Ian Fleming in Switzerland: in the footsteps of a childhood sweetheart
Keystone-SDA
Even before James Bond was created, Ian Fleming had a passionate romance in Switzerland with a young woman from the canton of Vaud. A new travel guide now traces the writer’s connections to French-speaking Switzerland and Lake Geneva.
In the Footsteps of Ian Fleming in Switzerland, published in English and French by Editions romandes 180°, invites readers to follow in the footsteps of the man who would later become the creator of James Bond during his time in the 1930s. The itinerary includes Geneva, where Fleming undertook an internship at what was then the League of Nations, as well as Coppet and Vich, where his love story with Monique Panchaud de Bottens unfolded.
A relationship as the central theme
This relationship forms the central theme of the book. It led the two young people to become engaged before they went their separate ways. “When he met her, she was very avant-garde for her time,” travel guide author Cornelius Schregle told Keystone-SDA news agency. He highlighted her love of skiing, the high mountains and driving – activities that were still unusual for a young woman from her social circle at the time.
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According to the author, this story may also have left its mark on the James Bond universe. “The women who populate the Bond universe have something of Monique about them: free-spirited women who take their fate into their own hands,” said Schregle.
At the Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne
Fleming discovered Switzerland at a very early age. Among other places, his family stayed at the Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne. Later, the landscapes and locations of French-speaking Switzerland reappeared in his work, while certain scenes from the James Bond films, in turn, turned Switzerland into a mythical backdrop.
The travel guide brings together historical and contemporary photographs, maps, archive documents and extracts from the novels. The majority of the places mentioned in the guide can therefore still be visited today, allowing the reader to turn reading into a journey.
With this journey through Switzerland, Cornelius Schregle sought not so much to write a new biography of Fleming as to shed light on a little-known phase of his life. “I wanted something lighter, something more entertaining,” with the aim of enabling everyone to discover these places “at their own leisure”.
Nevertheless, the work is the result of several years of research and encounters, in particular with members of the Fleming and Monique Panchaud families, as well as with the British biographers Nicolas Shakespeare and Andrew Lycett.
It builds on Cornelius Schregle’s work on the links between Switzerland and the cinema, which began with the book Backdrop Switzerland, published in 2016. The latter focuses on films that were shot in Switzerland or used Switzerland as a backdrop.
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Translated from German, reviewed by an English Department journalist.
