NEWS

Posted on 3 December, 2025

James Bond vs Le Chiffre. The climax of their rivalry in Casino Royale is a scene that cannot be forgotten. After he’s outplayed by 007 in their chemin de fer head-to-head, Le Chiffre retaliates, clearly relishing the act of torture and leisurely taking his time to inflict pain on his rival. With fainting and copious amounts of blood, it’s a harrowing scene that makes for wince-inducing reading, going on to be featured in the 2006 film, to memorable – if a little less shocking – effect.

Where did Fleming draw his inspirations? The author gives us an insight into the real-life events that informed the novel in his 1962 essay How To Write A Thriller.

‘People often ask me, “How do you manage to think of that?” To revert to my first book, Casino Royale, there are three strong incidents in the book. I extracted them from my wartime memories of the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty.

[…]Finally, the torture scene. What I described in Casino Royale was a greatly watered-down version of a French-Moroccan torture known as passer á la mandoline, which was practiced on several of our agents during the war.’

This interrogation torture was used to grim success in different conflicts – most famously by the French during the Battle of Algiers. A mandolin wire was placed between the prisoner’s legs and lifted, slicing into the most sensitive body parts, like the wire of a cheesecutter going through cheese. Passer á la mandoline was designed to impart maximum pain while keeping the prisoner alive to give up the desired information.

‘So you see the line between fact and fantasy is a very narrow one. I think I could trace most of the central incidents in my books to some real happenings. We thus come to the final and supreme hurdle in the writing of a thriller. You must know thrilling things before you can write about them. Imagination alone isn’t enough, but stories you hear from friends or read in the papers can be built up by a fertile imagination and a certain amount of research and documentation into incidents that will also ring true in fiction.’

Find Casino Royale at our shop here.