Friday, April 21, 2023

Foreign Devil: My Washington Times On Crime Column On Richard Hughes, The Far East Correspondent Who Inspired Ian Fleming And John Le Carre

 Back in 2020 I wrote about an interesting man named Richard Hughes (seen in the above photo), a Far East correspondent for the Sunday Times who inspired both Ian Fleming and John le Carre. Both spy thriller writers modeled a character after Hughes. 

You can read the column via the below link or the below text:  


The foreign correspondent who inspired Ian Fleming and John le Carre - Washington Times


 

Later this year Casemate will publish Edward Abel Smith’s “Ian Fleming’s Inspiration: The Truth Behind the Books.”

 

“James Bond is possibly the most well-known fictional character in history,” Casemate Publishing notes. “What most people don’t know is that almost all of the characters, plots and gadgets come from the real-life experiences of Bond’s creator — Commander Ian Fleming.

 

“In this book, we go through the plots of Fleming’s novels explaining the real-life experiences that inspired them. The reader is taken on a journey through Fleming’s direct involvement in World War II intelligence and how this translated through his typewriter into James Bond’s world, as well as the many other factors of Fleming’s life which were also taken as inspiration.”


 One friend who inspired Fleming was the late Richard Hughes, who was a foreign correspondent for the British Sunday Times. He was the inspiration for the fictional character Dikko Henderson in Ian Fleming’s 1964 James Bond novel “You Only Live Twice.” 


 “He is a giant Australian with a European mind and a quixotic view of the world,” the late Ian Fleming said of Richard Hughes. In 1959, Fleming, then the foreign manager of the Sunday Times, was asked by the newspaper's editor to travel to foreign cities and write about them, as Fleming notes, "through a thriller-writer's eye." The newspaper articles were compiled into a book called "Thrilling Cities" in 1963.