James Bond's famous golf match against Goldfinger was played on a fictional course called Royal St Mark's.
Except anyone who knew Ian Fleming's favourite golf club could see what he had done.
Fleming was a member of Royal St George's Golf Club at Sandwich in Kent. He loved the course, played there regularly and was captain-elect when he died.
When he wrote Goldfinger, published in 1959, he transformed his beloved Royal St George's into the fictional Royal St Mark's - the setting for Bond's tense golf match with Auric Goldfinger.
The details went even further. Royal St George's professional Alfred Whiting helped inspire the fictional club professional Alfred Blacking. Fleming knew the landscape, the wind, the bunkers and the peculiar character of the links intimately, and that familiarity found its way onto the page.
Fleming's last day also carried a poignant connection to the club. On 11 August 1964 he lunched at Royal St George's. He suffered a heart attack later and died in Canterbury in the early hours of the following day, aged fifty-six.
So when you stand near the great links at Sandwich, you are not simply looking at a famous golf course.
You are looking at a piece of Bond country - a real Kent landscape that Ian Fleming quietly turned into 007's world.
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