[FLEMING] | Property lease for Mitre Court Chambers, 1960, 5 leaves

IAN FLEMING

DOCUMENT SIGNED, COUNTERPART LEASE FOR ROOMS AT MITRE COURT CHAMBERS

between Fleming and Dr Thomas Hughes Ellis Richards, confirming a ten-year lease of two rooms on the fourth floor of Mitre Court Chambers, 4 Old Mitre Court, for an annual rent of £500, 8 pages, plus blanks, folio, signed by Fleming on the final page, also with the witness signature of Una Trueblood, 4 January 1960, docketed, sewn with green ribbon, with original envelope addressed to Dr Richards, collector’s black cloth folding case with the original envelope preserved in a pocket at the front, some creases

Ian Fleming took rooms in Mitre Court Chambers to use as a writing office during his final years, when the success of the Bond series allowed him to stop working for Kemsley at The Sunday Times. The rooms were just off Fleet Street in an area of London mostly populated by journalists and the legal profession. Fleming's friend Rennie Hoare, of the banking dynasty, found him the rooms: Mitre Court was at the back of Hoare's Bank and was owned by the bank. Fleming sublet the rooms from a G.P., Dr Hugh Richards, who had used them as part of his surgery. The witness to the lease, Una Trueblood, was Fleming's secretary at Kemsley. She typed up the television treatment that Fleming later developed into the novel Doctor No and, like many of Fleming's acquaintances, she gives her name to a character in the novel: Mary Trueblood, secretary to the MI6 station in Jamaica.