Welcome to Daily TWiP, your daily dose of all the holidays and history we couldn’t cram into The Week in Preview.

Does the name “Ian Fleming” ring a bell? How about if we say it this way? “Fleming. Ian Fleming.” That’s right – today we celebrate the birth anniversary of the British journalist and novelist who created the James Bond series. He was born Ian Lancaster Fleming in Mayfair, London, England, today (May 28th) in 1908.

During World War II, Fleming was recruited as a personal assistant to the director of naval intelligence of the Royal Navy. His intelligence work there provided much of the background for the James Bond novels, the first of which was “Casino Royale,” published in 1953. Sales of the novels didn’t take off in the U.S. until President John F. Kennedy listed “From Russia With Love” as one of his favorite books.

Fleming’s famous spy was a composite of several people, including naval officer Patrick Dalzel-Job and Fleming’s older brother, Peter, but he was named after the ornithologist James Bond, who let Fleming use his family’s Jamaica estate as a writing retreat.

When the books began to be adapted into films, Fleming put in a good word for his cousin, actor Christopher Lee (whose birthday was yesterday, by the way) for the roles of Dr. No or James Bond. He was passed over in favor of Joseph Wiseman and Sean Connery, respectively, but was later picked to play the titular role in “The Man with the Golden Gun.”

Daily TWiP appears Monday through Saturday courtesy of The Week in Preview. Read more of both at www.nashuatelegraph.com/columnists/weekinpreview.

– Teresa Santoski

Do you like Daily TWiP? Now you can like it on Facebook, too! Visit our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/DailyTWiP.

Keep track of Daily TWiP, The Week in Preview, Tete-a-tete, and Teresa’s general ramblings at http://twitter.com/TeresaInPreview.