Neglected Authors - Peter Fleming

Peter Fleming was born in 1907, and was a part-model for James Bond, the creation of his younger brother, Ian. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Mr Fleming travelled widely, chiefly as Special Correspondent for The Times. In 1935 he married the actress Celia Johnson, best known for the chappist kinema film Brief Encounter. In 1939 he joined the Grenadier Guards, serving in Norway, Greece and Burma, ending the war as head of strategic deception in South East Asia Command. Along with his brother he helped establish the Auxiliary Units, a "secret army" of civilian volunteers that would fight on, behind enemy lines, in the event of a German invasion of Britain. After the war he retired to his estate in the Chilterns, to lead the life of a literary squire.
 
Mr Fleming went to Brazil after seeing an advertisement in The Times: “Exploring & sporting expedition… to explore rivers Central Brazil, if possible ascertain fate Colonel Fawcett [who vanished in 1925 searching for a lost city]; abundance game, big & small; exceptional fishing; ROOM TWO MORE GUNS”. The resulting book, Brazilian Adventure, is a masterpiece of irony and self-deprecation. As he says himself, beyond the completion of a 3,000-mile journey, mostly under amusing conditions, and the discovery of one new tributary to a tributary to a tributary of the Amazon, nothing of importance was achieved. "I had meant, when I started," wrote Mr Fleming in the foreword, "to pile on the agony a good deal; I felt it would be expected of me. In treating of the Great Unknown one has a free hand, and my few predecessors in this particular field had made great play with the Terrors of the Jungle: the alligators, the snakes, the man-eating fish, the lurking savages, those dreadful insects - all the paraphernalia of tropical mumbo jumbo lay ready to my hand. But when the time came I found that I had not the face to make the most of them.”
 
One’s Company is an account of a journey through Russia and Manchuria to China, and is full of amusing incidents such as brake-failure on the Trans-Siberian Express, and an Eton Boating Song singing lesson in Manchuria.
 
News from Tartary describes, with masterly understatement, an undeservedly successful attempt to travel overland 3,500 miles from Peking to Kashmir. With his companion, the Swiss adventuress Ella Maillart, he set out across a China torn by civil war. It had been eight years since a traveller had crossed Sinkiang, which was under the control of a rebel warlord supported by Stalin's Red Army. Entering the province by a little known and almost lethal route and following the path of the Silk Road, they ended up in Kashgar before crossing the Pamirs to India. Beautifully written and superbly observed, this is also a marvellous insight into the last days of the Great Game.
 
Mr Fleming also published several books recounting historical episodes, including the Younghusband expedition to Lhasa, and the siege of Peking during the Boxer rebellion.
 
Mr Fleming died in 1971, while on a shooting expedition to Scotland. Mr Fleming was, in the words of one of his dust jackets, "the epitome of the enlightened English gentleman adventurer and explorer", the embodiment of the cheerful British amateur confronting the anomalies of abroad with unfailing pluck, intelligence, good humour and modesty.
 
Brazilian Adventure, One’s Company, and News From Tartary are all available in paperback.