Time in Europe

After living up to his reputation as the black sheep of the family, Ian’s mother Evelyn was at a loss to know what to do with her wayward son.  She decided to send him to Kitzbühel in Austria to improve his languages before sitting examinations for the Foreign Office.  Ian was sent to the Villa Tennerhof, which was run by Ernan Forbes Dennis and his wife, the celebrated author Phyllis Bottome who had a profound influence on Ian by encouraging him to use his imagination to write fiction.  Ian flourished under their tutelage where the educational theories of Adler were followed and students were encouraged to work hard and satisfy wide-ranging curiosities.  Ian loved to ski and to climb the mountains and later wrote to a friend describing Kitzbühel as, ‘that golden time when the sun always shone’.  After a year at the Tennerhof, Fleming moved on to Munich University and then to Geneva University to polish his German and French respectively.

‘That golden time when the sun always shone.’