The Lifeline (sometimes written as The Life-Line) is a 1946 thriller novel by the British writer Phyllis Bottome.^[1] It has been suggested as a direct influence on Ian Fleming, who had once attended a school run by Bottome, and his later creation of the James Bond stories. Equally the protagonist Mark Chalmers may have been partly based on Fleming himself.^[2] It was the only spy novel written by Bottome.^[3]

An Eton schoolmaster heading off on his annual visit to the Austrian Alps, which has recently been annexed by Germany agrees to a casual request from a Foreign Office friend to carry a message to the country. Before long he finds himself embroiled in the anti-Nazi resistance and targeted by the Gestapo.

• Buckton, Oliver. The World Is Not Enough: A Biography of Ian Fleming. Rowman & Littlefield, 2021.
• Lassner, Phyllis. British Women Writers of World War II: Battlegrounds of their Own. Springer, 1998.