The Life Line

Phyllis Bottome taught Ian Fleming to write. Published 7 years before Fleming’ s Casino Royale. Mark Chalmers, 36, dark haired, athletic, keen on skiing and winter sports, speaks fluent French and German and has a taste for wine, food and women. Sounds familiar? It is 1938, pre the Munich Agreement and post Anschluss. Chalmers, a master at Eton, is recruited by an old friend at the Foreign Office and introduced to his boss ‘ B’ . Chalmers reluctantly agrees to take on a hazardous mission for British Intelligence – to parachute into Nazi-occupied Austria and pass on information to a British agent. In case of trouble he is given a suicide pill. Chalmers has no intention of committing himself beyond this one job but once he reaches his destination, he finds himself sucked into the cause fighting fascism with the Austrian-German Underground - until there is no turning back.

Phyllis Bottome was a highly regarded prolific author in the mid 20th century. With her husband Ernan Forbes Dennis, a former diplomat and spy, she set up a school in Kitzbü hel, Austria and it was there, after he was thrown out of Eton, that she taught Ian Fleming to write. Amongst her many bestsellers was The Mortal Storm made into a prescient anti-fascist film which became a Hollywood blockbuster starring James Stewart. She died in London in 1963.