Moonraker is the third novel by the British author Ian Fleming to feature his fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond. It was published by Jonathan Cape on 5 April 1955 and featured a cover design conceived by Fleming. The plot is derived from a Fleming screenplay that was too short for a full novel, so he added the passage of the bridge game between Bond and the industrialist Hugo Drax. In the latter half of the novel, Bond is seconded to Drax's staff as the businessman builds the Moonraker, a prototype missile designed to defend England. Unknown to Bond, Drax is German, an ex-Nazi now working for the Soviets; his plan is to build the rocket, arm it with a nuclear warhead, and fire it at London. Uniquely for a Bond novel, Moonraker is set entirely in Britain, which raised comments from some readers, complaining about the lack of exotic locations.
First edition cover, published by Jonathan Cape
A V-2 rocket launch from summer 1943: the threat remembered from the war was the basis of the novel.
Boodle's, a gentlemen's club in London, was the model for Blades; Fleming was a member of three clubs, including Boodle's.
The "totemic significance" of the White Cliffs of Dover helps make Moonraker "the most British of the Bond novels", according to Black.
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.
Ian Fleming
The Glenelg War Memorial, listing Valentine Fleming, Ian's father
Eton College, Fleming's alma mater from 1921 to 1927
The Admiralty, where Fleming worked in the Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War