NEWS

Posted on 29 November, 2025

Ian Fleming’s high-stakes baccarat dual between Bond and Le Chiffre is at the heart of Casino Royale and continues to thrill with every read. Taking place in the Hotel Splendide’s Casino Royale, in the coastal town of Royale-les-Eaux, the game of chemin de fer ultimately bankrupts Le Chiffre and unleashes a deadly series of consequences. The narrative fuses Fleming’s signature blend of glamour, danger, daring, skill and style, but where did he 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?” As to the [Casino Royale] gambling scene, this grew in my mind from the following incident.

I and my chief, the Director of Naval Intelligence – Admiral Godfrey – in plain clothes, were flying to Washington in 1941 for secret talks with the American Office of Naval Intelligence, before America came into the war. Our seaplane touched down at Lisbon for an overnight stop, and our Intelligence people told us how Lisbon was crawling with German secret agents. The chief of these and his two assistants gambled every night in the casino at the neighbouring Estoril. I suggested to the DNI that he and I should have a look at these people. We went, and there were the three men, playing at the high chemin de fer table. Then the feverish idea came to me that I would sit down and gamble against these men and defeat them, thereby reducing the funds of the German Secret Service.

It was a foolhardy plan which would have needed a golden streak of luck. I had £50 in travel money. The chief German agent had run a bank three times. I bancoed it and lost. I suivied and lost again, and suivied a third time and was cleaned out, a humiliating experience which added to the sinews of war of the German Secret Service and reduced me sharply in my chief’s estimation. It was this true incident which is the kernel of Bond’s great gamble against Le Chiffre.’

Stay tuned for more of Fleming’s inspirations and find the book at our shop here.