GoldenEye – Inside Ian Fleming’s Hedonistic Jamaican Retreat

By Kevin Pilley, October 2025

Ian Fleming used to welcome his guests to the north coast of Jamaica in a rather idiosyncratic way.

When he heard they were on their way from the airport or the harbour, he instructed his staff to throw some red meat into the sea – a horse carcass would do, anything bloody.

When his guests arrived, he invited them to cool down with a relaxing swim off his private beach. He pointed them down the steps to the sand and the Caribbean Sea, where several shark fins were circling close to shore in a large blood slick.

Fleming wrote all thirteen James Bond novels at GoldenEye, his home in Jamaica, ten minutes from the Ian Fleming International Airport and around thirty from the cruise terminal at Ocho Rios. The first, Casino Royale, was written in 1951 as “an antibody” to getting married for the first time at the age of forty-three. His bride was Lady Rothermere, the former wife of the British newspaper proprietor. Friends teased Fleming that he was her only fan.

Ian Fleming at his typewriter inside GoldenEye

“Writing four hours a day”

The villa and grounds are now a luxury oceanfront boutique resort, complete with beach huts and lagoon villas – and fewer sharks.

Its spa offers warming pimento and ginger massages, bioactive bush baths, Blue Mountains coffee wraps and Blackwell Rum brown-sugar scrubs. The Shabeen bar sits on Snorkeller’s Cove, the Bamboo Bar on Button Beach and the Bizot Bar on Low Cay beach.

Etonian Fleming bought the north-shore property in “the beautiful banana port of Oracabessa” (Golden Head) for £4,000, having originally been sent to Jamaica by British naval intelligence to help curb U-boat sinkings in the Caribbean. Although Oracabessa is Spanish for “goat’s head”, Fleming likely named his Jamaican home after a British Admiralty plan to defend Gibraltar. He stayed at the former donkey’s racecourse for eighteen winters, writing four hours a day “fast and with application”.

Noël Coward lived there for a while before moving down the road to Firefly, previously Blue Harbour. He is buried there.

“Sound of the pounding surf”

Ian Fleming died in 1964, before the films became truly popular. At the front gate of GoldenEye there is still a sign reading: “For Sale or Rent — The birthplace of James Bond, superspy.” The estate remained vacant until 1976, when music producer Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, bought it. It is now a 400-acre, all-inclusive holiday spa resort and part of Blackwell’s Island Outpost collection, which also includes The Caves and Strawberry Hill.

Fleming’s old garage has been converted into a bedroom suite with a giant video/DVD screen and a substantial bar. His bedroom still has the red bulletwood desk on which he wrote, with the jalousies shut to keep out the sun. There is a typewriter, although the original gold-plated one was sold in 1995. Seashells are scattered on tables as he liked them to be. The bath is outside. Every villa has a signature claw-foot bath. Tree-level villas have glassless windows to let in the breeze and the sound of the pounding surf. There is a swimming pool, a sunken garden, tropical woodland and the Bizot Bar named after the well-known French music tastemaker.

Allegedly, Sting wrote The Police’s ‘Every Breath You Take’ there in 1983.

On the beach near GoldenEye

“Place of pilgrimage”

Jamaica has featured in many Bond films. Laughing Waters (ten minutes away) is where Ursula Andress, as Honeychile Rider, famously emerged from the sea — it is now called James Bond Beach. Captain Swaby’s Swamp Safari was where Sir Roger Moore hurdled the alligators. The swamps around Falmouth were Dr No’s lair. The Queen’s Club in Kingston — the first scene in Dr. No — is still there. Naturally, there are Bond location tours.

But GoldenEye (the film named after it debuted in 1995) is where it all began. It is a place of pilgrimage as well as hedonism. Fleming was known locally as “the Commander”, and the man who prophesied he would die of “living too much” had advice for his incoming guests. His recipe for a happy life was simple:

“Drink water with your rum. Eat a little red meat but more fish. Swim, fish, and keep your drinking, smoking and women in moderation — and at a long distance from your wife.”

Beach hut

“Warm reception”

And, sensibly, no one should swim while the local school is out and the local shark population is in a feeding frenzy.

You only live once; GoldenEye rewards visitors with a warm reception.

Blackwell once said, “I focus on finding stunning locations and putting luxury hotels on them. I try to turn people on to the nature of Jamaica and encourage them to meet the people.”

It makes every Red Stripe taste like Dom Pérignon 1953, and every Blackwell ’n’ Stormy like Champagne Taittinger — as name-checked by Fleming in Casino Royale.

Kevin Pilley

Kevin Pilley is a former professional cricketer and  the ex-chief staff writer of PUNCH magazine. His humour, travel, lifestyle and food & drink work appears worldwide. He has been published by over 600 titles.

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