Shaken and stirred: letters reveal Ian Fleming's tempestuous first love

In letters from early 1930s to Edith Morpurgo, Fleming writes: 'I would like to hurt you because you have earned it'

It might sound more Fifty Shades of Grey than 007, but a series of letters by a young Ian Fleming to his Austrian lover see the man who would go on to create James Bond detailing how he would like "to hurt you because you have earned it and in order to tame you like a little wild animal".

Written in the early 1930s by Fleming to Edith Morpurgo, the daughter of a Salzburg businessman, the letters in German shine a light on the pair's tempestuous relationship: one of Fleming's missives has even been torn into pieces by its recipient, before being pieced back together with tape.