James Bond creator Ian Fleming reveals he was wary of women drivers and suspicious of men with sideburns in his ’13 rules for life’ notebook

• Among the pages former spy Fleming worked on iconic 007 lines for his novels
• He recommended to ‘tread carefully’ around people with moustaches or beards 
• The book is to be auctioned in Texas next month and could fetch up to £17,000

James Bond creator Ian Fleming was wary of female drivers and suspicious of men with sideburns, his notebook has revealed.

The ex-spy penned his ’13 rules for life’ in a notebook that he used while planning his novel You Only Live Twice.

One of the rules to live by was to ‘beware of motorcars with two women in the front seat’. Others included ‘beware people who smell’ and ‘tread carefully in the company of moustaches, sideburns and beards’.

Ian Fleming, who used to be a spy himself, published You Only Live Twice in 1964. It was the last novel he wrote before he died

The author instructed himself to ‘not waste time on women who wear a bracelet on the left ankle’ and to avoid ‘all politicians’

His final instruction simply says: ‘Live until you’re dead’, with number 12 adding to ‘not worry about chlorosis of the liver or cancer’

The notebook contains 39 pages and will be sold by a private collector at Heritage Auctions in Texas this month. It’s expected to fetch up to £17,000.

Other notes in the book reveal the moments Fleming crafts iconic 007 lines, including a scribble that says: ‘You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you are about to die.’

In the final epigraph in Fleming’s novel, he adapted this and wrote: ‘You only live twice: Once when you’re born, and once when you look death in the face’.

You Only Live Twice, published in 1964, was the last novel he published. He died of a heart attack that year after it was published and the book was later turned into a film with Sean Connery as 007.

Joe Maddalena of Heritage Auctions said: ‘James Bond has become such an icon in literature and film and pop culture that we take the character and his creation for granted.

‘But these handwritten documents straight from his creator provide us with an insight and a perspective that often make 007 seem brand new. We’re allowed into the creative process. We’re over his shoulder as Bond is born.’

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