Towards the end of Fleming’s penultimate full-length novel, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1964), Bond is missing presumed dead while on a ‘diplomatic’ mission to Japan. An obituary appears in The Times which explains that Bond, being orphaned as a child after a climbing accident claims the lives of his parents, Andrew and Monique, he goes to live under the guardianship of his aunt, a Miss Charmian Bond, who lives in the quaintly named hamlet of Pett Bottom at Bridge, between Canterbury and Hythe. Her cottage was close to the attractive Duck Inn, an excellent pub/restaurant that lies at the foot of a beautiful small valley, and where Ian Fleming was often found sitting in the garden making copious notes for his books, and where it is claimed he wrote YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.

ABOVE: [slideshow] The Duck Inn,  Pett Bottom, photographed undergoing renovation in 1978, and in 2008.

ABOVE: (top left) The Duck Inn (1978) and [rollover] in 2008 (top right) Canterbury City's Council's 'blue plaque' on the wall of The Duck Inn. (bottom left) James Bond creator Ian Fleming and 1966 PAN paperback edition on YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE designed by Raymond Hawkey. (bottom right) Mr. & Mrs. Ogilvie-Lang, the original owners of the Duck Inn, Pett Bottom when Ian Fleming would visit their public house in the early 1960s. John Laing (as he was generally referred to, and whose full name was John Farquhar Ogilvie-Lang) was a really unique character, a man very much of his time.

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