There’s a romanticism to these stories about seasonal escapes that can be both immensely appealing and frustratingly impossible. Amid the tropical sun of the Caribbean winter, Fleming found inspiration to create one of the most enduring characters of modern genre literature, much as Georgia O’Keeffe discovered her signature artistic style in the southern Adirondacks. We can imagine a similar relief and creative charge if only we, too, could find a way to spend extended time away from our normal professional routines each year. But what was easy for someone like Fleming in postwar Britain seems
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