by Dan Hagen
NP Columnist

James Bond’s attitude toward women has been much criticized, but it wasn’t fictional. It matched his creator’s.

Even the melodramatic tragedy characteristic of 007’s relationships with women was prefigured in Ian Fleming’s real life, according to Andrew Lycett’s biography “Ian Fleming.”

Alan Schneider, a U.S. naval intelligence officer who knew Fleming during World War II, noted that women, whether English aristocrats or American officers, all got the same backhanded treatment from Fleming.

“He got bored with them fast and could be brutal about it,” Schneider said. “He had absolutely no jealousy. He explained to me that women were not worth that much emotion. But with it all, he had an abiding and continual interest in sex without any sense of shame or guilt.”     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.