Commander James Bond CMG RNVR is a character created by the British journalist and novelist Ian Fleming in 1953. He is the protagonist of the James Bond series of novels, films, comics and video games. Fleming wrote twelve Bond novels and two short story collections. His final two books—The Man with the Golden Gun (1965) and Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966)—were published posthumously.
The character is a Secret Service officer, code number 007 (pronounced "double-O[/oʊ/]-seven"), residing in London but active internationally. Bond was a composite character who was based on a number of commandos whom Fleming knew during his service in the Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, to whom Fleming added his own style and a number of his own tastes. Bond's name may have been appropriated from the American ornithologist of the same name, although it is possible that Fleming took the name from a Welsh agent with whom he served, James C. Bond. Bond has a number of consistent character traits which run throughout the books, including an enjoyment of cars, a love of food, drink and sex, and an average intake of sixty custom-made cigarettes a day.
Since Fleming's death in 1964, there have been other authorised writers of Bond material, including John Gardner, who wrote fourteen novels and two novelizations; Raymond Benson, who wrote six novels, three novelizations and three short stories; and Anthony Horowitz, who has written three novels. There have also been other authors who wrote one book each: Kingsley Amis (under the pseudonym Robert Markham), Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver and William Boyd. Additionally, a series of novels based on Bond's youth—Young Bond—was written by Charlie Higson and later Stephen Cole.
As a spin-off from the original literary work, Casino Royale, a television adaptation was made, "Casino Royale", in which Bond was depicted as an American agent. A comic strip series also ran in the Daily Express newspaper. There have been twenty-seven Bond films; seven actors have played Bond in the films.
The central figure in Ian Fleming's work is the fictional character of James Bond, an intelligence officer in the "Secret Service". Bond is also known by his code number, 007, and was a Royal Naval Reserve Commander.
James Bond is the culmination of an important but much-maligned tradition in English literature. As a boy, Fleming devoured the Bulldog Drummond tales of Lieutenant Colonel Herman Cyril McNeile (aka "Sapper") and the Richard Hannay stories of John Buchan. His genius was to repackage these antiquated adventures to fit the fashion of postwar Britain ... In Bond, he created a Bulldog Drummond for the jet age.
William Cook in the New Statesman[1]
During the Second World War, Ian Fleming had mentioned to friends that he wanted to write a spy novel.[2] It was not until 1952, however, shortly before his wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Ann Charteris, that Fleming began to write his first book, Casino Royale, to distract himself from his forthcoming nuptials.[3] Fleming started writing the novel at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica on 17 February 1952, typing out 2,000 words in the morning, directly from his own experiences and imagination.[4] He finished work on the manuscript in just over a month,[5] completing it on 18 March 1952.[6] Describing the work as his "dreadful oafish opus",[7] Fleming showed it to an ex-girlfriend, Clare Blanchard, who advised him not to publish it at all, but that if he did so, it should be under another name.[8] Despite that advice, Fleming went on to write a total of twelve Bond novels and two short story collections before his death on 12 August 1964.[9] The last two books—The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living Daylights—were published posthumously.[10]
Fleming based his creation on a number of individuals which he came across during his time in the Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, admitting that Bond "was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war".[11] Among those types were his brother, Peter, whom Fleming worshipped[11] and who had been involved in behind-the-lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war.[12]
Aside from Fleming's brother, a number of others also provided some aspects of Bond's make up, including Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, a skiing spy whom Fleming had met in Kitzbühel in the 1930s, Patrick Dalzel-Job, who served with distinction in 30 AU during the war, and Bill "Biffy" Dunderdale, station head of MI6 in Paris, who wore cuff-links and handmade suits and was chauffeured around Paris in a Rolls-Royce.[11][13] Sir Fitzroy Maclean was another figure mentioned as a possibility, based on his wartime work behind enemy lines in the Balkans, as was the MI6 double agent Dušan Popov.[14]
In 2016, a BBC Radio 4 documentary explored the possibility that the character of Bond was inspired by author and mentor to Fleming, Phyllis Bottome in her 1946 novel, The Lifeline. Distinct similarities between the protagonist in The Lifeline, Mark Chalmers, and Bond have been highlighted by spy writer Nigel West.[15]
Fleming took the name for his character from that of the American ornithologist Dr James Bond, an expert on Caribbean birds based at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies, first published in 1936.[16] Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy of Bond's guide and he later explained to the ornithologist's wife that "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born".[17]
When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument ... when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard. — Ian Fleming, The New Yorker, 21 April 1962[18]
On another occasion Fleming said: "I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, 'James Bond' was much better than something more interesting, like 'Peregrine Carruthers'. Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure—an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department."[19] After Fleming met the ornithologist and his wife, he described them as "a charming couple who are amused by the whole joke".[20] In the first draft of Casino Royale he decided to use the name James Secretan as Bond's cover name while on missions.[21]
In 2018 the family of James Charles Bond, who had served under Fleming as a member of the Special Operations Executive, claimed that the name could have been linked with him.[22][23]
Bond's code number—007—was assigned by Fleming in reference to one of British naval intelligence's key achievements of First World War: the breaking of the German diplomatic code.[24] One of the German documents cracked and read by the British was the Zimmermann Telegram, which was coded 0075,[25] and which was one of the factors that led to the US entering the war.
Facially, Bond resembles the composer, singer and actor Hoagy Carmichael. In Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd remarks, "Bond reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless." Likewise, in Moonraker, Special Branch Officer Gala Brand thinks that Bond is "certainly good-looking ... Rather like Hoagy Carmichael in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold."[26] Others, such as journalist Ben Macintyre, identify aspects of Fleming's own looks in his description of Bond.[27] General references in the novels describe Bond as having "dark, rather cruel good looks".[28]
In the novels (notably From Russia, with Love), Bond's physical description has generally been consistent: slim build; a 3 in (76 mm) long, thin vertical scar on his right cheek; blue-grey eyes; a "cruel" mouth; short, black hair, a comma of which rests on his forehead. Physically he is described as 1.83 m (6 ft 0 in) in height and 76 kg (168 lb) in weight.[28] During Casino Royale, a SMERSH agent carves the Russian Cyrillic letter "Ш" (SH) (for Shpion: "Spy") into the back of Bond's right hand; by the start of Live and Let Die, Bond has had a skin graft to hide the scars.[29]
In Fleming's stories, Bond is in his mid-to-late thirties, but does not age.[30] In Moonraker, he admits to being eight years shy of mandatory retirement age from the 00 section—45—which would mean he was 37 at the time.[31] Fleming did not provide Bond's date of birth, but John Pearson's fictional biography of Bond, James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, gives him a birth date of 11 November 1920,[32] while a study by Bond scholar John Griswold puts the date at 11 November 1921.[33] According to Griswold, the Fleming novels take place between around May 1951,[34] to February 1964, by which time Bond was aged 42.[35]
If the quality of these books, or their degree of veracity, had been any higher, the author would certainly have been prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. It is a measure of the disdain in which these fictions are held at the Ministry, that action has not yet—I emphasize the qualification—been taken against the author and publisher of these high-flown and romanticized caricatures of episodes in the career of an outstanding public servant.
You Only Live Twice, Chapter 21: Obit:[36]
_arms.svg/1280px-Bond_(of_Earth,_Cornwall)_arms.svg.png)
Fleming wrote On Her Majesty's Secret Service while Dr. No was being filmed in Jamaica and was influenced by the casting of Scottish actor Sean Connery to give Bond Scottish ancestry.[37] It was not until the penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice, that Fleming gave Bond a more complete sense of family background, using a fictional obituary, purportedly from The Times.[38] The novel reveals Bond’s parents were Andrew Bond, of Glencoe, and Monique Delacroix, of the Canton de Vaud.[39] The book was the first to be written after the release of Dr. No in cinemas and Connery's depiction of Bond affected Fleming's interpretation of the character, to give Bond a sense of humour that was not present in the previous stories.[40] Bond spends much of his early life abroad, becoming multilingual in German and French because of his father's work as a Vickers armaments company representative. Bond is orphaned at age 11 after his parents are killed in a mountain climbing accident in the Aiguilles Rouges near Chamonix.[41]
After the death of his parents, Bond went to live with his aunt, Miss Charmian Bond, in the village of Pett Bottom, where he completed his early education. Later, he briefly attended Eton College at "12 or thereabouts", but was expelled after two halves because of girl trouble with a maid.[38] After being sent down from Eton, Bond was sent to Fettes College in Scotland, his father's school.[39] On his first visit to Paris at the age of 16, Bond lost his virginity, later reminiscing about the event in "From a View to a Kill".[42] Fleming referenced his own upbringing for his creation, with Bond alluding to briefly attending the University of Geneva[43] (as did Fleming), before being taught to ski in Kitzbühel (as was Fleming) by Hannes Oberhauser, who is later killed in "Octopussy".[44][42]
Bond joined the Secret Service in 1938–as described by a Russian dossier about him in From Russia, with Love.[34] He spent two months in 1939 at the Monte Carlo Casino watching a Romanian group cheating before he and the Deuxième Bureau closed them down.[44] Bond's obituary in You Only Live Twice states that he joined "a branch of what was subsequently to become the Ministry of Defence" in 1941, where he rose to the rank of principal officer.[45][39] The same year he became a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, ending the war as a commander.[44]
At the start of Fleming's first book, Casino Royale, Bond is already a 00 agent, having been given the position after killing two enemy agents, a Japanese spy on the thirty-sixth floor of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center (then housing the headquarters of British Security Co-ordination – BSC) in New York City and a Norwegian double agent who had betrayed two British agents; it is suggested by Bond scholar John Griswold that these were part of Bond's wartime service with Special Operations Executive, a British Second World War covert military organisation.[46] Bond is made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in either 1953–as described by a Russian dossier about Bond in From Russia, with Love—or 1954, as described by Bond's obituary in You Only Live Twice.[47]
Bond lives in a flat off the King's Road in Chelsea. Continuation authors John Pearson and William Boyd both identify the location as Wellington Square. The former believed the address was No. 30, and the latter No. 25.[48] His flat is looked after by an elderly Scottish housekeeper named May. May's name was taken from May Maxwell, the housekeeper of Fleming's close friend, the American Ivar Bryce.[49] In 1955 Bond earned around £2,000 a year net (equivalent to £66,000 in 2023); although when on assignment, he worked on an unlimited expense account.[50] Much of Fleming's own daily routine while working at The Sunday Times was woven into the Bond stories,[51] and he summarised it at the beginning of Moonraker:
... elastic office hours from around ten to six; lunch, generally in the canteen; evenings spent playing cards in the company of a few close friends, or at Crockford's; or making love, with rather cold passion, to one of three similarly disposed married women; weekends playing golf for high stakes at one of the clubs near London.
Moonraker, Chapter 1: Secret paper-work[52]
Only once in the series does Fleming have a partner for Bond in his flat, with the arrival of Tiffany Case, following Bond's mission to the US in Diamonds Are Forever. By the start of the following book, From Russia, With Love, Case has left to marry an American.[50] Bond is married only once, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, to Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo, but their marriage ends tragically when she is killed on their wedding day by Bond's nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld.[53]
In the penultimate novel of the series, You Only Live Twice, Bond suffers from amnesia and has a relationship with an Ama diving girl, Kissy Suzuki. As a result of the relationship, Kissy becomes pregnant, although she does not reveal this to Bond before he leaves the island.[54]
Fleming biographer Andrew Lycett noted that, "within the first few pages [of Casino Royale] Ian had introduced most of Bond's idiosyncrasies and trademarks", which included his looks, his Bentley and his smoking and drinking habits.[55] The full details of Bond's martini were kept until chapter seven of the book and Bond eventually named it "The Vesper", after his love interest Vesper Lynd.
'A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.'
'Oui, monsieur.'
'Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?'
'Certainly monsieur.' The barman seemed pleased with the idea.
'Gosh, that's certainly a drink,' said Leiter.
Bond laughed. 'When I'm ... er ... concentrating,' he explained, 'I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold, and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink's my own invention. I'm going to patent it when I think of a good name.'
Casino Royale, Chapter 7: Rouge et Noir[56]
Bond's drinking habits run throughout the series of books. During the course of On Her Majesty's Secret Service alone, Bond consumes forty-six drinks: Pouilly-Fuissé,