The tiny town of Oracabessa may seem an unlikely inspiration for a fictional world of spies, villains, and fantastical gadgets, but that is just what it offered to Ian Fleming. He fell in love with the place during a visit to Jamaica in 1943. Following the footsteps of his friend, Noel Coward, who built two homes just down the coast, Fleming created Goldeneye as a retreat from the bleak English winter and visited Jamaica regularly. Friends such as Graham Greene, Truman Capote, and Evelyn Waugh came to stay and lap up the sybaritic routine of sundowners and snorkeling. It was not until his wife became pregnant in 1952 that Fleming settled down to writing. Naming his hero after an author of a book on birds of the West Indies, and using Jamaica as the setting for Doctor No  and The Man with the Golden Gun  (both were eventually filmed here), Fleming was entranced by the island that inspired him to write, “Would these books have been born if I had not been living in the gorgeous vacuum of a Jamaican holiday? I doubt it”.