The American journalist Dorothy Thompson sighed after meeting the young Ian Fleming in Kitzbühel: “The moulding of those cheekbones.” His nose had been broken in a head-on collision on the soccer pitch with Henry Douglas-Home, brother of Alec, and repaired with a metal plate, giving him the look of a light-heavyweight boxer. His future wife, Ann, would later ascribe his melancholy to “the most terrible migraines” he suffered from. “Inside a hot room, the brass used to expand and cause the headaches.”
His vitality was singled out by Noël Coward. “Half of his world was fantasy. That was what made him such an enchanting person to be with.” Coward never disguised his feelings for Fleming. “I loved him and he loved me. There was nothing
