You Only Live Twice (novel) - Background

Background

You Only Live Twice is the twelfth book (the eleventh novel) of Fleming's Bond series and the last book completed by Fleming before his death. The story is the third part of the Blofeld trilogy, coming after Thunderball, where SPECTRE is introduced, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where Blofeld is involved in the murder of Bond's wife. You Only Live Twice was the last book by Fleming that was published in his lifetime: he died five months after the UK release of the novel. It was written in January and February 1963 in Jamaica at Fleming's Goldeneye estate. The original manuscript was 170 pages long and the least revised of all Fleming's novels, with a mood that is dark and claustrophobic, reflecting Fleming's own increasing melancholia. The story was written after the film version of Dr. No was released in 1962, and Bond's personality was somewhat skewed towards the screen persona rather than simply to Fleming himself; Sean Connery's filmic depiction of Bond affected the book version, with You Only Live Twice giving Bond a sense of humour and Scottish antecedents that were not present in the previous stories, although Fleming himself was part Scottish. Correspondence dating back to 1960 shows that Fleming contacted a Scottish nobleman to help research Bond's family history, in particular seeking a Scottish Bond line.

Fleming's first trip to Japan was as part of the Thrilling Cities trip undertaken for The Sunday Times in 1959, although his visit only lasted for three days. He returned in 1962 and was accompanied on his trip round the country by Australian friend Richard Hughes and Tiger Saito, both journalists. In You Only Live Twice, these two characters became Dikko Henderson and Tiger Tanaka, respectively. Hughes was also the model for "Old Craw" in John le Carré's The Honourable Schoolboy.

The novel contains a fictional obituary of Bond, purportedly published in The Times, which provided details of Bond's early life, although many of these were Fleming's own traits. These included Bond's expulsion from Eton College, which was part of Fleming's own history. As with a number of the previous Bond stories, You Only Live Twice used names of individuals and places that were from Fleming's past. Bond's mother, Monique Delacroix, was named after two women in Fleming's life: Monique Panchaud de Bottomes, a girl Fleming was engaged to in the early 1930s, with Delacroix taken from Fleming's own mother, whose maiden name was Ste Croix Rose. Bond's aunt was called Charmian Bond: Charmian was the name of Fleming's cousin who married Richard Fleming, Ian's brother. Charmian's sister was called "Pet" which, when combined with the Bottom from Monique Panchaud de Bottomes, gives Pett Bottom, where Charmian lives. Pett Bottom is also the name of a real place which amused Fleming when he stopped for lunch after a round of golf at Royal St George's Golf Club, Sandwich.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld's name partially comes from Tom Blofeld, a Norfolk farmer and a fellow member of Fleming's club Boodle's, who was a contemporary of Fleming's at Eton. Tom Blofeld's son is Henry Blofeld, a sports journalist, best known as a cricket commentator for Test Match Special on BBC Radio. For Blofeld's pseudonym in the novel, Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, Fleming uses the name of an old café he had seen in Hamburg in 1959—"Old Shatterhand". The characterisation of him dressed as a Samurai was taken from the sketch Fleming had come up with thirty five years earlier for a character called Graf Schlick.