Make that Booths, High & Dry…

than wine — but never enough to make them drunk. Both loved fast cars — Bond went for Aston Martins while Fleming preferred a Bugatti. The two also had a weakness for gadgets — “gimmicks”, as Fleming, a former Sunday Times foreign manager, calls them in his notes.

One particularly revealing note shows how Fleming thought Bond should be careful about drinking too much: “Drink relaxed Bond. His only rule was not to get drunk but perhaps for 20 years he had hardly gone to bed cold sober.

“His other rules were not to drink at midday or after dinner, and never to drink liqueurs. A great woman who had once granted Bond her favours and had been disappointed by his lack of fervour had chided him angrily. `I might have known it. I should have stopped you having the liqueur brandy.”’

The author’s concern for the secret agent’s sobriety stemmed from his own problems with alcohol. “Fleming himself really didn’t hold his drink very well,” said Andrew Lycett, his biographer. “More than two glasses of wine at lunch time and he was done for.”

Fleming himself was particularly fond of gin and vermouth. “Like Bond,” said Lycett, “he also enjoyed some of the exotic drinks you could get in Jamaica” — the island where the author escaped from the British winter to write his books.

One tiny red-covered notebook from the 1950s contains scenes describing the drinking habits of Bond and an unnamed woman. The handwritten scrawl features two characters, simply named He and She, who discuss types of drink and how they are served.

He:“Gin. The Booth’s one, called High & Dry. Couple of chunks of ice. Add water. Pink if you like.”
She:“Make it two.”
He:“Your’re quite a girl.”

Then Fleming tries out some more ideas.

He:“Two martins. Booth’s High & Dry. And make it six to one. Squeeze of lemon peel.”
She:“That sounds together.”
He:“Never drown a good gin.”
She:“Why do you always ask for Booth’s High & Dry?”
He:“Because it’s as smooth as your thighs and as clear as your eyes.”
She:“Phoeey.”

Fleming then attempts some other versions.

He:“Waiter! Two martinis. Shaken, not stirred, please. That Booth’s gin — High & Dry. And a twist of lemon peel. Easy on the vermouth.”

Lycett deduces that “shaken not stirred” probably reflected Fleming’s concern that in a stirred drink, the flavour of the ingredients is more likely to be lost….

Excerpted from, `How Bond got taste for martinis and motors’, by Richards Brooks, `The Sunday Times’, October 1