Toot Sweets: Ian Fleming and the construction of British identity

I just saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – the musical. Ha. It’s amazing.

What I didn’t realise until afterwards was that Ian Fleming originally wrote it. Who would have thought it hey? Well – not me at least. But yet it makes so much sense, it fits so perfectly. It features an eccentric British inventor, by the name of Caractacus Potts, who teams up with the deliciously named Truly Scrumptious to spread insurrection in an Eastern European totalitarian state (Vulgaria - ha). It has Fleming written all over it. Brilliant. And how do they infiltrate said country? Why, they use none other than the greatest gadget ever devised – Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Q himself could do no better.

Combine this with a healthy dose of waffle about how great it is to be British and a grandfather telling stories of the old colonial days and all in all you have a fine post war, pro-British story. We may have lost the empire and we may not be as rich as our American cousins but we still have that cutting edge, that cheeky wit, that gift of the gab to see us through. At least, that is, according to Fleming, a bored clerk in the department of Naval Intelligence.

I’m not sure how right he is, but its one hell of a myth. I fear I’m becoming something of a patriot these days, but why not hey? The rest of the world doesn’t seem to be doing so brightly. Britain has its problems but in the words of Mr Potts himself, while it may ‘need a little work, there’s a fine engine under here’.