Publication of Casino Royale

Date: April 13, 1953 • Location: London, United Kingdom

Ian Fleming's novel Casino Royale was published as the first work to feature the British spy character James Bond.

Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British writer best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father Valentine Fleming was the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.