An Anagram Explained

Ian Fleming was an honest writer who may have borrowed liberally from others, but owned up to his literary debts.  He also felt that other writers who had simply inspired him to write, also merited a mention.

From Russia, With Love is full of overt nods to purveyors of spy fiction who had fueled the youthful daydreams of the creator of 007, a list that includes John Buchan, Somerset Maugham, and Graham Greene, to name a few.  Buchan had created “Bulldog Drummond,” a name snarled threateningly by Red Grant when he advises Bond not to try an funny business;  Bond and Tatiana travel under the pseudonym “Somerset;” and Graham Green wrote The Third Man, a title invoked at least three times in the latter part of Fleming’s masterwork.

Fellow author Eric Ambler, who had introduced Fleming to some of the more colorful districts of Istanbul, received the ultimate acknowledgment, however.  At the climax of From Russia, With Love, a paperback copy of Ambler’s Mask of Demitrios intercepts a bullet headed straight for the heart of James Bond.

The fifth Bond novel may also contain an oblique salute to a man who was not a writer of fiction, but a journalist, and one knew his way around the exotic city where Bond would meet Tatiana Romanova and Ali Kerim Bey, and would help the latter destroy the evil Krilencu.

For the Bulgarian assassin who would play what is essentially the role of Lucifer, the cat from Cinderella, Fleming chose a surname similar to that of Bolshevik prosecutor Nikolai Krylenko.  Krylenko had been a brutal Chief Prosecutor for early “show trials” during the Stalin regime, and was Commissar of Justice by the time Fleming was dispatched to Moscow to report on the Metropolitan-Vickers trial in 1933.  

By massaging a few letters in “Krylenko” Fleming could make the name seem unfamiliar while simultaneously turning it into an anagram for “Uncle Rik.”  This would all be a pure piece of idle speculation if there were no one in Fleming’s orbit who might have been referred to as “Uncle Rik,” but in fact there was such a figure.

Bernard Rickatson-Hatt was an editor at Reuters and an old friend of Ian’s widowed mother.  He kept Evelyn Fleming informed about her son’s burgeoning career in journalism, but refused to join her effort to bar Ian from marrying Monique Panchaud de Bottomes.  The romance ended nonetheless, when Ian realized that his mother would very likely terminate his allowance if they wed.

Before joining Reuters, Rickatson-Hatt had spent the last years of the Great War in army intelligence, serving a three-year assignment in the Turkish city then known as Constantinople.  What his mission entailed was a subject which Rickatson-Hatt flatly refused to discuss, at least on the record.

In 1941 Fleming’s former boss became an advisor to the governors of the Bank of England.  He is generally credited with providing the lecture on international monetary policy delivered to Bond by Colonel Smithers in both the literary and filmic versions of Goldfinger.  Thus, Bernard Rickatson-Hatt was not only a close friend of the family but a resource for at least one of Fleming’s books, freely sharing his expertise on money, banking, and gold reserves.  

If, on the other hand, during some late-night bull session at Reuters, Bernard had shared a story from the his time in Army Intelligence at the end of the war, one involving a particularly nasty troublemaker and his vile minions, the disclosure could have been a technical violation of the Official Secrets Act.  

A circumspect way for Fleming to tip his hat to his former boss, would have been to create a character whose name would immediately get his attention, but would also be an anagram for a nickname no one else would immediately recognize. 

Nikolai Krylenko, besides being a relentlessly bloodthirsty prosecutor, was also a rabid chess fan who hoped to replace churches with chess clubs in the new Soviet regime.  Thus he may have served as the inspiration for both Kronsteen and Krilencu.  What Fleming absorbed while on assignment for Reuters in 1933 apparently fueled a large chunk of From Russia, With Love.

The anagram simply may have been a thank-you to Rickatson-Hatt for sending Fleming to Moscow in the first place.