· Starting in 1952 with Casino Royale, Ian Fleming wrote one James Bond novel a year until his death in 1964. All were composed between January and March at his holiday home, Goldeneye, in Jamaica.

· James Bond 007 is the longest-running film franchise, with 22 films having been made since Dr No in 1962. It is also the second most successful, after Harry Potter; the series has grossed more than $4bn.

· Sean Connery, the first Bond, starred in six Bond films. George Lazenby replaced him for one film, after which the part was played by Roger Moore (seven films), Timothy Dalton (two), Pierce Brosnan (four) and Daniel Craig (two so far).

· It's estimated that more than 2 billion people (nearly a third of the world's population) have watched Bond movies.

· Sebastian Faulks's Bond novel Devil May Care, to be published on 28 May, was written according to Fleming's methods: 2,000 words a day for six weeks. 'In his house in Jamaica, Ian Fleming used to write 1,000 words in the morning, then go snorkelling, have a cocktail, lunch on the terrace, more diving, another 1,000 words in late afternoon, then more martinis and glamorous women,' said Faulks. 'In my house in London, I followed this routine exactly, apart from the cocktails, the lunch and the snorkelling.'

· When President John F Kennedy included From Russia with Love (filmed with Connery and Daniela Bianchi) on a list of his favourite books in 1961, sales of the Bond novels, previously unsuccessful in America, boomed.

· Roger Moore became the oldest Bond at 58, when production closed on A View To a Kill in 1985.

· James Bond attended Fettes College in Edinburgh, the public school attended by Ian Fleming's father and by Tony Blair. Sean Connery was once the school's milkman.

· Kingsley Amis wrote two books about Bond in 1965 under the pseudonym Bill Tanner and then wrote the first Bond novel published after the death of Fleming, Colonel Sun, under the pen name Robert Markham. This was despite opposition from Fleming's widow, Ann, who disliked Amis, calling him a 'left-wing opportunist'.

· In 2003, the Fleming estate commissioned Charlie Higson, co-creator of The Fast Show, to write a sequence of five novels about the young James Bond at Eton in the Thirties. Sales of the first volume, SilverFin (2005), in which a 13-year-old Bond overcomes killer eels, surpassed the first Harry Potter novel.

· Lois Maxwell opted for the part of Miss Moneypenny over Bond girl Sylvia Trench in Dr No because she felt Trench was too raunchy. Times change; in 1999, Serena Scott Thomas was given the option of using a body double when her character, Dr Molly Warmflash, disrobes in The World is Not Enough, but she decided to do the job herself.

· Since Dr No was released in 1962, James Bond has killed more than 150 men and slept with 44 women, three-quarters of whom have tried to kill him.

· Ken Adam, set designer on The Spy Who Loved Me, warned producer Albert R 'Cubby' Broccoli that there wasn't a stage big enough for the set pieces, to which Broccoli replied, 'then build it'. The 007 Stage at Pinewood was the result. At 59,000 sq ft, it is still the biggest in Europe.

· In 1983, a legal loophole meant that two Bond movies - the official EON film Octopussy and Kevin McClory's unofficial remake of Thunderball, starring Connery as Bond, called Never Say Never Again - were in cinemas at the same time. Since then, MGM has bought the name 'James Bond'.

· The first gadget used in a Bond film was the Geiger counter in Dr No. Bond uses the bulky-looking Geiger counter to scan a boat where he finds radioactive rocks. Technology had improved by the time Thunderball was released in 1965, when viewers saw a Geiger counter installed within a camera.

· In 2006, a 1965 Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger and Thunderball, was sold at auction for more than £1m. A Tennessee museum owner had bought the car from Sir Anthony Bamford in 1970 for £5,000. Gadgets in the car include built-in Browning machine guns, tyre-slashers, an oil slick ejector and a retractable rear bullet-proof screen, although the passenger ejector seat with removable roof panel had been removed.

· Shooting of the latest Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, was suspended after three near-fatal accidents in five days. The first happened when an employee of Aston Martin, delivering the £134,000 DBS sports car to the set, lost control of the car and drove into Lake Garda. He emerged, he told the press, 'shaken but not stirred'.

· Jet Packs, devices used in the 1965 film Thunderball, are one of the few Bond gadgets that made it to commercial production, if only briefly. Powered by pressurised hydrogen peroxide, they were developed for the US army so that soldiers could leap over walls and rivers. However, the maximum flight time of 20 seconds proved too short

· Letters between Ian Fleming and his own 'Miss Moneypenny', which were auctioned in April this year, revealed the author's close relationship with Jean Frampton, who was hired to type his 007 manuscripts but who also perfected several plots. In one letter, she writes: 'I still regret the end of Thunderball, as my naïve and literal mind would like to know exactly what happened ... What about Blofeld (or does he live to die another day?)'. The letters fetched £14,340 - five times more than expected.

· David Niven had been Ian Fleming's preferred choice for the part of James Bond, but EON Productions chose Sean Connery. In You Only Live Twice, David Niven is referred to as the only real gentleman in Hollywood. Niven went on to star in the 1967 Bond satire, Casino Royale.

· Fleming suggested his friend and neighbour Noel Coward as the villain for the first James Bond film. Coward is said to have responded 'Dr No? No. No. No.'

· The Rolex Submariner watch was worn by Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton. Since GoldenEye (1995), Omega Seamaster watches have been product-placed in the Bond films.

· Ian Fleming wrote a tale featuring another high-powered automobile, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car, for his son Caspar, in 1964. It was made into a film musical in 1968 starring Dick Van Dyke (and became a West End smash in 2002.

· Fleming, an original screenplay about the life of the author, written by Damian Stevenson, is to be produced by Appian Way, Leonardo DiCaprio's production company. This is not the first attempt at a biopic of the author. In 1989, Goldeneye starred Charles Dance as Fleming; in 1990, Jason Connery played Fleming in The Secret Life of Ian Fleming and in 2005 Bondmaker starred Ben Daniels.