I wasn’t staying in this house which I’d given to my brother who had moved, I was staying at the Carlton Tower Hotel, and I got the first 100 pages of Dr No, and... I thought they were pretty awful, frankly.  And then I gave them to Letitzia to read and she said, ‘You can’t make this picture. You can’t prostitute yourself’. But I knew that Terence Young was going to direct it, and even though we had never worked together, but we were great friends and I know he very much respected my work and I respected his work and... so I decided, finally, to make the picture. What I should have done, at that time, which I think they would have agreed to: get a percentage of the film, but I thought it was safer to be paid, because I didn’t know what the picture was going to be like.

And so... then somehow things fell into place.  Locations were going to be in Jamaica, and Harry Saltzman, I knew from Italy, where he was making television pictures, and he knew me and I knew him.  And I think it was Harry who had brought, actually, the Bonds to Cubby.  And... I went to Jamaica for the locations, and there wasn’t really very much for me to do out there, except come up with an idea for the dragon, you know, a strange dragon. But I also... my assistant was Syd Cain, who was pretty good, so I left that dragon to Syd Cain, and came back to Pinewood, because I knew I had to fill three large stages at Pinewood with sets, because it was such a quick picture. And I had a short meeting with Terence, in which he explained, you know... he said, ‘I’ll leave it entirely to you, provided you give me entrances and exits for the actors. A concept I’ll leave to you’. 

And it was really an incredible thing for me to arrive at Pinewood, and I wasn’t all that keen, in those days at Pinewood. I would have preferred Shepperton.