The day before the Moonraker launch, Sir Hugo Drax takes Gala Brand and Krebs into London for some last-minute preparations. On the way, Miss Brand is determined to get a look at Sir Hugo’s notebook which he keeps in his pocket to check for herself the figures that he enters into it each day.
She manages to pick the notebook from Drax’s hip pocket, and get it into her coat. Now she needs him to stop the car so she can get out and take a look at it.
A garage would be dangerous. He might decide to fill up with petrol. And perhaps he also carried his money in his hip-pocket. But was there an hotel? Yes, she remembered, the Thomas Wyatt just outside Maidstone. And it had no petrol pumps. She started to fidget slightly. She pulled the coat back on to her lap. She cleared her throat.
The Thomas Wyatt hotel is still there, though now the part which was the inn back then is now a pub, with a Premier Inn attached to it.
The car swerved up to the front of the inn and stopped with a jerk. “Hurry up. Hurry up,” said Drax as Gala, leaving the door of the car open, sped obediently across the gravel, her coat with its precious secret held tightly in front of her body.
Sir Thomas Wyatt was a fairly prominent poet and rebel of the middle ages.
Nice post – and good to see the Thomas Wyatt. I grew up in Maidstone and know the Kentish locations mentioned in Moonraker very well. I was thrilled to read Fleming’s descriptions of Kent – and in particular Maidstone – when I read Moonraker in my early teens (I think), and the book has been a favourite of mine ever since. At the end of 2012, I took a ‘road trip’ through Kent to revisit the places mentioned by Fleming, and the result was an article published in MI6 Confidential issue 23. During my trip, I stopped at the Thomas Wyatt for a Bondian lunch. Incidentally, the Royal Star hotel in Maidstone is still there too, except that it’s now an upmarket shopping centre. Also, the junction of King Street and Gabriels Hill is largely pedestrianised.
Edward
Thanks for visiting the site and for the comment! Great to have someone who’s been there chime in. I’d love to get over there and check out these places for myself.
My wife, and therefore kids, are direct decendants of Maidstone’s Sir Thomas Wyatt the poet, and his son by the same name, but known as the “rebel”. The rebel’s grandson was Rev. Haute Wyatt, a leader of the Jamestowne Virginia colony. His daughter Anne stayed and married.
The Sir Thomas Wyatt was a great pub before it became a Beefeater