sort of remnants of a summer holiday which was interrupted first by the Kennedy visit and last weekend again by Harold Wilson in Hamburg….If one had known you were coming I would have returned a day earlier' (9th September 1963). The majority of the letters with file holes to the left edges, some stapled or pinned to the upper left corners, others with minor paperclip rust stains, light creasing, some tears to the edges etc. Generally G, 25 Antony Terry (1913-1992) British Journalist, a former European Editor of The Sunday Times who was first hired in 1949 by Fleming (at the time the Foreign manager for the newspaper). Terry's obituary in The Independent stated that he was 'one of the paper's most valuable assets, a one-man listening post, a fastidious checker of facts, a burrower into dark corners and a traveller who never complained of fatigue'.

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