You Only Live Once: Memories of Ian Fleming by Ivar Bryce

Happened to stumble upon this title online while looking for some reading material over my holiday off from work. Never knew this book ever existed.

Has anybody read it? Would be interesting be an interesting read since he knew Fleming well.

I have read it. Bryce says that Fleming himself told him he ought to write his memoirs, as he'd had what Fleming considered a remarkable life.

Sad that, in order to sell his own memoirs, Bryce had to attach himself to his old friend's notoriety, but Fleming might have been pleased.

Still, it's an interesting read in its own right, as well as a valuable subjective account of some of the incidents that keep cropping up in the recent Fleming biopics. For instance, 'Goldeneye: The Life of Ian Fleming' depicts Bryce and Fleming enjoying a sun-drenched raft ride down a narrow river while in Jamaica on a mission to retrieve an Enigma encoder from a German U-boat. Actually, they were there to attend a conference and it rained the entire time (still, the way Bryce describes the oppressive downpour and his concern that Fleming would never return to the island creates an anecdote that reminds me of my feelings for my own summer retreat).

Bryce's account of the McClory copyright trial and its affects on Fleming are so subjective that the copy I read had a sticker attached to the frontispiece to remind readers that McClory won the right for Thunderball to be billed as based on a screenplay by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham and Ian Fleming.

Read it for Fleming and/or read it for Bryce. Either way it's an essential little volume for any OC collector.