Brown Willy is said to be one of "the UK's best-loved high points". The hill features in an annual race held on New Year's Day that starts and finishes at Jamaica Inn, an old coaching inn made famous by Daphne du Maurier's 1936 novel of the same name. The hill is regarded as a sacred mountain by members of the Aetherius Society, a UFO religion founded in 1954 by George King. They believe that Brown Willy was charged with "holy energy" on 23 November, which they celebrate each year as "Charging Day", and gather at the hill on that day each year
The Spy Who Loved Me (novel) upstate New York, which Fleming would drive past on the way to Ivar Bryce's Black Hollow Farm; this became the Dreamy Pines Motel. Similarly, he took incidents from his own life and used them in the novel: Vivienne Michel's seduction in a box in the Royalty Kinema, Windsor, mirrors Fleming's loss of virginity in the same establishment. A colleague at "The Sunday Times", Robert Harling, gave his name to a printer in the story while another minor character, Frank Donaldson, was named after Jack Donaldson, a friend of Fleming's wife. One of Fleming's neighbours in Jamaica was Vivienne Stuart, whose