Nigel Cawthorne - A Brief Guide to James Bond

Nigel Cawthorne is the author of Military Commanders and Vietnam A War Lost and Won. His writing has appeared in over a hundred and fifty newspapers, magazines and partworks from the Sun to the Financial Times, and from Flatbush Life to The New York Tribune. He lives in Chatham, Kent.

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Copyright Nigel Cawthorne, 2012

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In the 1950s, Britain was a dowdy place, still recovering from World War II. With Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House, America was at its most conformist. Then along came a hero like no other. He was definitely on the side of the good guys, but he drank and smoked, and there is no indication that he ever went to church. Even in a foxhole, he was not a man who would say a prayer. The only vespers he knew were a cocktail he had named after his latest sexual conquest.

Bond bedded beautiful women who surrendered without a struggle. He drove fast cars and visited exotic places. He saw off a series of powerful villains and, whatever happened, James Bond could cope with the situation. For me, as a young lad, this was a revelation. Ian Fleming described his James Bond books as the pillow of fantasy of an adolescent mind. They certainly were for me.

Although Bond had been through the war, he did not talk about it. I had already noted in my own family that those who talked about what they had done in the war had not done anything important. Those who remained silent, I discovered, had faced real danger and wanted to forget about it. But more importantly, Bond was part of the new generation the generation of Elvis and soon the Beatles and John F. Kennedy.

Indeed, when Bond first came to the screen in 1962 with Dr No, he wore the same sharp suits as the Kennedys. Whats more, JFK was a fan. Despite actor Sean Connerys strong Scottish accent, Bonds persona remained curiously transatlantic. In later movies, he is equally at home in the US and the UK. But who can forget the scene when Ursula Andress emerges from the sea? It is a seminal moment in cinema history.

While the Bond of the books is vulnerable, often injured, prey to nerves, even afraid, and kills sparingly, in the films he is fearless, barely even bleeds, suffers no psychological misgivings, and slaughters on an industrial scale. Yet the two Bonds are the same tough, resourceful, stylish, sardonic, well-brought-up man of-the-world that I, even in my late middle age, seek to emulate not altogether successfully, it has to be said.

Fleming said that his James Bond books were autobiographical. There are indeed similarities between Fleming and the Bond of the novels both went to Eton; both saw wartime service in the Royal Navy. Fleming had an inside knowledge of espionage, having served in Naval Intelligence, where he liaised with the Special Operations Executive and MI6, the same Special Intelligence Service that Bond worked for. He knew about the Soviet Union, visiting as a journalist to cover the Metro-Vickers spy trial in 1933 and returning in 1939. He also knew about armed assaults, at command level, from his time with 30 Assault Unit during World War II. He even carried a Beretta. But Fleming never had a licence to kill let alone the ability to perform James Bonds death-defying feats.

While Fleming did share Bonds love of drinking, fast cars and women, the James Bond of the novels and the films was not Ian Fleming of Goldeneye, his Jamaican home. Bond was a fantasy born out of Britains post-war austerity, but he went on to become a fantasy the whole word shares.

During Ian Flemings lifetime, his books sold over thirty million copies. All are still in print and more Bond books have been written by other authors since Flemings death in 1964. The Bond films are the highest grossing franchise in Hollywoods history. It is estimated that half the population of the world has seen at least one Bond movie as the legendary Cold War warrior now takes on the villains of the post-Cold War world.

Now that another Bond movie has just come to the screen it is, perhaps, a good time to go back and take a good hard look at the character and his creator, and see what Bond tells us about ourselves.

While writing this, I am, of course, sipping a dry martini, shaken, not stirred.

Nigel Cawthorne

Bloomsbury, 2011

Of his James Bond books, Ian Fleming once said: Everything I write has a precedent in truth. So for the truth about James Bond we should first look at the life of Ian Fleming, the wellspring of 007s creation.

Like James Bond, Fleming was born to a Scottish family. His grandfather, Robert Fleming, was from a poor background in Dundee. As a clerk working in a textile company, he seized the opportunity to represent his firm in the United States. In the aftermath of the Civil War, America was desperately short of capital, so Robert Fleming set up a pioneering investment trust that took the savings of thrifty Dundonians and invested them in American railroads with yields twice that of the stock markets in Edinburgh or London. He was in his twenties when he made his first big railroad deal in 1873.