A view to a James Bond thriller

By BEN ROSS

Set back from a rocky outcrop on Jamaica's north coast, near the one-time banana port of Oracabessa, is a low, white bungalow. From its long, slot-like front window there is a panoramic view of the Caribbean. Beyond a fringe of reef, 145km of open sea separates it from the political hot potato of Cuba; to the north-west are the cash-rich Cayman Islands.

From the water, the house is just a pale splash against the greenery of the Jamaican hills - far less imposing than the vast beachfront properties nearby. Yet this is a place where you might expect to find intrigue and adventure, with dinner guests playing blackjack, scantily clad girls lounging by the pool and martinis shaken, not stirred. This is Goldeneye.

Of course, that's the fantasy. There's certainly the whiff of serious money around, but you'd have to replace intrigue with indolence, swap the gambling for a few hands of bridge by the pool and - important, this - double the number of martinis involved to get closer to the truth.

Goldeneye, the tranquil home that Ian Fleming designed and built in 1946 and in which he wrote the 14 James Bond books before his death in 1964, is a bolt hole for the very rich, a place for the famous to ponder the trajectory of their glittering careers. The real world isn't part of the currency, the setting is so perfect it reeks of fiction.

In the real world, journalists do not usually sun themselves in the garden of a home that has played host to Michael Caine, Kate Moss and Harrison Ford. They do not lounge on the sofa where Sting wrote Every Breath You Take. Their every whim is rarely catered for by a 24-hour steward service. And they certainly do not sleep in a cottage on the cliff edge with a view of the ocean from their bed.

In the real world, the fact that I'm here at all is the result of immense business success on the part of others, who are celebrating with close and extremely grateful friends. For the purposes of a trip that redefines the parameters of luxury holidaymaking, however, you can give me a cat to stroke and call me Blofeld.

The truth of how much Fleming projected his life into the fiction of his most famous creation is also hard to pin down.

He was born in 1908 and went to Eton, flunked Sandhurst and struggled with careers as a journalist and merchant banker before becoming a successful Commander in the Naval Intelligence Division of the "Wavy Navy" (the civilian branch of the Royal Navy) during World War II.

It seems he was never a Bond but was a spymaster "M" figure. He was certainly involved in and fascinated by espionage.

It was also during the war that Fleming first fell in love with Jamaica. Andrew Lycett's 1995 biography details Fleming's first reaction: "When we have won this blasted war, I am going to live in Jamaica. Just live in Jamaica and lap it up, and swim in the sea and write books."

In his post-war job as Foreign Manager at the Sunday Times he travelled the world. The exotic backdrops to the Bond books are relics of his travels in Europe, the Middle East and America and of his earlier time as a journalist in Moscow.

But true to his word, he soon settled in Jamaica, for the winter months at least. The plot of land he bought was then known as Rock Edge, but Fleming liked the symmetry of Oracabessa's English translation ("Golden Head") with Goldeneye, the codename of a wartime operation he had masterminded.

And he also began to write, drawing the name of his hero from a twitchers' handbook on his bookshelf: The Birds of the West Indies, by James Bond.

Jamaica was soon to feature prominently in the Bond legend. Dr No and The Man with the Golden Gun were both set here, and the film version of Dr No was shot in Kingston and on the north coast.

Ramsey Dacosta, one of the three stewards employed to whisk you in your own private, glass-bottomed boat to a private beach 15m away, was a child when Fleming first moved to Goldeneye. He remembers "the Commander" breakfasting on orange juice, then swimming before locking himself away behind the jalousies of his room to write his daily quota of 2000 words at his special corner desk.

After this burst of creativity, he would entertain friends in the sunken garden. Regulars included Noel Coward, Evelyn Waugh, Errol Flynn and Lucian Freud.

Dacosta says, "Commander Fleming was always very friendly. He let his friends use the house when he wasn't there."

One such guest was Sir Anthony Eden, who stayed at Goldeneye for a fortnight in 1956 to recover his health after the Suez Crisis. A telegram to Fleming from the island's governor is still pinned to the wall in the main bedroom: "Everyone in Jamaica joins with me in thanking you for persuading the Prime Minister and Lady Eden to come here. We feel sure that a few weeks here will completely restore him to good health."

Even prime ministers had to rough it, though. Fleming wasn't one for creature comforts, and the decor was minimal.

Not that roughing it is a problem these days. Fact or fiction, Brosnan or Bond; either would feel at home in the luxury villa that is Goldeneye. Beyond the main house, is 7ha of lush greenery, tended by squadrons of gardeners.

For the athletic, a floodlit tennis court beckons, or there's the elegantly sculpted pool. The television room was once Fleming's garage; he was obsessed with American cars.

Today, it is stocked with DVDs of every Bond film and has a home-cinema system that blasts the figs from the trees. The sofa is 4.5m long and 2.4m wide. You could lose an Aston Martin in it.

Down at the cliff edge are four smaller villas named after Bond girls. Each is set inside its own bamboo stockade. Ablutions are carried out in private outdoor bathrooms sheltered under banana trees.

From the villas, a path leads to a gazebo, where cocktails precede traditional Jamaican surf and turf at mealtimes, and there's a view of a 150m-long, crescent-shaped private beach Even the sand is manicured.

Goldeneye is almost impossible to leave even briefly, but it's worth making the 15-minute road trip to the other literary residence on this stretch of coast: Noel Coward's "Firefly" villa.

Goldeneye and Firefly are owned by Island Outpost, the luxury hotel chain run by media mogul Chris Blackwell, who brought Bob Marley to international fame on his Island record label.

Blackwell's mother, Blanche, was Fleming's closest confidante towards the end of his life, and Fleming gave the young Blackwell his first job as location manager for Dr No. While Goldeneye is given over to luxury living, Firefly has been restored to its original state and is a museum.

Coward and Fleming were close friends. Indeed, Coward was often a vital support in Fleming's chaotic personal life.

A broad brushstroke would paint Fleming as a self-absorbed romantic who could rarely see beyond his obsessions. He used Bond to bring them to life. Fleming, like Bond, was a womaniser.

His affair with, and eventual marriage to, Anne Rothermere was always turbulent. He was also prone to fits of introspection and self-doubt.

Towards the end of his life, he looked to Goldeneye as one of the few places he could get any peace: "Would these books have been born if I had not been living in the gorgeous vacuum of a Jamaican holiday? I doubt it."

Since then, celebrity has transformed Goldeneye. Plaques scattered throughout the property mark trees planted by the great and good. The first, dated 1956, commemorates Sir Anthony Eden's efforts. But more recent plaques speak of fame of a very different kind. Johnny Depp's guava tree looms over Gwyneth Paltrow's lychee. And Pierce Brosnan the fifth Bond has planted a mango. James Bond has returned to his roots.

- INDEPENDENT

Island Inns

Jamaica Travel