More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
A self-guided tour through James Bond country has been launched in time for the new movie.
No Time to Die, with Daniel Craig, will be premiered at the Royal Albert Hall next Tuesday and go on UK general release two days later.
The tourism group White Cliffs Country has put out a story trail map listing places in Dover district connected to the spy stories and their author.
Many locations are well regarded as having provided inspiration for Ian Fleming, whilst he was creating his books about Britain’s most famous fictional spy from his coastal home in St Margaret’s Bay.
The Bond hotspots include landmarks, heritage sites and establishments that have featured in novels Goldfinger and Moonraker and in the Bond movie Diamonds are Forever.
The listed places include:
5 Bench Street, Dover. Fleming regularly ate at the then Royal Café.
He used existing places for scenes in his books and put Bond in a setting here, renaming it the Café Royal.
The eaterie is gone, converted into the entrance hall of the YMCA training centre.
The Port of Dover. In the film Diamonds are Forever the spy catches a hovercraft from here to the Continent.
The Swingate Inn, Deal Road, Swingate, St Margaret's-at-Cliffe. It was said that this place was used by both playwright Noel Coward and Fleming who regularly raced to St. Margaret’s from London on Friday evenings.
It is also the likely scene of a murder in Moonraker.
St Margaret's Bay. Fleming and Coward used to meet at the Granville Hotel, now replaced by luxury flats.
Fleming also lived in an Art Deco beach house called White Cliffs. This was for a decade from 1952 and it was here he wrote Moonraker and Goldfinger.
Kingsdown. This stretch of coast is probably where the Moonraker research establishment is located and the steep cliff path mentioned in the book can be found at Oldstairs Bay, leading down from the golf course.
Royal St George's Golf Course, Sandwich. Fleming played here for 30 years and this inspired him to write the scene of the match between Bond and Auric Goldfinger.
Fleming was due to become the club's next captain but died suddenly.
He had been there for lunch on August 11, 1964, but suffered a heart attack at the hotel he was in, in Canterbury, that evening. He died at Kent and Canterbury Hospital the next day, aged 56.
