Peter Fleming (writer)

Robert Peter Fleming (31 May 1907 – 18 August 1971) was a British adventurer, journalist, soldier and travel writer.

He was the elder brother of Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, and attained the British military rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Peter Fleming was one of four sons of the barrister and Member of Parliament (MP) Valentine Fleming, who was killed in action during World War I in 1917, having served as MP for Henley from 1910.

Fleming was educated at Durnford School and at Eton, where he edited the Eton College Chronicle.

The Peter Fleming Owl (the English meaning of "Strix", the name under which he later wrote for The Spectator) is still awarded every year to the best contributor to the Chronicle.

He went on from Eton to Christ Church, Oxford, and graduated with a first-class degree in English.

Fleming was a member of the Bullingdon Club during his time at Oxford.

In April 1932 Fleming replied to an advertisement in the personal columns of The Times: "Exploring and sporting expedition, under experienced guidance, leaving England June to explore rivers central Brazil, if possible ascertain fate Colonel Percy Fawcett; abundant game, big and small; exceptional fishing; room two more guns; highest references expected and given."

He then joined the expedition, organised by Robert Churchward, to São Paulo, then overland to the rivers Araguaia and Tapirapé, heading towards the last-known position of the Fawcett expedition.

During the inward journey the expedition was riven by increasing disagreements as to its objectives and plans, centred particularly on its local leader, whom Fleming disguised as "Major Pingle" when he wrote about the expedition.

Fleming and Roger Pettiward (a school and university friend recruited onto the expedition as a result of a chance encounter with Fleming) led a breakaway group.

This group continued for several days up the Tapirapé to São Domingo, from where Fleming, Pettiward, Neville Priestley and one of the Brazilians hired by the expedition set out to find evidence of Fawcett's fate on their own.

After acquiring two Tapirapé guides the party began a march to the area where Fawcett was reported to have last been seen.

They made slow progress for several days, losing the Indian guides and Neville to foot infection, before admitting defeat.

The expedition's return journey was made down the River Araguaia to Belém.

It became a closely fought race between Fleming's party and "Major Pingle", the prize being to be the first to report home, and thus to gain the upper hand in the battles over blame and finances that were to come.

Fleming's party narrowly won.

The expedition returned to England in November 1932.

Fleming's book about the expedition, Brazilian Adventure, has sold well ever since it was first published in 1933, and is still in print.

Fleming travelled from Moscow to Peking via the Caucasus, the Caspian, Samarkand, Tashkent, the Turksib Railway and the Trans-Siberian Railway to Peking as a special correspondent of The Times.

His experiences were written up in One's Company (1934).

On 10 December 1935 he married the actress Celia Johnson (1908–1982), best known for her roles in the films Brief Encounter and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

He then went overland in company of Ella Maillart from China via Tunganistan to India on a journey written up in News from Tartary (1936).

He served in the Norwegian campaign with the prototype commando units – Independent Companies – but in May 1940 he was tasked with research into the potential use of the new Local Defence Volunteers (later the Home Guard) as guerrilla troops.

His ideas were first incorporated into General Thorne's XII Corps Observation Unit, forerunner of the GHQ Auxiliary Units.

Fleming recruited his brother, Richard, then serving in the Faroe Islands, to provide a core of Lovat Scout instructors to his teams of LDV volunteers.

Meanwhile, Fleming wrote a speculative novel called The Flying Visit in which he imagined Adolf Hitler flying to Britain to propose peace with that nation, only to have United Kingdom let him return in light of the awkward diplomatic quandary he placed the British government in.

These two books were combined as Travels in Tartary: One's Company and News from Tartary (1941).

All three volumes were published by Jonathan Cape.

According to Nicolas Clifford, for Fleming China "had the aspect of a comic opera land whose quirks and oddities became grist for the writer, rather than deserving any respect or sympathy in themselves".

In One's Company, for example, Fleming reports that Beijing was "lacking in charm", Harbin was a city of "no easily definable character".

Changchun was "entirely characterless", and Shenyang was "non-descript and suburban".

However, Fleming also provides insights into Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, which helped contemporary readers to understand Chinese resentment and resistance, and the aftermath of the Kumul Rebellion.

In the course of these travels Fleming met and interviewed many prominent figures in Central Asia and China, including the Chinese Muslim General Ma Hushan, the Chinese Muslim Taoyin of Kashgar, Ma Shaowu, and Puyi.

Of Travels in Tartary, Owen Lattimore remarked that Fleming, who "passes for an easy-going amateur, is in fact an inspired amateur whose quick appreciation, especially of people, and original turn of phrase, echoing P. G. Wodehouse in only a very distant and cultured way, have created a unique kind of travel book".

Lattimore added that it "is only in the political news from Tartary that there is a disappointment", as, in his view, Fleming offers "a simplified explanation, in terms of Red intrigue and Bolshevik villains, which does not make sense."

Stuart Stevens retraced Peter Fleming's route and wrote his own travel book.

Just before war was declared, Peter Fleming, then a reserve officer in the Grenadier Guards, was recruited by the War Office research section investigating the potential of irregular warfare (MIR).

His initial task was to develop ideas to assist the Chinese guerrillas fighting the Japanese.

It proved bizarrely prescient in 1941 when Hitler's Deputy, Rudolf Hess, did that exact excursion into Britain and Britain found their new high ranked Nazi prisoner cumbersome for their foreign and propaganda policies.