Ian Fleming
Fleming lived in Jamaica for many years in a holiday home that he built and named ‘Goldeneye’ after a WW2 intelligence operation. Around this time, several other major intelligence figures – William Wiseman, William Stephenson, Lord Beaverbrook and even Noel Coward – all bought houses in the same region of the island. Fleming drank and smoked and wrote and died of heart disease in 1964 aged only 56. He only lived long enough to see two of his books – Dr No and From Russia With Love, turned into films. His creation has since inspired the world’s longest-running film franchise, and one of its most commercially successful.