Page to screen: James Bond

Women want him, men want to be him and he likes it “Shaken, not stirred”. No, we are not doing an article on LAL’s Managing Director! We have decided to start the year with a closer look at one of the most famous English literary figures.

Commander James Bond, KCMG, RNVR agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) was created in 1952, the brainchild of British journalist Ian Fleming. He has to date appeared in 12 novels, two short stories and 22 films. In 2007, to commemorate the 100th birthday of Ian Fleming, a 13th Bond novel was published, written by Sebastian Faulks.

For those of you wanting to impress your friends you might like to know that James Bond’s parents are Andrew Bond and Monique Delacroix and, depending on which biography you read, his birthday is 11th November 1920, 1924 or 1925. His family motto is “Orbis non sufficit” (“The world is not enough”). His bride, Teresa di Vicenzo, is murdered on their wedding day and in the novels he has a son by the character Kissy Suzuki.

In contrast to the smooth, suave secret agent portrayed on film, it is thought that Bond was a more romanticised version of Fleming himself. From reading the books it has become obvious that Bond and Fleming attended the same schools, liked the same foods (scrambled eggs, and coffee), had the same habits (drinking, smoking, wearing short-sleeve shirts) and had similar naval paths. In an interview Fleming once admitted that Bond had been partly inspired by his service in the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty, most notably an incident described in ‘Casino Royal’, when Fleming went on a mission to Lisbon. At a casino in Estoril he lost a large amount of money to a “chief German agent” in a game of Chemin de Fer.

In both novels and film, Bond has meaningless affairs or one-night-stands with virtually every woman he meets, and then leaves them when they become an inconvenience. One of the more amusing aspects of the Bond stories is that the women he meets also have the most ridiculous names: who can forget Dr, Christmas Jones, Holly Goodhead or the world-famous Pussy Galore. [AT]