Free For Your Eyes Only by Ben Macintyre

According to one theory, Fleming particularly hated a terrace of modern houses designed by Goldfinger on Willow Road in Hampstead, and so used his name for one of his most memorable evildoers: Auric Goldfinger, the richest man in England; treasurer of the Soviet counter-intelligence agency, SMERSH; and a gold-obsessive who likes to paint his lovers with gold in orderto make love to the substance he craves. When Ernö obtained a proof copy of
Goldfinger
, he gave it to his associate, Jacob Blacker, and asked him whether he should sue. Blacker read the book and reported that the only substantial difference was: ‘You’re called Ernö and he’s called Auric.’ This was rather rude, since Ernö was a visionary six-foot architect and Auric is a murderous five-foot megalomaniac. But, unlike most of Fleming’s name-borrowings, there are a few genuine similarities between the Goldfingers: both were Jewish émigrés from Eastern Europe who liked fast cars, and both were Marxists, in Auric’s case by association with SMERSH. There is also a whiff of anti-Semitism in Fleming’s depiction of a Jewish billionaire with a gold fixation. The real Goldfinger was exceptionally unamused, summoned his lawyers, and threatened to halt publication. Equally angry, Fleming thought his publisher should insert an erratum slip, changing Goldfinger to ‘Goldprick’ throughout the book (a name originally suggested, unseriously, by the critic Cyril Connolly). A truce was established after Fleming’s publishers agreed that, in advertising the book, the name Goldfinger would be coupled with the name Auric wherever possible. Even so, for the rest of his life Ernö Goldfinger was plagued by people calling him on the telephone and saying, in the voice of Sean Connery, ‘Goldfinger? This is 007.’
    Ernö provided the name, unwittingly and unwillingly, but the character of Goldfinger may have been based on theextrovert and flashy American gold tycoon Charles W. Engelhard Jr, whom Fleming met in 1949 and remained friends with. Engelhard was owner of a huge mining and metals conglomerate, and a major racehorse owner. The gold magnate delighted in the general assumption that he was the inspiration for Goldfinger, turning up to parties dressed in orange and pretending that he had a stewardess named Pussy Galore on his private plane.
    â€˜Q’, the head of research and development for the secret service and irascible provider of Bond’s gadgets and cars, would become a staple character in the films, but there is no Q character in the books. In
Casino Royale
, Bond is told to ‘see Q for any equipment you need’, but this is most likely to be a reference to ‘Q-Branch’, the real name of a shadowy department which supplied uniforms, gizmos and other unconventional weapons of war. Charles Fraser-Smith of Q-Branch had provided much of the equipment for Operation Ruthless, Fleming’s aborted plan to capture the Enigma codebook. A former missionary in Morocco, Fraser-Smith was nominally a civil servant with the Ministry of Supply’s Clothing and Textile Department, under cover of which he made equipment for secret agents, saboteurs and prisoners of war, such as miniature cameras, maps written in invisible ink and golf balls hollowed out to hide a compass. When this latter technique was used to conceal diamonds in the film of
Diamonds Are Forever
, Fraser-Smith was critical, pointing out that the golf balls he had designed during thewar were ideal secret receptacles since they would still work as golf balls, whereas those imagined in the film would barely have got off the ground.
    Fleming clearly derived great pleasure, and considerable devilry, from his choice of names, whether the subject was good, bad or inanimate. He had an extraordinary ear for names with a ring to them, a gift which later imitators have found hard to emulate. ‘He took immense trouble with names and