Fraser-Smith's own 1981 memoir reportedly states Fleming misused his golf-ball concealment idea in fiction — per a secondhand blog quote, not yet independently verified
Per a personal book-review blog (Barbara Harper, "Stray Thoughts"), Charles Fraser-Smith's own memoir The Secret War of Charles Fraser-Smith (with Gerald McKnight and Sandy Lesberg; first published 1981 by Michael Joseph, London) states that Fraser-Smith "slightly" knew Ian Fleming but considered that Fleming "misused" his golf-ball concealment idea in fiction: Fleming's fictional golf balls "would not have performed as golf balls" and "wouldn't have fooled an Irish farmhand let alone the lynx-eyed prison officers and S.S. of the O Flags" (memoir, p. 128, per the blog's citation).
If accurate, this would be Fraser-Smith's own testimony that Fleming did reuse his golf-ball idea in fiction — a primary-source confirmation stronger than History.com's secondhand framing in claim-fraser-smith-real-life-model-for-bond-q and claim-diamonds-are-forever-golf-ball-device-corroborated-independently, since it comes with a specific, idiosyncratic complaint about realism rather than a flattering gloss. It would not, however, confirm the Diamonds Are Forever half of that chain: the blog post names no Bond novel or film title at all — "diamond," "diamonds," "gem," and "gems" appear nowhere in it (checked against the post directly, 2026-10-02 audit) — so as rendered by Harper, Fraser-Smith's complaint is about Fleming reusing the golf-ball trick for hiding things in some unnamed fiction, not about that novel specifically. Nor is the page pointer as firm as it looks: the memoir exists in at least three editions with differing pagination (Michael Joseph 1981 and Paternoster 1989 at 159 pp., the M.S. Fraser-Smith/Louth printing the blog's own purchase link points at, at 155 pp.), and the blog states no edition, so "p. 128" locates the passage only in whichever copy Harper read. However, the memoir itself does not appear to be digitized — no archive.org or Open Library readable copy was located, Open Library lists it "currently unavailable," and it is long out of print — and a Tangmere Museum page about the same memoir returned HTTP 403 to every tooling route tried this session. The quote above is admissible as the blog's own sentence; the memoir text it reports has not been independently read.
Source
“Fraser-Smith wrote that he "slightly" knew Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. But he said Fleming misused one of his ideas of hiding things in golf balls. Fleming's golf balls would not have performed as golf balls and "wouldn't have fooled an Irish farmhand let alone the lynx-eyed prison officers and S.S. of the O Flags" (p. 128).”
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