The romps at Shane's Castle that would put Bond to shame

SIXTY years have now passed since the death of Ian Fleming, but for fans of spy thrillers there is still nobody who can do it better.

His novels may have sold millions, but make no mistake this literary maverick was anything but bookish.

Like James Bond, his most famous creation, Fleming enjoyed a jet set life and loved the company of glamorous women.

He also liked a drink, though seldom a Martini. His poison was vodka - and he was not fussy if it was shaken or stirred.

Yet the former naval intelligence officer had a strange affinity with the Borough of Antrim, particularly the Shane’s Castle estate.

Who would have guessed that the man behind cinema’s most enduring creation spent many happy days exploring the 1,800 acre estate - spending hours on the battlements looking out over a blustery and wild Lough Neagh?

Particularly at Christmas. He always felt there was something special about Shane’s Castle over the festive period - and in his letters he revealed that he cherished the simple pleasures of scrabble, bridge and table tennis, scarfing stilton, tangerines and smoked salmon. Washed down, of course, with the odd vodka.

But where did this link begin, and how did it continue right up to and indeed beyond his death in 1964?

Perhaps it is apt that this is a steamy tale of sex, scandal and betrayal. 007 would undoubtedly approve.

At the heart of the story is Ann Charteris, the beautiful young socialite who married Lord O’Neill in 1932.

Initially both she and husband Shane had a happy marriage, and their union produced two children - Raymond, the current Lord O’Neill, and his younger sister Fionn.

But as war clouds gathered, deep cracks were opening in the marriage. Faced with the choice of facing hostilities on the home front or in Europe, Shane heeded his country’s call and enlisted for action.

Desperately lonely, Ann reportedly found comfort in the arms of Edmond Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere. Then, in 1940, she met a dashing young military man called Ian. Ironically, both men played bridge and golf with Lord O’Neill.

But it was a family tragedy that proved to be the catalyst. In 1944 Lord O’Neill was mortally wounded in Italy, laying down his life for King and country.

At the tender age of just 11, Raymond O’Neill was elevated to the position of Lord - but he would not be the only man of the house.

Correspondence from the time revealed that Ann ‘expected’ Fleming to make his move and ask for her hand, but he was having none of it.

Not unlike a certain secret agent to come, Mr Fleming was happy to enjoy the high life with no strings attached. Seizing his opportunity, spurned rival Harmsworth swooped in.

He proposed and the couple were married on June 28 1945, but it seems that Ann was still irresistibly drawn to Fleming.

And it did not go unnoticed, with Fleet Street wags naming him ‘Lady Rothermere’s Fan’.

Within a year they had reignited their fiery affair after a passionate rendezvous in New York. It continued in Jamaica after Ann hoodwinked her new husband that she was paying a visit to his old friend and neighbour, Noel Coward.

The marriage was doomed and Lord Rothermere eventually threw down the gauntlet to his errant wife. There wasn’t room for three people in the marriage, so she had to choose.

In the end, events overtook them. In 1951 Ann discovered she was pregnant - and her husband was not the father.

Divorce papers were duly served and Ann told the children of her intentions as they returned to Oxfordshire from Christmas at Shane’s Castle.

It was been claimed that Raymond was not so sure that the rakish writer offered her the security she craved, but Fionn was delighted - reportedly glad to be free of her stand-offish and stuffy stepdad.

Or was she? In 2019 Fionn, contacted the Antrim Guardian to defend the memory of Lord Rothermere.

“It is not true that I ever thought Esmond Rothermere ‘stand-offish and stuffy’.

“Esmond was a shy man and did not engage with us. We may have lived in the same house but we lived on different floors and had little to do with him.

“My mother wrote - ‘Esmond, remote as the North Pole’.

“I remember him with affection. He was a kindly man.”

Nevertheless, on March 24, 1952 Ann and Ian finally tied the knot. Their only child Casper arrived five months later on August 12.

That same year Fleming finished the first of the Bond novels that would go on to sell over 100 million copies.

And that was just as well, as both he and his bride had very expensive tastes.

The family lived a lifestyle that could have been drawn from those pages, sharing their time between London, Jamaica and Kent - with regular visits across the Irish Sea to Shane’s Castle, where he would conjure up new scrapes for Bond.

Young Casper, who Fleming nick-named 003-and-a-half, was particularly fond of the estate and its rugged coastline, ancient woods and creepy ruins.

Fleming happily fed his interest in history, buying him books and touring antique shops during their trips to far-flung places.

Like many men of his time, he was a fond if not overly attentive father - but then how many dads could write something like ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ as a special gift?

But make no mistake, marriage had not domesticated him. He had a string of mistresses, some of them serious - including Blanche Blackwell, a prominent socialite.

Eventually Ann also strayed, and was romantically linked for a time with Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Labour Party.

Ann once wrote to him: “You mention ‘bad old bachelor days’ – the only person you stopped sleeping with when they ceased was me!”

The couple stayed together, but it was often turbulent.

Indeed, Fleming once wrote: “In the present twilight, we are hurting each other to an extent that makes life hardly bearable.”

Even Christmas at Shane’s Castle had lost some of its sheen.

In a letter to Evelyn Waugh after the festivities in 1959, Ann revealed that it had been ‘hard’ - though she did not lay the blame squarely at her husband’s door.

She had been too tired to go to church that December 25, as she had spent Christmas Eve shopping ‘carrying five pillows, four lampshades, a pound of stilton, a crate of tangerines and smoked salmon for eight’.

To compound matters, the man of the house had not ordered in the festive cheer and remained in his library listening to ‘stereophonic sounds’.

And the heating was not even switched on.

“The cellar and larder were empty save for a bottle of whiskey for Peter Quennell and a bottle of vodka for Ian.

“I summoned the keeper and told him to shoot peasant and woodcock. I filled the cellar, decorated the Christmas tree, turned on the central heating and with the aid of Nanny collected sufficient peasants to staff the house.

“The Fionn arrived with the bubonic. Caspar got a fever and O’Neill turned off the central heating as an economy. My poor father turned blue and had to be revived with brandy.

“But now, thank God, the festive season was over.”

There probably was a sense that other things were coming to an end too.

Women were not Ian’s only vice. He always had a cigarette in his hand, only putting it down to raise a glass. He regularly puffed up to 70 custom-made cigarettes a day and swallowed ‘lethal quantities of sprits’.

He suffered a heart attack in 1961 and, afterwards, his mood darkened.

Selby Armitage, who had known Ian all his life, met him at about this time.

“Ian, what’s it like, what’s it really like to be famous? It’s a thing you always wanted when you were young. Are you enjoying it now you’ve got it?“’” he asked.

He looked very sorry for himself.

“It was all right for a bit. But now, my God. Ashes, old boy. Just ashes. I’d swap the whole damned thing for a healthy heart.”

It was a ticking timebomb - and it finally exploded on August 11, 1964 when he suffered another heart attack - and this time it was massive.

He died the next day, aged just 56. By cruel coincidence it was Casper’s 12th birthday.

The young lad was already struggling to cope with his father’s global fame and was said to have taken barbiturates to help him sleep from a young age. The loss of his father hit him hard, and he lashed out at the people closest to him.

“Casper hates me and talks of little but matricide,” wrote Ann to novelist Evelyn Waugh during this period. “What shall I do?”

Though a bright student, Casper regularly got into trouble at Eton, including a brush with the law when he was 16 when a loaded revolver was found in his room. He also had a passion for swordsticks, daggers, pistols and steel crossbows. Not unlike a certain Mr Bond.

He dropped out of Oxford too, but by then he had access to a £300,000 trust fund left by his father. However, instead of bringing order, it brought chaos.

He developed a drug habit and in 1974 he made the first attempt on his life, taking an overdose and swimming out to sea.

During the following year there were spells in psychiatric hospitals where he was treated for severe depression.

By September 1975, however, he seemed to be back to his old self - and he was back to his old stomping grounds at Shane’s Castle.

“He seemed really happy,” said Georgina, Lady O’Neill.

“He would go searching for arrowheads. He was an archaeologist. That was his great love.”

Yet somehow during that carefree visit it seems that the 23-year-old decided that he would never return.

A week later he was in his mother’s flat in Chelsea and he penned a short note which read: ‘If it is not this time it will be the next’.

After consuming a deadly dose of barbiturates he calmly lay down to die. Sadly, he succeeded.

“It was dreadful when he died,” Lady O’Neill later recalled.

“He got in with a crowd at Oxford who took drugs. I don’t suppose that helped. Casper was very clever but he suffered from depression - a lot of the family did.”

Ann was devastated. She took to the drink to numb the pain and died from cancer in 1981.

A sad, final chapter to be sure.

But the Fleming name lives on, and might yet outlive the ancient rock of Shane’s Castle.

‘Skyfall’, the 23rd film in the long-running franchise took over one billion dollars at the global box office. The Bond business is still booming.

Lord Raymond O’Neill still resides on the family estate. A keen environmentalist, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order after he relinquished the title of Lord Lieutenant of County Antrim.

As stepson of Ian Flaming and nephew of Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O’Neill, his truly has been a remarkable life.

And if the walls of Shane’s Castle could talk, what a story they would tell!