In a letter from Jamaica, Fleming told his publisher not to “stand for any nonsense from the Golden-Finger” as there were many others of the Goldfinger name in US and German telephone directories. But Fleming himself was not to be bullied. The publisher had carried out some research into Erno and said they “discovered quite a bit, none of it very pleasant and all of it made us unusually wary”. Whilst the exact nature of any demands he might have made are unknown, given there were few (if any) other Goldfingers in Britain at the time and fearing a delay in the publication of Goldfinger and a loss of earnings, the publishers of the Bond books certainly thought that it worthwhile coming to some sort of arrangement with the architect. He was also a foreigner who became a naturalised Brit and, like his architect namesake, lacked people skills.Īccording to The Man with the Golden Typewriter, a compilation of Ian Fleming’s letters that has just been published, Erno let it be known that he thought his name was being brought into disrepute by being chosen as that of a Bond arch-villain. The fictional villain, Auric Goldfinger was a short, Jewish Soviet agent. A Marxist, born into a Jewish family in Hungary who took British nationality.

The exceptionally tall Erno Goldfinger was by all accounts a humourless man. It’s commonly accepted that Fleming got the idea for the name Goldfinger when he first heard it mentioned whilst chatting over a round of golf with John Blackwell, a cousin of Erno Goldfinger’s wife, Ursula. While he never actually met the bird-watcher, he thought the monosyllabic name relayed a strength and directness that was ideal for the type of spy he wanted to portray.Īs far as I know, the twitcher version of James Bond never took umbrage at being turned into a fearless, alcoholic, womanising, psychopathic fictional character (what reasonable man would?).īut the same cannot be said for the inspiration behind the name of perhaps Fleming’s most famous villain, Goldfinger.Įrno Goldfinger was the renowned 1930’s modernist architect who designed (among others) the Brutalist Trellick and Balfron Towers (respectively North Kensington and Poplar) and 2 Willow Road in Hampstead. He came upon the name James Bond from reading a book on ornithology by a man of that name.

Like most great writers, Ian Fleming took inspiration for his fictional characters from real life. With Spectre, the latest Bond adventure hitting our screens recently, Michael Duncan explores the story that links one of Fleming’s most famous villains with a couple of famous London Tower blocks and an architecturally-significant Hampstead terrace.

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