tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/ian-fleming-38653/articlesIan Fleming – The Conversation2024-03-21T18:01:52Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2262812024-03-21T18:01:52Z2024-03-21T18:01:52ZThe ideal James Bond is an actor on the cusp of superstardom – as film history shows<p>More people have walked on the Moon than have played James Bond, so it’s no wonder that the suave secret agent with a licence to kill is one of the most coveted roles in cinema. The casting of a new 007 always grabs the public imagination – even now, when it’s still only a rumour that British actor <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/26774029/aaron-taylor-johnson-offered-role-james-bond/">Aaron Taylor-Johnson</a> has been offered the part.</p>
<p>There have been false rumours in the past. I still remember a non-story that Australian model <a href="https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/bonds-finlay-light-interview">Finlay Light</a> had been cast as the new Bond in 1986. </p>
<p>Even before social media, the casting of James Bond was always a subject of public intrigue. Before Sean Connery was cast in Dr No (1962), the Daily Express <a href="https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/history_dr_no_casting_peter_anthony">ran a competition</a> to find the public’s choice for the “ideal” Bond. The winner was model Peter Anthony, who won ahead of several other contenders, including stuntman Bob Simmons.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/films/1676825/James-Bond-Sean-Connery-Dr-No-Michael-G-Wilson">often-told story</a> that Cary Grant was “offered” the part by the producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli should be taken with a <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/When_the_Snow_Melts/-qocAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=When+the+Snow+Melts+cubby+broccoli&dq=When+the+Snow+Melts+cubby+broccoli&printsec=frontcover">large dose of salt</a>. Grant’s picture fee at the time was over four times Dr No’s total cast budget of £25,000. </p>
<p>Harry Saltzman, Broccoli’s production partner, told the press that Michael Craig and Patrick McGoohan had been considered. And the United Artists’ archive reveals that Broccoli and Saltzman saw the war picture The Valiant (1962) but reported that “Robert Shaw in this particular film did not impress any of us as being James Bond”. However, Shaw was subsequently cast as an assassin in From Russia With Love (1963).</p>
<p>Two myths have accumulated around Connery’s casting over the years. One is that he was an unknown when he was cast. In fact, Connery was already a well-established television actor and had meaty supporting roles in films such as Another Time, Another Place (1958) and The Frightened City (1961) before he got the call. </p>
<p><a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/dr-no/9780231204934">Broccoli stated</a> it was Connery’s role in Disney’s whimsical fantasy Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959) that put the actor on his radar. </p>
<p>The other myth is that Bond’s creator Ian Fleming disapproved of Connery, considering him too rough and ready to play the suave secret agent. However, as revealed in Fergus Fleming’s collection of his uncle’s letters, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/31/the-man-with-the-golden-typewriter-ian-flemings-james-bond-letters-fergus-fleming-review">The Man With the Golden Typewriter</a> (2015), Fleming met – and approved of – Connery. </p>
<p>The writer told his confidante, Blanche Blackwell, that “the man they have chosen for Bond, Sean Connery, is a real charmer – fairly unknown but a good actor with the right looks and physique”.</p>
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<h2>Next in line</h2>
<p>Bond was the box office phenomenon of the 1960s, and when Connery decided it was time to step back after five films, finding a replacement was a drawn-out process. Australian model George Lazenby, a genuine unknown whose only acting experience had been in television commercials for Fry’s chocolate, won the part on account of his ability to stage convincing fight scenes.</p>
<p>On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) is the closest of the adaptations to Fleming’s book, but it didn’t perform as well as previous Bonds at the box office. Lazenby carried the can for its perceived failure: he was destined to be the one-time Bond.</p>
<p>American actor John Gavin, best known for playing Janet Leigh’s boyfriend in Psycho (1960), was signed for Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Gavin had the right sort of looks and physique for the part, and would have played Bond as British. </p>
<p>However, United Artists were determined to get Connery back, and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: 12.5% of the distributor’s net receipts with an up-front cash advance of US$1,250,000 (£983,050) and an agreement to produce two films of the actor’s choice. No wonder Connery seems to be enjoying himself so much in Diamonds Are Forever. Gavin was paid and released from his contract.</p>
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<p>The casting of Live And Let Die (1973) proved controversial. United Artists wanted a household name star and its archive confirms that Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman were approached – but neither were interested. </p>
<p>In the end it came down to a choice between Burt Reynolds or Roger Moore. Saltzman reportedly favoured the former but Broccoli “<a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/dr-no/9780231204934">violently opposed”</a>“ Burt Reynolds. Moore emerged as the compromise choice as he was the only actor on whom they could agree.</p>
<p>Moore was the first established star to be cast as Bond – albeit his stardom was on the small screen, as the dashing gentleman hero of The Saint (1962) and The Persuaders! (1971). He was also the oldest Bond at the point of casting. As one reviewer <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/dr-no/9780231204934">presciently remarked</a>: "Roger Moore is 45. I predict he could now be playing James Bond into his fifties.” As indeed he did.</p>
<p>Moore’s successor was another television actor, the Irish-born Pierce Brosnan, star of Remington Steele (1982). But when the network refused to release Brosnan from his contract, Timothy Dalton was a late replacement for The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989). Brosnan eventually got the role that he thought had eluded him nine years later in GoldenEye (1995). In that sense he was the longest “Bond-in-waiting”.</p>
<h2>Modern Bonds</h2>
<p>Brosnan had been the bookies’ odds-on favourite. In contrast his successor, Daniel Craig, whose biggest role had been in the British gangster film Layer Cake (2004), was a a surprise choice. His casting prompted something of a backlash from fans – that he was too short, too “ugly” and too blonde for Bond.</p>
<p>There was even an online campaign, “<a href="http://danielcraigisnotbond.com/index/blog/2017/02/26/daniel-craig-is-not-bond/">Craig Not Bond</a>”. However, the success of Casino Royale (2006), Skyfall (2012) and three other blockbusters silenced the critics. Craig, one of the few Bonds to leave the series at the time of his choosing, retired from Her Majesty’s Secret Service with the five biggest-grossing Bond films in the series’ history.</p>
<p>So, Lazenby and Moore excepted, Bond producers have usually cast an actor on the cusp of stardom. Aaron Taylor-Johnson – if the rumours turn out to be true – would fit that pattern. He’s not an unknown, but he’s not quite a superstar. And at 33 he’d also be the youngest Bond since Lazenby, not an insignificant consideration given that the producers will want to sign the new Bond for at least three films.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Chapman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The casting of James Bond has been met with much intrigue and myth over the years.James Chapman, Professor of Film Studies, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1994172024-01-01T20:34:41Z2024-01-01T20:34:41ZMy favourite fictional character: George Smiley is unattractive, overweight, a terrible dresser – and a better spy than James Bond<p>I grew up in the southeast of England. There wasn’t all that much to do. I remember spending a lot of time at the local cinema. You had to drive to get there. I watched pretty much anything I could. </p>
<p>Tom Cruise was excellent in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117060/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_4_tt_7_nm_0_q_mission%2520impo">Mission: Impossible</a>. Pierce Brosnan was equally great in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113189/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">GoldenEye</a> – James Bond careening through the streets of St Petersburg astride a tank. It was cool, it was funny, it was the mid-1990s. </p>
<p>These films also served as a visual reminder: the Cold War was a thing of the past. Communism was done and dusted, already an impossibly distant memory. The West was well and truly the best. </p>
<p>If I wasn’t watching films, I was reading books. I was not an especially discerning reader. <a href="https://theconversation.com/gabrielle-careys-affectionate-life-of-james-joyce-is-a-story-of-contingency-vulnerability-and-sadness-210892">James Joyce</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/shopping-showjumping-and-a-notorious-goldfish-sex-scene-the-bonkers-world-of-the-bonkbuster-209985">Jilly Cooper</a>. I didn’t really mind. </p>
<p>There were a fair few books at my grandparents’ place, which I always thought of as home. This is where I discovered the work of John Le Carré. I remember being intrigued by the unusual name embossed in gold print on the cover of the volume I’d stumbled upon. It rang a bell: something to do with <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-secret-world-9780140285321">a secret world</a> of spies. </p>
<p>Here’s a taste of Le Carré’s prose: </p>
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<p>When Lady Ann Sercomb married George Smiley towards the end of the war she described him to her astonished Mayfair friends as breathtakingly ordinary. When she left him two years later in favour of a Cuban motor racing driver, she announced enigmatically that if she hadn’t left him then, she never could have done; and Viscount Sawley made a special journey to his club to observe that the cat was out of the bag.</p>
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<p>This is the opening paragraph of Le Carré’s debut novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/call-for-the-dead-9780241639214">Call for the Dead</a>. Le Carré wrote the book while living in the same village my grandparents moved to a couple of decades later (Great Missenden). </p>
<p>Published in 1961, this novel ushered into existence the spymaster George Smiley.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-secret-lives-of-ian-fleming-and-john-le-carre-the-spymasters-shaped-by-a-lack-of-parental-love-212348">Friday essay: the secret lives of Ian Fleming and John Le Carré – the spymasters shaped by a lack of parental love</a>
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<h2>Instantly hooked on an unlikely hero</h2>
<p>A composite <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/john-le-carre-on-the-real-characters-behind-george-smiley-m6s7gw5t2">based on several real people</a>, George Smiley is Le Carré’s most beloved and influential literary creation. He has been portrayed on screen, to acclaim, by luminaries like Alec Guinness and Gary Oldman. </p>
<p>Guinness played Smiley in the famous 1979 television adaptation of the novel that might well be Le Carré’s masterpiece: <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-9780241658987">Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy</a>, which celebrates its 50th birthday this year. In 2011, Oldman put in a commendable shift as Smiley in the well-received film adaptation.</p>
<p>In this iconic novel, Smiley hunts down a thinly fictionalised version of the infamous MI6 double agent, Kim Philby.</p>
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<p>If not for Smiley, we would not have Jackson Lamb, the protagonist of Slow Horses – also, fittingly, played by Oldman in the ongoing televisual adaptation of Mick Herron’s Slough House series. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/best-books-of-2023-our-experts-share-the-books-that-have-stayed-with-them-214578">Best books of 2023: our experts share the books that have stayed with them</a>
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<p>Here’s how Le Carré introduces Smiley to his readers:</p>
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<p>Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.</p>
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<p>Economical, yet evocative. As an initial description, this surely ranks as one of the very best. I was instantly hooked: who was this man, and why describe him this way? And what on earth was going on with those really bad clothes?</p>
<p>Le Carré doesn’t directly address that last question in Call for the Dead. He explains instead that part of George Smiley died after Lady Ann left him:</p>
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<p>The part of Smiley which survived was as incongruous to his appearance as love, or a taste for unrecognised poets: it was his profession, which was that of intelligence officer. It was a profession he enjoyed, and which mercifully provided him with colleagues equally obscure in character and origin. It also provided him with what he had once loved best in life: academic excursions into the mysteries of human behaviour, disciplined by the practical application of his own deductions.</p>
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<p>Smiley works as an intelligence agent for the Circus, Le Carré’s fictionalised version of Britain’s MI6. Looks can deceive. Despite his undistinguished appearance, Smiley is incredibly good at what he does. This unlikely hero – part bureaucrat, part <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/william-boyd-on-what-makes-george-smiley-tick-6hktg7380">detective</a> – always gets things done, more often than not in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-wilderness-of-mirrors-70-years-since-the-first-james-bond-book-spy-stories-are-still-blurring-fact-and-fiction-201373">'The wilderness of mirrors': 70 years since the first James Bond book, spy stories are still blurring fact and fiction</a>
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<h2>From the Cold War to Brexit</h2>
<p>Smiley finds himself in a spot of bother at the start of Call for the Dead. </p>
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<p>A civil servant called Samuel Fennan has, on the back of a routine security check, committed suicide. Smiley, who oversaw the vetting process, is being scrutinised by his superiors. They think him responsible. Suspecting foul play, Smiley sets up his own investigation. </p>
<p>Despite spending much of the novel in hospital, Smiley hatches a brilliant plan and unravels the truth. Without wishing to spoil the plot: the novel ends with Smiley heading to Zürich in the hope that he can win his wife back.</p>
<p>Le Carré kept coming back to Smiley throughout his career, in eight of his subsequent novels.</p>
<p>Moving from the Cold War to the self-inflicted catastrophe of Brexit, Le Carré’s nine Smiley novels paint a remarkably candid – and increasingly melancholic – portrait of a former imperial power in terminal decline. Smiley knows it’s declining, and that he has wasted his days chasing ghosts – some real, most imagined. </p>
<p>He says so in 1990’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-secret-pilgrim-9780241330944">The Secret Pilgrim</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s over, and so am I. Absolutely over. Time you rang down the curtain on yesterday’s cold warrior. And please don’t ask me back, ever again. The new time needs new people. The worst thing you can do is imitate us.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-a-cold-war-a-historian-explains-how-rivals-us-and-soviet-union-competed-off-the-battlefield-192238">What's a cold war? A historian explains how rivals US and Soviet Union competed off the battlefield</a>
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<h2>George Smiley is James Bond’s reality check</h2>
<p>We can productively compare Le Carré’s creation with his contemporary, James Bond. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-secret-lives-of-ian-fleming-and-john-le-carre-the-spymasters-shaped-by-a-lack-of-parental-love-212348">Like Le Carré</a>, Ian Fleming had a professional background in espionage. Similarly, Fleming put his firsthand knowledge of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradecraft">tradecraft</a> to good use when writing books. </p>
<p>However, in marked contrast to Le Carré, Fleming rails against the reality of Britain’s diminished status as a world power in the wake of the second world war. His fictional universe is one in which – despite much evidence to the contrary – the Sun somehow refuses to set on the British Empire.</p>
<p>This basically explains James Bond. Fleming conceived of Bond as <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-ian-fleming-wanted-james-bond-to-be-extremely-dull/">a blunt instrument</a>, a weaponised literary device capable of reaffirming Britain’s standing as a world power. Bond isn’t really a character, he’s a means to an end. All surface, no feeling. An example of ideological wish fulfilment. </p>
<p>This, in turn, helps us understand the enduring appeal of George Smiley.</p>
<p>Le Carré famously <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-bond-idUKTRE67G24U20100817/">detested</a> Bond. Smiley was the necessary corrective. Overweight, unattractive, a terrible dresser – Smiley is everything Bond is not when it comes to looks. And he has no luck in love whatsoever. Still, it is clear that Le Carré’s leading man has something the woefully insubstantial Bond emphatically lacks: a rich, if conflicted, inner life. </p>
<p>As I said earlier, looks can deceive. The truth is that Bond is boring. He is utterly dull. Crucially, the same could never be said of the well-rounded (no pun intended), all-too-human Smiley. </p>
<p>Ultimately, I concur with <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/a-private-spy-9780241994559">Le Carré</a>: </p>
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<p>For me, it has to do with depth. Smiley is an Abbey, made up different periods, fashions, and even different religions, not all of them necessarily harmonious. His authority springs from experience, ages of it, compassion, and at root an inconsolable pessimism which gives a certain fatalism to much that he does.</p>
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<p>Pessimistic and fatalistic. Driven by compassion. George Smiley, who is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/10/john-le-carres-son-to-write-new-george-smiley-novel">slated to appear in a new novel</a> to be written by Le Carré’s son, is a reminder, disguised as fiction, that still waters do indeed run deep. No wonder he’s such a memorable character.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Alexander Howard stumbled on spymaster John Le Carré soon after relishing a James Bond film. And he was instantly hooked on George Smiley, Le Carré’s unglamorous bureaucrat-detective – an unlikely hero.Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2123482023-10-26T19:03:21Z2023-10-26T19:03:21ZFriday essay: the secret lives of Ian Fleming and John Le Carré – the spymasters shaped by a lack of parental love<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555978/original/file-20231026-29-w5gl2q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5982%2C3988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Le Carré in a scene from The Pigeon Tunnel</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Apple TV+</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2022, writer Suleika Dawson published an intimate, refreshingly candid <a href="https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/the-secret-heart-john-le-carre-an-intimate-memoir-suleika-dawson?variant=39815110131790">first-hand account</a> of her passionate extramarital affair with David Cornwell – who worked as an intelligence agent for MI5 and MI6 in the 1950s and early 1960s, and wrote spy novels using the pseudonym John le Carré.</p>
<p>Dawson and Cornwell first crossed paths in September 1982. Dawson, who had recently graduated with a degree in English Literature and Language from the University of Oxford, had a job abridging novels for an audiobook firm in London. </p>
<p>Cornwell, whom Dawson correctly describes as “the premier fabulist of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-a-cold-war-a-historian-explains-how-rivals-us-and-soviet-union-competed-off-the-battlefield-192238">Cold War</a>”, was booked in at her firm’s recording studio to read the abridged version of his ninth novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/smileys-people-9780241330913">Smiley’s People</a>, published in 1979. (An award-winning <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083480/">television adaptation</a> starring Alec Guinness appeared in 1982.) </p>
<p>Cornwell had been an internationally bestselling author since his third novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold-9780241330920">The Spy Who Came in from the Cold</a>, was published in 1963. He had stopped working as an intelligence officer to become a full-time writer a year later, after his diplomatic cover in West Germany (where he was stationed when the <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-100812">Berlin Wall</a> was erected) <a href="https://spyscape.com/article/john-le-carre-thinker-writer-cold-war-spy">was blown</a> by MI6 double agent Kim Philby – or so he always claimed. </p>
<p>A fictional version of Philby would be hunted by George Smiley, Le Carré’s most iconic fictional spy, in his 1974 novel <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-9780241658987">Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy</a>.</p>
<p>There was, Dawson remembers, “an extraordinary bond between us, which we both felt from that first lunch – which David, whose life had been a constant search for love, perhaps felt even more forcefully than I did”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555989/original/file-20231026-19-nhyptv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alec Guinness as George Smiley in the 1982 adaptation of Smiley’s People.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Messy private life’ off-limits</h2>
<p>Cornwell’s “constant search for love” is highly relevant to Adam Sisman’s <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Adam-Sisman-Secret-Life-of-John-le-Carre-9781800818231">The Secret Life of John le Carré</a> (2023), a biographical addendum of sorts to his 2015 book, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/217665/john-le-carre-the-biography-by-adam-sisman/9780307361516">John le Carré: The Biography</a>. </p>
<p>Although Cornwell was initially enthusiastic about Sisman’s biography and agreed to work with him on it, he was wary when it came to inquiries about his “own messy private life”. It was – as Sisman soon came to discover – strictly off-limits. </p>
<p>This is something the famed documentarian Errol Morris would come up against in <a href="https://tv.apple.com/au/movie/the-pigeon-tunnel/umc.cmc.633pbtki99m7e8lc9ybbyab3">The Pigeon Tunnel</a> (2023). His recent documentary adaptation of Le Carré’s 2016 memoir, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/294602/the-pigeon-tunnel-by-carre-john-le/9780241396377">The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life</a>, concentrates on Cornwell’s relationship with his conman father, and on his career in British intelligence and as a novelist, but is notably thin on details when it comes to certain aspects of his private life. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9gWnuhjwNrw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Errol Morris’s documentary The Pigeon Tunnel concentrates on Cornwell/Le Carré’s relationship with his conman father and on his career.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At one particularly telling juncture late in the film, Morris asks Cornwell about the theme of “betrayal” that runs through his life and career. Cornwell’s response is worth quoting:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well, I feel you got the last drop out of the sponge on that subject. But I’ll answer any question you wish me to answer as truthfully as I can. […] I’m not going to talk about my sex life - anymore, I trust, than you would. It seems to be an intensely private matter. My love life has been a very difficult passage, as you would imagine, but it has resolved itself wonderfully. And that’s enough on that subject.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is a fleeting, yet significant moment in the film – reminiscent of the situation in which Sisman found himself while working on his 2015 biography. Relations between biographer and subject became increasingly strained, with Cornwell threatening to scupper the venture altogether.</p>
<p>Sisman turned to Cornwell’s eldest son, Simon, who recommended the biographer should keep a “secret annexe” of material that could be published in some form after David and his wife Jane had passed away.</p>
<p>“Now that [Cornwell] has died,” Sisman writes in his preface to The Secret Life of John Le Carré, “it is important to add this coda to the biography that he encouraged, semi-authorised, and then tried to sabotage.” </p>
<p>He writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is not a substitute for or a condensation of my 2015 biography, but a supplement containing material that I felt obliged to omit then, as well as information that has emerged since.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The new book affords him the opportunity to paint as complete as possible a biographical portrait of Cornwell, who was born in 1931 and died in 2020, while hoping to dispel “some of the myths about David’s past” – certain of which came from Cornwell himself. </p>
<p>Sisman demonstrates, for example, that it is highly unlikely Philby blew Cornwell’s cover when he <a href="https://theconversation.com/back-in-the-ussr-my-life-as-a-spy-in-the-archives-26303">defected to the Soviet Union</a> in 1963.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/john-le-carre-authentic-spy-fiction-that-wrote-the-wrongs-of-post-war-british-intelligence-152055">John Le Carré: authentic spy fiction that wrote the wrongs of post-war British intelligence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Ian Fleming and his looming family influence</h2>
<p>Nicholas Shakespeare, who writes novels when not penning <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/355675/bruce-chatwin-by-shakespeare-nicholas/9780099289975">celebrated biographies</a>, says something similar in the prologue to <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/ian-fleming-9781787302426">Ian Fleming: The Complete Man</a>, his 800-page account of the author who created the most world’s famous fictional spy, James Bond.</p>
<p>Shakespeare thinks there “ample and legitimate reasons to go right back to the beginning; to turn the soil of [Fleming’s] personal history and revisit his legacy from a contemporary perspective”.</p>
<p>Drawing on published and unpublished materials, Shakespeare aims to correct a few assumptions about Fleming’s life – especially when it comes to his career with the Naval Intelligence Division during the second world war.</p>
<p>A child of extraordinary wealth and privilege, Fleming was born in 1908 and died in 1964. Of Scottish descent, he grew up in England and was educated at Eton - where Cornwell once taught - and Sandhurst Royal Military College.</p>
<p>His merchant banker father, Valentine Fleming, was, in Shakespeare’s account, “a paragon of whom no one spoke ill”.</p>
<p>Ian Fleming barely knew his father, a well-loved war hero who was killed in action during the first world war, and whose obituary was written by none other than Winston Churchill (which Ian framed and kept above his bed as a child).</p>
<p>“Like Churchill’s framed obituary,” Shakespeare contends, “the phantom of his dead father loomed over Ian for the remainder of his life.”</p>
<p>Shakespeare reasons the untimely death of Valentine Fleming played a decisive role in the genesis of James Bond. Specifically, he speculates that one of the reasons why Ian – who never saw front-line combat – created 007 was an unconscious desire to “join his father at the front”.</p>
<p>Ian Fleming’s relationship with his older brother, Peter, is similarly noteworthy. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fleming_(writer)">Peter Fleming</a> was an adventurer, journalist and author. Shakespeare asserts that Ian spent his whole life trying to keep up with his much-admired brother.</p>
<p>In 1951, Peter published a bestselling spy novel, The Sixth Column, which he dedicated to his brother. It appeared mere months before the first James Bond novel, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3758.Casino_Royale">Casino Royale</a>.</p>
<p>Ian had long harboured literary ambitions. Upon reading The Sixth Column, Shakespeare says, “Ian knew he could do better.”</p>
<p>Shakespeare quotes Ian Fleming’s American editor – Al Hart – in support. Ian, who worked as a stockbroker and a journalist (with Reuters and The Sunday Times) before finding belated fame as a novelist, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>wrote because he got tired of being Peter Fleming’s younger brother. He was determined that Peter Fleming should be known as Ian Fleming’s elder brother. And by God, he is.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Shakespeare, where Ian’s relationship with his brother can be characterised as competitive, his relationship with his mother – Eve – should be understood in terms of control and domination. </p>
<p>Eve Sainte Croix Fleming comes in for sustained criticism in the new biography. Shakespeare, who has very little positive to say here, describes her as “imperious, melodramatic, entitled, and a narcissist who dealt acidly with dissent”. </p>
<p>In Shakespeare’s retelling, Eve’s parenting left a lot to be desired, and had a detrimental effect on Ian’s development. </p>
<p>He suggests Fleming’s fraught bond with his mother came to shape the character and problematic behavioural patterns of James Bond – especially in relation to women. (Like 007, Fleming was an incorrigible womaniser.)</p>
<h2>Infidelities ‘a necessary drug’ for Le Carré</h2>
<p>Familial relationships played an equally significant role in Cornwell’s development. He was always upfront about this. </p>
<p>He spoke and wrote extensively about the effect his father Ronnie – a notorious conman and convicted felon – had on his childhood, and how this vexed relationship shaped his behaviour in adult life. </p>
<p>Ronnie’s presence is most clearly felt in Le Carré’s transparently semi-autobiographical 1986 novel <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/a-perfect-spy-9780241322482">A Perfect Spy</a>, whose protagonist, a British intelligence officer and double agent, has a charismatic conman father. Philip Roth thought it the “best English novel since the war”.</p>
<p>Cornwell’s relationship with Ronnie is explored at length in The Pigeon Tunnel: both the memoir and Morris’s documentary adaptation.</p>
<p>“People loved Ronnie to the end of his days, even people he robbed,” Cornwell told Morris. “When he was on stage, beguiling people, he absolutely believed in what he was saying. These spasms of immense charm and persuasiveness were his moments of feeling real.”</p>
<p>His father wanted him to have a “posh education” and sent him to schools where he learned “the manners and attitudes of a class to which I did not belong”. (Set in a fictional private school, Le Carré’s 1962 novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/180369/a-murder-of-quality-by-carre-john-le/9780241330883">A Murder of Quality</a>, gives us a sense of Cornwell’s feelings about the British ruling class.) This sense of not belonging, of performing a role, also contributed to him being “a little spy” from “a very early age”.</p>
<p>Cornwell’s relationship with his mother, Olive, was just as complex. Unable to cope with Ronnie’s compulsive swindling and dangerous lifestyle, David’s mother walked out on the family when he was five years old. He met her again when he was 21. “She was impenetrable emotionally,” he told Errol Morris. “I never heard her express a serious feeling.”</p>
<p>Sisman mentions Olive at the start of The Secret Life, when discussing Cornwell’s many extramarital affairs:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why did David pursue these women with such intensity and what does it say about him? When compelled to confront this issue, he told me that the restless, self-destructive search for love was part of his nature. In his mind this went back to his childhood, to his unrequited love for his mother, who abandoned her children at an early age.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the film version of The Pigeon Tunnel, Cornwell reflects on the night his mother disappeared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Did she come into the room where we slept and take a last look at us? […] I imagine that she did.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sisman sets out to answer his own questions. He maintains that Cornwell’s infidelities are key to a proper – or complete – appreciation of his writing. Not only do they help us understand what Cornwell wrote, but they help to explain, in Sisman’s words, “how, why and when he wrote”. </p>
<p>Sisman quotes from his private correspondence with Cornwell when making this claim: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My infidelities produced in my life a duality & that became almost a necessary drug for my writing, a dangerous edge of some kind […] They are not therefore a “dark part” of my life, separate from the “high literary calling”, so to speak, but, alas, integral to it, & inseparable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dawson would agree with this assessment - appreciating as she does “how entirely fractal David’s life was, how each part was a smaller replica of the whole. The perfect multifaceted reflection of the perfect spy.” </p>
<p>“It’s terribly difficult to recruit for the secret service,” says Cornwell in the film, The Pigeon Tunnel. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You’re looking for somebody who’s a bit bad. But at the same time loyal. There’s a type they were looking for in my day. And I fitted perfectly.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/john-le-carre-mi6-and-the-fact-and-fiction-of-british-secret-intelligence-124522">John le Carré, MI6 and the fact and fiction of British secret intelligence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The ‘truth’ about Ian Fleming’s war work</h2>
<p>Nicholas Shakespeare touches on the topic of infidelity at various points in his book on Fleming. He also grants that Fleming’s notoriety as “a prickly, self-centred bounder” with a penchant for sexual sadism is well deserved, and tough to shake.</p>
<p>Shakespeare openly acknowledges he had initial reservations about Fleming’s character and his “undeniable shortcomings”. Selfish, cruel, snobbish – these are a few of terms that tend to get thrown around when talking about Fleming. Some of the others, like the four-letter word <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lucian-freud-1120">Lucien Freud</a> used to describe Fleming, cannot be printed here.</p>
<p>Despite this, Shakespeare thinks Fleming “an unfailingly intriguing character” who is ripe for reappraisal. Working with unpublished letters and diaries, previously uninterviewed witnesses, and a series of declassified files, Shakespeare sets out to cast “Fleming and his life in a new light that leads to new conclusions about the man”.</p>
<p>Shakespeare comes to new conclusions about Fleming’s conduct during the second world war. Fleming’s war record has long been a bone of contention. In part, this is due to the fact he worked in a department that dealt with confidential matters of national security, counterintelligence and espionage.</p>
<p>Some people, as Shakespeare acknowledges, believe Fleming was nothing more than a glorified office worker, “too wedded to his comforts and smart uniform to risk going into action himself”.</p>
<p>These critics tend to “wonder with something of a sneer whether he could have done anything really useful in the war”. Cornwell, for example, had precious little time for Fleming, whom he considered a self-aggrandising fantasist. </p>
<p>Cornwell was also deeply suspicious of James Bond – <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-bond-idUKTRE67G24U20100817">he considered Fleming’s famous creation</a> “neo-fascistic and totally materialist” and less a spy than “some kind of international gangster with, as it is said, a licence to kill”.</p>
<p>Shakespeare believes otherwise: since Fleming “was never allowed to write the truth about his war work, facts about his life are hard to see clearly through the aura cast by the success of James Bond”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556000/original/file-20231026-17-6z74r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Accordingly, Shakespeare – who is unwavering in his conviction that “a clear and reliable picture of [Fleming’s] duties and the depth and range of his knowledge and responsibilities does exist” – strives in his biography to set the historical record straight. </p>
<p>Shakespeare finds Fleming “made a noteworthy contribution to the second world war - and not only in organising covert operations in Nazi-occupied North Europe and North Africa that helped to shorten the conflict”. Fleming also worked to bring the United States into the conflict, and worked to set up and coordinate the wartime intelligence organisation that eventually turned into the CIA. </p>
<p>Shakespeare brings his discussion of Fleming’s war record to a close with the assertion: “Ian never lived at such an intense level again. He would spend the rest of his life in peacetime, trying to recapture moments of time like these.” The way he did this was, as Shakespeare puts it, “by writing the books which have become the reason we are still reading about him today”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-wilderness-of-mirrors-70-years-since-the-first-james-bond-book-spy-stories-are-still-blurring-fact-and-fiction-201373">'The wilderness of mirrors': 70 years since the first James Bond book, spy stories are still blurring fact and fiction</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Bond: ‘a post-war British fantasy’</h2>
<p>Contrary to received wisdom, the 12 action-packed spy novels Fleming wrote after the war were, in Shakespeare’s reckoning, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>grounded in reality and a truth that Ian could not reveal but had intensely experienced. He wrote what he knew. By converting his lived experience into fiction, and updating it, he released the burden of that knowledge.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555998/original/file-20231026-23-byxwrv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Bond books also served specific ideological purposes. Historical context is important here. As Shakespeare puts it, Fleming’s fictions were intended “as a post-war British fantasy, as a balm for a demoralised imperial power on its uppers”. </p>
<p>The writer and columnist Ben Macintyre makes a similar point in his <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/for-your-eyes-only-9781408830642/">official history</a> of 007. “To the readers of the 1950s,” Macintyre writes, “Bond was a promise of glamour and plenty amid postwar austerity, the thrill of sexual licence in a buttoned-up society.”</p>
<p>We see evidence of this in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3758.Casino_Royale">Casino Royale</a> (1953), the first Bond book. Here’s a description of Bond’s breakfast (his favourite meal of the day):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bond liked to make a good breakfast. After a cold shower, he sat at the writing-table in front of the window. He looked out at the beautiful day and consumed half a pint of iced orange juice, three scrambled eggs and bacon and a double portion of coffee without sugar. He lit his first cigarette, a Balkan and Turkish mixture made for him by Morlands of Grosvenor Street, and watched the small waves lick the long seashore and the fishing fleet from Dieppe string out towards the June heat-haze followed by a paper-chase of herring-gulls.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fleming’s novels, which tend to be set in suitably sun-drenched locations, are full of descriptions like this. Self-consciously excessive and extravagant (the line about Bond’s custom-made cigarettes is a particularly nice touch here), they gesture in the direction of a lifestyle that would have been out of reach to all bar the extremely wealthy.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-james-bond-a-misogynist-he-doesnt-have-to-be-connery-moore-or-even-craigs-vision-forever-169619">Is James Bond a misogynist? He doesn't have to be Connery, Moore or even Craig's vision forever</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Smiley: deliberately ‘breathtakingly ordinary’</h2>
<p>I want now to take that description and contrast it with two passages from Le Carré. The first comes from <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold-9780241330920">The Spy Who Came In From The Cold</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>His flat was small and squalid, done in brown paint with photographs of Clovelly. It looked directly on to the grey backs of three stone warehouses, the windows of which were drawn, for aesthetic reasons, in creosote.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Where Fleming is expansive and sun-dappled, Le Carré is claustrophobic and drab.</p>
<p>The second passage is taken from Le Carré’s first novel, 1961’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/182715/call-for-the-dead-by-carre-john-le/9780241639214">Call for the Dead</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555999/original/file-20231026-32729-if7v76.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is the first physical description of Le Carré’s famous spymaster, the aforementioned George Smiley. The polar opposite of Bond in almost every conceivable way, Smiley is – as Le Carré insists on the very first page of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/call-for-the-dead-9780241639214">Call for the Dead</a> – “breathtakingly ordinary.” There is certainly nothing glamorous about him - and that is Le Carré’s point.</p>
<p>Similarly, while Bond’s MI6 is constantly saving the world from the outlandish machinations of egotistic supervillains, Smiley’s British intelligence service is vulnerable to leaks – and the threats it battles are deeply embedded in political systems and real-world conflicts. It is also – and this is something Le Carré says time and time again in his <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/180842-george-smiley">Smiley novels</a> – an outdated relic of Britain’s imperial era.</p>
<h2>‘Childhood is the credit balance of the writer’</h2>
<p>Shakespeare acknowledges that readers </p>
<blockquote>
<p>tend to think of John Le Carré before George Smiley. With Fleming, it is the reverse, as if Bond’s unstoppable waves of popularity have lapped back over the author, submerging him.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556001/original/file-20231026-23-wzz8c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
<p>By examining the lives of Fleming and Cornwell, and touching on some of the stark differences between their iconic literary creations, Shakespeare and Sisman provide us with a compelling framework to reevaluate the profound impact of these two authors – on the realm of spy fiction, literary history and their enduring influence on Western popular culture. </p>
<p>As we have seen, both works also speak to the role childhood experience and trauma can have on the development of character.</p>
<p>Talking to Errol Morris, Cornwell quotes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene">Graham Greene</a>: “Childhood is the credit balance of the writer.” He says, “It’s not a lament, it’s just a self-examination.” Later, he describes his writing process as a journey of self-discovery, “every time”. He reflects:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have never submitted to analysis. I feel if I knew any secrets about myself I’d deprive myself of writing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Reading these excellent new biographies, it strikes me that Cornwell’s personal and professional secrets are safe with Sisman, as are Fleming’s with Shakespeare.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212348/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>John le Carré and Ian Fleming, the world’s most famous spy novelists, share experience in UK intelligence and difficult childhoods. But their heroes, George Smiley and James Bond, are very different.Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2013732023-04-12T20:04:38Z2023-04-12T20:04:38Z‘The wilderness of mirrors’: 70 years since the first James Bond book, spy stories are still blurring fact and fiction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520394/original/file-20230412-22-c6w2to.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=119%2C0%2C3778%2C1994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Daniel Craig as James Bond in the 2006 film adaptation of Casino Royale.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With these opening words, Ian Fleming (1908-64) introduced us to the gritty, glamorous world of James Bond. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519489/original/file-20230405-462-14518m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519489/original/file-20230405-462-14518m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519489/original/file-20230405-462-14518m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519489/original/file-20230405-462-14518m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519489/original/file-20230405-462-14518m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519489/original/file-20230405-462-14518m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519489/original/file-20230405-462-14518m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519489/original/file-20230405-462-14518m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover of the first edition of Casino Royale.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fleming’s first novel, <a href="https://www.ianfleming.com/items/casino-royale/">Casino Royale</a>, was published 70 years ago on April 13 1953. It sold out within weeks. British readers, still living with rationing and shortages after the war, eagerly devoured the first James Bond story. It had expensive liquor and cars, exotic destinations, and high-stakes gambling – luxurious things beyond the reach of most people.</p>
<p>The novel’s principal villain is Le Chiffre, the paymaster of a French trade union controlled by the Soviet intelligence agency SMERSH. After losing Soviet money, Le Chiffre takes to high-stakes gambling tables to recover it. Bond’s mission is to play against Le Chiffre and win, bankrupting both the Frenchman and the union. </p>
<p>The director of British intelligence, known only by his codename “M”, also assigns Bond a companion – Vesper Lynd, previously one of the agency’s assistants. The two infiltrate the casino, play at the tables, and dodge assassination attempts, while engaging in a dramatic battle with French communists, the Soviets, and each other.</p>
<p>Fleming’s Bond – the sophisticated, tuxedo-clad secret agent – is an enduring image of espionage. Since 1953, martinis, gadgets, and a licence to kill have been part of how ordinary people understand spycraft. </p>
<p>Some of this was real: Fleming drew on his own work as a spy for his novels. Intelligence work is often less glamorous than he depicted, but in both espionage and novel-writing, the difference between fact and fiction is not always easy to distinguish. </p>
<h2>Ian Fleming, Agent 17F</h2>
<p>Fleming came from a wealthy, well-connected British family, but he was a mediocre student. He only lasted a year at military college (where he contracted gonorrhoea), then missed out on a job with the Foreign Office. He could write, though. He spent a few years as a journalist, but drifted purposelessly through much of the 1930s. </p>
<p>The outbreak of war in 1939 changed everything. The director of British Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Henry Godfrey, recruited Fleming as his assistant. Fleming excelled, under the codename 17F. He didn’t see much of the war firsthand, but was involved in its planning. He was an ideas man, not overly concerned with practicalities or logistics. Fleming came up with the fictions; other people had to turn them into realities. </p>
<p>In 1940, for example, he developed “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/entertainment-britain-fleming-bond-finea-idCAL1663266620080416">Operation Ruthless</a>”. To crack the German naval codes, Fleming planned to lure a German rescue boat into a trap and steal its coding machine. They would obtain a German bomber, dress British men in German uniforms, and deliberately crash the plane into the channel. When the German rescue crew arrived, they would shoot them and grab the machine. </p>
<p>Preparations began but Fleming’s plan never eventuated. It was too difficult and risky – not least because crashing the plane might simply kill their whole crew.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520379/original/file-20230411-20-eg5sey.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520379/original/file-20230411-20-eg5sey.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520379/original/file-20230411-20-eg5sey.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520379/original/file-20230411-20-eg5sey.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520379/original/file-20230411-20-eg5sey.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520379/original/file-20230411-20-eg5sey.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520379/original/file-20230411-20-eg5sey.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520379/original/file-20230411-20-eg5sey.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Promotional poster for the 1967 film adaptation of Casino Royale.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fleming worked on various operations. When he began writing after the war, these experiences found their way into Bond’s world. Fleming and Godfrey had visited Portugal, a neutral territory teeming with spies, where they went to the casino. Fleming claimed he played against a German agent at the tables, an experience that supposedly inspired Bond’s gambling battles with Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. </p>
<p>Godfrey maintained that Fleming only ever played against Portuguese businessmen, but Fleming never let facts get in the way of a good story.</p>
<p>Fleming picked up inspiration everywhere. Godfrey became the model for M. Fleming’s secretary, Joan Howe, inspired Moneypenny. The Soviet SMERSH coding device in <a href="https://jamesbond.fandom.com/wiki/From_Russia_with_Love_(novel)">From Russia, With Love</a> (1957) was based on the German Enigma machine. Many of Fleming’s characters were named for real people: one villain shares a name with Hitler’s Chief of Staff, another with one of Fleming’s schoolyard adversaries.</p>
<p>It became something of a sport to hypothesise about the inspiration for Bond. Fleming later called him a “compound of all the secret agents and commando types” he met during war. There were elements of Fleming’s older brother, an operative behind the lines in Norway and Greece. Fleming also pointed to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Reilly">Sidney Reilly</a>, a Russian-born British agent during the First World War. He had access to reports on Reilly in the Naval Intelligence archive during his own service. </p>
<p>Other possible models include <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_O%27Brien-ffrench">Conrad O’Brien-ffrench</a>, a British spy Fleming met while skiing in the 1930s, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Dunderdale">Wilfred “Biffy” Dunderdale</a>, MI6 Station Chief in Paris, who wore handmade suits and was chauffeured in a Rolls Royce. Stories of discovering <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/mr-bond-i-presume-20141017-117xji.html">the real-life James Bond</a> still appear.</p>
<p>But there was also much of Fleming himself in Bond. He gave 007 his own love of scrambled eggs and gambling. Their attitude towards women was similar. They used the same brand of toiletries. Bond even has Fleming’s golf handicap. </p>
<p>Fleming would play with this idea, teasing that the books were autobiographical or that he was Bond’s biographer. Much like a cover story for an intelligence officer, Bond was Fleming’s alter-ego. He was anchored in Fleming’s realities – with a strong dash of creative licence and a little aspiration.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519725/original/file-20230406-360-5enh6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519725/original/file-20230406-360-5enh6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519725/original/file-20230406-360-5enh6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519725/original/file-20230406-360-5enh6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519725/original/file-20230406-360-5enh6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519725/original/file-20230406-360-5enh6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519725/original/file-20230406-360-5enh6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519725/original/file-20230406-360-5enh6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ian Fleming on the set of the film From Russia, With Love. Istanbul, Turkey, June 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ahmet Baran/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The changing world of Bond</h2>
<p>The success of Casino Royale secured contracts for more Bond novels. In the early 1960s, critics began to denounce the books for their “sex, snobbery, and sadism”. Bond’s attitude toward women, in particular, was clear from the beginning. In Casino Royale, he refers to the “sweet tang of rape” in relation to sex with his MI6 accomplice and paramour Vesper Lynd. </p>
<p>But the public appeared to be less concerned. Bond novels still sold well, especially after John F. Kennedy listed one among his top ten books. The first film adaptation, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055928/">Dr. No</a>, appeared in 1962 and Fleming’s success continued apace.</p>
<p>Bond’s world was evolving, though. From Casino Royale to For Your Eyes Only (1960), Bond battled SMERSH, a real Soviet counter-espionage organisation. The early Bond novels were Cold War stories. Soviet Russia was the West’s enemy, so it was Bond’s. </p>
<p>But East-West relations were thawing in 1959 when Fleming was writing Thunderball (1961). The Cold War could plausibly have ended and he didn’t want any film version to look dated, so Fleming created a fictional villain: SPECTRE. This was an international terrorist organisation without a distinct ideology. It could endure beyond the battles of the Cold War – and did. It features in the 2021 Bond film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2382320/">No Time To Die</a>.</p>
<p>Fleming’s more fantastic plots were always anchored in reality by recognisable brands and products. Bond’s watch was a Rolex; his choice of bourbon was Jack Daniels. His cigarettes were Morlands, like Fleming’s. In the novels, Bond drove Bentleys – the Aston Martin was introduced in the 1964 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058150/">Goldfinger</a>. </p>
<p>The films have changed Bond’s brands to keep up with the world around them (and secure lucrative product-placement deals): Omega replaced Rolex in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113189/">Goldeneye</a> (1995); the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/apr/17/bond-taste-for-beer-skyfall">martini was swapped for a Heineken</a> in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/">Skyfall</a> (2012). Bond now carries a Sony phone.</p>
<p>Other changes brought the 1950s spy into the 21st century. Recent films have more diverse casting. Their female characters do more than just spend a night with Bond before their untimely deaths. The novels, too, continue to change – the 70th-anniversary editions have had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/27/james-bond-novels-to-be-reissued-with-racial-references-removed">racial slurs and some characters’ ethnic descriptors removed</a>. </p>
<p>Some have criticised this as censorship. But as with <a href="https://theconversation.com/roald-dahl-a-brief-history-of-sensitivity-edits-to-childrens-literature-200500">recent rewritings of Roald Dahl’s books</a>, changes like this are not new. Fleming’s family has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-28/ian-fleming-james-bond-books-changes-to-new-editions/102035958">defended the alterations by citing similar removals</a> in 1955, when Live and Let Die was first published in the United States. </p>
<p>There is a risk that this whitewashes Fleming’s attitudes, making them appear more palatable than they really were. But the revised Bond novels will include a disclaimer noting the removals. Casino Royale itself has not been altered (Bond’s rape comment remains intact), so the changes will perhaps be less extensive than the media coverage suggests.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-james-bond-a-misogynist-he-doesnt-have-to-be-connery-moore-or-even-craigs-vision-forever-169619">Is James Bond a misogynist? He doesn't have to be Connery, Moore or even Craig's vision forever</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Spies After Bond</h2>
<p>Fleming is not the only ex-spy to have successfully turned his hand to spy fiction. John le Carré’s George Smiley is perhaps an anti-Bond: slightly overweight, banal, and essentially a bureaucrat. He relies on a shrewd mind rather than gadgets or guns. </p>
<p>Le Carré introduced his readers to a more mundane, morally grey world of espionage. He had worked for MI5 and MI6 in the 1950 and ‘60s. He thought Bond was a gangster rather than a spy. Le Carré’s stories have also shaped how we think about espionage. Words like “mole” and “honeytrap” – the terminology of spycraft – <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/02/john-le-carre-spy-came-in-from-cold-book/673227/">entered common usage via his novels</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519487/original/file-20230405-18-j5clyg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519487/original/file-20230405-18-j5clyg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519487/original/file-20230405-18-j5clyg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519487/original/file-20230405-18-j5clyg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519487/original/file-20230405-18-j5clyg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519487/original/file-20230405-18-j5clyg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519487/original/file-20230405-18-j5clyg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519487/original/file-20230405-18-j5clyg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gary Oldman as George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2012).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stella Rimington, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/apr/23/stella-rimington-i-fell-into-intelligence-by-chance">the first female director-general of MI5</a>, began writing fiction after retiring from intelligence in the late 1990s. Her protagonist, 34-year-old Liz Carlyle, hunts terror cells in Britain. Like Smiley, Carlyle appears rather ordinary. She is serious and conscientious. We get glimpses of the everyday sexism she experiences. Carlyle triumphs by remaining level-headed, not by fiery gun battles or explosions.</p>
<p>After three decades of agent-running for the CIA, Jason Mathews wrote his <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/series/The-Red-Sparrow-Trilogy">Red Sparrow</a> trilogy to occupy himself in retirement. He called it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/books/shadowing-jason-matthews-the-ex-spy-whose-cover-identity-is-author.html">a form of therapy</a>. </p>
<p>There’s a little more Bond in Mathews’ books than in those of le Carré or Rimington. His protagonists Nate Nash and Dominika Egorova are attractive, charismatic and entangled in a personal relationship of stolen moments and high drama. This is counterbalanced by the many hours they spend running surveillance-detection routes before meeting targets. The more tedious and banal aspects of spycraft – brush passes, broken transmitters, and dead drops – accompany the glamour and romance.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/john-le-carre-mi6-and-the-fact-and-fiction-of-british-secret-intelligence-124522">John le Carré, MI6 and the fact and fiction of British secret intelligence</a>
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<h2>The wilderness of mirrors</h2>
<p>Spy fiction is never just about entertainment. The real world of espionage is so secret that most of us only ever encounter it on pages or screens. We don’t usually look to Bond films for accurate representations of espionage. But the influence of Fleming’s spy and the general aura of secrecy surrounding intelligence work lend some glamour and excitement to the work of real spies.</p>
<p>These fictions also influence our views on real intelligence organisations, their activities, and their legitimacy. This is why the <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-cia-goes-to-hollywood-how-americas-spy-agency-infiltrated-the-big-screen-and-our-minds/">CIA invests time and money into fictionalisations</a> dealing with its work. From stories based on true events, such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1024648/">Argo</a> (2012) or <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790885/">Zero Dark Thirty</a> (2012), to fictional series like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1796960/">Homeland</a> (2011-20), the agency’s image is shaped via the media we consume.</p>
<p>This was true when Fleming was writing, too. Soviet authorities <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Russia-and-the-Cult-of-State-Security-The-Chekist-Tradition-From-Lenin/Fedor/p/book/9780415703475">were preoccupied</a> by Sherlock Holmes’ surging popularity behind the Iron Curtain and fretted over the release of the Bond novels and films. The KGB studied both carefully. It was likely Bond who prompted KGB officers to release classified details about their most successful spy story: the career of <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-name-s-sorge-richard-sorge/">Richard Sorge</a>. </p>
<p>Former intelligence officers such as Fleming are often quite good at fiction – perhaps because it is a core part of spycraft. A solid cover story has to be grounded in reality, with just enough fiction to protect the truth or gain a desired outcome. A good operation often requires creativity, to outwit a target or evade detection. And spreading fictions – disinformation – can sometimes be just as useful as gathering information.</p>
<p>The world of espionage is sometimes referred to as the “wilderness of mirrors”. Spycraft relies on both reflections and distortions. The line between fact and fiction, between real stories of intelligence work and invented ones, can become blurry – and intelligence agencies often prefer it that way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ebony Nilsson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We don’t look to James Bond for accurate depictions of spycraft, but at least some of his adventures are grounded in reality.Ebony Nilsson, Research Fellow, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1204192019-07-17T05:26:48Z2019-07-17T05:26:48ZA black, female 007? As a lifelong James Bond fan, I say bring it on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284431/original/file-20190717-173376-wusqx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Actress Lashana Lynch, pictured here in Captain Marvel, is rumoured to be playing 007 in the next Bond film. The films, which have consistently relied on misogynistic tropes, are in need of an update.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marvel Studios/IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Something incredible might be happening to James Bond: a separation, a personal Brexit of sorts. According to the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7244671/Thought-007-never-woman-black-shes-James-Bond-hand-number-over.html">Daily Mail</a>, while Daniel Craig will return as Bond in the next film, Bond may not return as 007. There will, reportedly, be a new 007 in town, and she’ll be black. And a woman. </p>
<p>At this stage, the rumour that 007 will be played by British actress Lashana Lynch is unconfirmed, sourced from tabloid “insiders”. But if this claim is true (and it does have more than a hint of authenticity to it) what does it mean? A dangerous fragmentation of the franchise? Or a necessary evolution? </p>
<p>As a lifelong Bond aficionado, I hope the news is true for the simple reason that it’s about bloody time. I love Bond, but he has only ever moved with the times on the most surface of levels – like a cool uncle who continues to buy the latest tech, but no longer quite understands how to use it. For the entirety of its life, the franchise has been the epitome of conservatism. </p>
<p>The first Bond film I saw was <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076752/">The Spy Who Loved Me</a>. The action, adventure, humour, gadgets and “coolness” of the alpha-male in action was intoxicating, and I burned voraciously through the movies, novels and short stories.</p>
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<p>It should be said that there are two distinct Bonds: one of the page and one of the screen. The book Bond, created by Ian Fleming in 1953, actually worked in an office. The novels were a fulfilment fantasy of the (male) office clerk, one who was still experiencing the effects of rationing from WWII and had no opportunity for international travel. </p>
<p>Bond had a (female) secretary and did mundane paperwork until he got the call from M, who would send him on impossibly glamorous and global secret missions. The books were unashamedly equal parts thriller and travelogue. Written in the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/genres/pulp">pulp tradition</a>, the symbolism of the stories was deliberately obvious; heroes had names like “Trueblood”, with the villains usually foreign and most often “half-breeds”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284436/original/file-20190717-173347-66ijb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284436/original/file-20190717-173347-66ijb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284436/original/file-20190717-173347-66ijb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284436/original/file-20190717-173347-66ijb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284436/original/file-20190717-173347-66ijb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284436/original/file-20190717-173347-66ijb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1224&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284436/original/file-20190717-173347-66ijb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1224&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284436/original/file-20190717-173347-66ijb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1224&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Even now, the racism of the books tends to be classified as what critic and cultural commentator <a href="http://my.fit.edu/%7Erosiene/eco%20bond.pdf">Umberto Eco</a> once indulgently called just “a cautious, middle-class chauvinism”, with Fleming guilty of nothing more than portraying attitudes prevalent and unexamined at the time. However you label the variety of racism, it dated the books badly, sealing them in a time capsule of the 1950s. </p>
<p>Bond himself was never given racist attitudes, instead the equally “of their time” sexist ones. Whereas the racism of the books did not translate directly to the screen, the misogyny carried over wholesale. </p>
<p>The movie Bond is an always-active spy: a dashing, tough, charismatic man’s man (yes, even Roger Moore) who knew how to both charm and manipulate women. And this, apart from some cosmetic updating, is still essentially the Bond we have today.</p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/times-up-mister-bond-why-new-ideas-of-identity-mean-the-next-007-should-be-black-bisexual-or-even-a-woman-93169">Time's up Mister Bond: why new ideas of identity mean the next 007 should be black, bisexual – or even a woman</a>
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<h2>Deceiving the zeitgeist</h2>
<p>The clearest example of Bond attempting to deceive the zeitgeist comes from <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113189/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">GoldenEye</a>. It was 1995, and Bond was back after a six-year gap, with Pierce Brosnan in the lead. Much was made of the film series keeping up with current attitudes: there was now not only a female “M” (played by Judi Dench), but she got to call Bond a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur,” to much publicity (and in the trailer too). </p>
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<p>But this was merely lip-service: Bond was proven to be misunderstood (it seemed “M” mistakenly thought him a playboy dilettante), and the film simply carried on with its normal value system, including having a character called Xenia Onatopp who killed men during sex with her thighs. This was not just a missed opportunity, it completely missed the point.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/james-bond-needs-a-new-attitude-not-a-new-actor-77572">James Bond needs a new attitude, not a new actor</a>
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<p>The old 20th century Bond films have become like the original books – dated cultural products that need context. However, the new Craig-era films are far more problematic. </p>
<p>Full disclosure: I hate this Bond. Notwithstanding that this iteration has been rewritten not just as proto-Bond (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381061/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Casino Royale</a>), but also dumb-Bond (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Skyfall</a>) and eventually just inept-Bond (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379713/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Spectre</a>), the series started as a reactionary scramble to copy the success of the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258463/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Bourne franchise</a>. This Bond might have had a vulnerable side, but he has been moulded not as a man-of-his-time, but a man-out-of-time. </p>
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<span class="caption">Daniel Craig as Bond went from ‘proto-Bond’ in Casino Royale to ‘inept-Bond’ in Spectre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379713/mediaviewer/rm2513170944">Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions/IMDB</a></span>
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<p>The problem is that he is still paraded as a figure to be idolised, a heroic role model for the new generation. This extends to one of the most questionable scenes of any Bond era: his sexually exploiting a sex slave who has come to him for help in Skyfall. Don’t get me wrong, sex scenes are completely welcome, a core genre convention, but the moment is barely consensual yet depicted simply as impressive sexual conquest. </p>
<p>No-one wants a Bond rewritten as an asexual pacifist, but neither should he be defined by misogyny. The brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge, only the second woman since 1962 to be brought in to work on a Bond script, believes rightly that it is important the films evolve and <a href="https://deadline.com/2019/05/phoebe-waller-bridge-bond-1202624860/">treat women better, even if Bond doesn’t</a>. I hold a slightly different view - if Bond always exists in the always-present “now”, and his attitudes are simply indicative of the time, then there is no need to cling to outdated worldviews.</p>
<p>This is why the prospect of a potential radical new era is so thrilling. If Lynch becomes 007, it will be a brilliant, yet still somewhat conservative move, as the makers are very late to the now market-tested “woke” table, but we may finally get a truly authentic contemporary Bond. One that still has plenty of gratuitous sex and violence, whether or not those engaging in it are black, female or 007.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120419/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darren Paul Fisher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rumour has it British actress Lashana Lynch will play 007 in the next Bond film. If true, the move will be a welcome change to a franchise that has long remained the epitome of conservatism.Darren Paul Fisher, Head of Directing, Department of Film, Screen and Creative Media, Bond UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1017412018-08-21T10:59:37Z2018-08-21T10:59:37ZIdris Elba: isn’t it time for a black James Bond?<p>A black Bond? It’s an apparently unproblematic and straightforward question, right? Well, not quite. When suggested quite quizzically by a colleague, it sparked a series of reactionary positions in the staff room, especially from the 007 traditionalists.</p>
<p>In fact, whispers that the very suave – and yet indisputably black – actor Idris Elba could potentially play Bond have ignited social commentaries about race, filmic representation and literary integrity around the world.</p>
<p>The issue was shaken and stirred (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) by a recent report in the <a href="https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/722149/james-bond-idris-elba-first-black-007-barbara-broccoli-luther-daniel-craig">Daily Star</a>, in which director Antoine Fuqua recalled a discussion with Bond producer Barbara Broccoli, who allegedly said “it is time” for a black actor to star as 007 and that she is confident “it will happen eventually”.</p>
<p>Interestingly, this little nugget sat at the top of a story about Fuqua launching his latest business venture – an app that allows people to listen to movies online with surround sound. But reporters know how to sell stories to their editors and so the headline, main picture and the first half dozen paragraphs were devoted to Elba’s Bond prospects. </p>
<p>Despite the fact that Fuqua’s management subsequently insisted that the conversation was “made-up stuff”, the question of Elba as the new Bond dominated the comments below the story, which included one reader asking: “What would be the outcry if Martin Luther King was played by a white bloke?” What indeed?</p>
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<p>Elba himself is keeping us guessing: “<a href="https://twitter.com/idriselba/status/1028552314183999488">My name’s Elba, Idris Elba</a>” he tweeted at 9am on August 12, followed three hours later with: “<a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/idris-elba-responds-bond-rumours-saying-believe-hype/">Don’t believe the hype</a>”. </p>
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<p>Elba’s no mug. He knows how to fan the flames of speculation. And I’m unashamedly going to fall into his trap. So is it time for a black James Bond? What the heck – why not?</p>
<h2>Tall, dark and handsome</h2>
<p>Is it beyond fictionalisation – or the limitations of our individual and cultural imagination – to comprehend a reality in which there’s a devilishly handsome and sophisticated black Englishman with an MI6-approved licence to kill. It gives new – or should I say restores (in my humble opinion) the original – meaning to “tall, dark and handsome”, right? Everything that Bond is supposed to be.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it be more surprising, and perhaps unsettling, if such an imagining, even in fiction, couldn’t withstand the assumed fragility of our liberal mindedness? Especially when we are supposed to live in a post-racial society where – ironically – inequalities, discrimination and oppression are nonexistent. If they <em>are</em> nonexistent in the material world, it seems they are alive and well in the figments of our imagination. </p>
<p>Cast your mind back to the media’s preoccupation with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s “<a href="https://news.sky.com/story/what-can-meghan-markle-do-for-black-britons-11372616">racially progressive</a>” interracial union, or France’s international posturing as a bastion of ethno-racial equality, with its “colourblind” government <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/how-french-law-makes-minorities-invisible-a7416656.html">prohibition</a> on referencing the race and ethnicity of its citizens. Is that enough to convince you that we live in a multicoloured land of bliss where all is possible?</p>
<p>Rallying against this romanticism are traditionalists – or Bond literalists – who, in all their intransigent preoccupation with conserving the historically white purity and scriptural heritage of the Bond franchise, are irked at a blackened prospect. They offer a plethora of counter arguments, not least that in 1953 Casino Royale, the first in Ian Fleming’s 12-book Bond series, the secret agent is described as a white Englishman of part Scottish and Swiss heritage who was educated at Fettes College.</p>
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<p>To which I submit: we aren’t in the 1950s. The films are no longer time-warped in black-and-white – they have changed and adapted to reflect the cultural zeitgeist of cinematic and contemporary public consciousness.</p>
<p>It’s interesting to note that these purists are not all white – disproportionally so, yes – but not all. Some <a href="https://twitter.com/TheDon_Dizz/status/1028624572357201921">non-white Bond enthusiasts</a> have also put in their own two cents’ worth, asking producers to “stick to the script” and insisting that being white is integral to Bond’s character. But can we racialise character?</p>
<p>Others, meanwhile, have called for their own black, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/james-bonds-ppk-gun-is-only-good-for-its-looks/2012/10/04/4892e07c-0e2b-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story.html?utm_term=.98651795ec1c">Walther PPK-wielding</a> agent, in the manner of 007, to not only tell their own new or complimentary stories but also avoid falling prey to potential accusations of tokenism in film.</p>
<h2>Colourblind casting</h2>
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<p>Meanwhile, JK Rowling <a href="https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/678888094339366914">decried critics</a> of the casting of black actress <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jun/05/harry-potter-jk--rowling-black-hermione">Noma Dumezweni</a> as the fictional Harry Potter character Hermione Granger, as “a bunch of racists” and that “white skin was never specified”, challenging normative assumptions that fictional characters are white, by default. </p>
<p>Supporters of Bond’s racial metamorphosis urge for better ethnic minority filmic representation in the spy genre and stress that fiction is not exempt from transformation even in the context of race. It’s a sentiment I share.</p>
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<span class="caption">Colourblind casting? Orson Welles as Othello.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">United Artists via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>I realise that my openmindedness unlatches a Pandora’s Box of “Whatabout-me-isms”. What about a polyamorous, gender-nonconforming, effeminate, anti-misogynist Gujarati Indian as Othello? Or, can I, as a Liverpudlian-accented, shaven-headed, transgendered lesbian, play Sherlock Holmes? Then again, what about a white Shaft? But wait wouldn’t that be “Whitesploitation”? Let’s not go there.</p>
<p>Would Elba make a fine Bond? Absolutely. Having seen 007 in all his white iterations, I’m all for a representational shift towards a salt-and-peppered Afro-textured, mahoganied urbanite. Too far fetched? Surely not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101741/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Edward Ademolu PhD, FHEA does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why can’t fiction’s most famous secret agent be played by Idris Elba? Just use your imagination.Dr Edward Ademolu PhD, FHEA, Dr of International Development; Global Development Institute, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/816422017-07-28T09:30:10Z2017-07-28T09:30:10ZJames Bond, North Korea and the shadow of intercontinental ballistic missiles<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179974/original/file-20170727-31972-13rwchl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Moonraker movie poster from 1979 created by Dan Gouzee.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.bondmovies.net/moonraker.html">United Artists/bondmovies.net</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fears over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/21/north-korean-travel-ban-marks-return-to-cold-war-era-restrictions-on-u-s-citizens-abroad/?utm_term=.b96e88f07c30">mounting tensions</a> with America are a chilling reminder of the Cold War and an era that many assumed was in the past. </p>
<p>Yet these disturbing echoes continue to resonate – perhaps because the themes are so embedded in popular culture and, in this case, popular fiction. Even that very British hero James Bond has something to say to diplomats dealing with the worsening situation with Pyongyang.</p>
<p>July 27 marked the anniversary of the signing of the armistice that <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10165796">ended the Korean war</a> in 1953 – although the war between North and South has never officially ceased. Sixty-four years on the after effects continue with North Korea now <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40502361">possessing an intercontinental ballistic missile</a> (ICBM). Desire for a missile that can deliver a nuclear warhead to far-away continents returns to the 1950s Cold War pursuit of a nuclear warhead that could travel faster than any bomber aircraft. America, Britain, China, France and the USSR all chased this goal, that combined space race and Nazi-era weapons technology.</p>
<p>The USSR won both, firing the <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/russia-tests-an-intercontinental-ballistic-missile">world’s first ICBM</a> in 1957 and getting the first human to space and back with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/from-the-archive-blog/2011/may/29/gagarin-first-space-travel-1961">Yuri Gagarin</a> in 1961. Joseph M Siracusa argues in <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003E1BGL4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">his book</a>, that the nuclear missile seemed to offer immunity from nuclear attack as “no nuclear power may use military force against another nuclear power”. Other countries seeking the security of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17026538">Mutually Assured Destruction</a> (MAD) have followed, with the nuclear “club” since growing in size to an official, possibly inaccurate, number of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/the-nine-countries-that-have-nuclear-weapons-a6798756.html">nine members</a>. </p>
<h2>Bond and the bomb</h2>
<p>That 1950s obsession with the long-range ballistic missile found its way into fiction. To be popular, spy fiction must reflect the fears of society and governments. During the Cold War, <a href="http://www.ianfleming.com/james-bond/">Ian Fleming’s James Bond</a> was there to examine those fears. Two years before the first ICBM was fired by the USSR, Fleming made Britain’s desire for such a weapon the centre of his 1955 Bond novel, <a href="http://www.ianfleming.com/products/moonraker/profile/">Moonraker</a>.</p>
<p>Fleming – who was once described by Sean Connery as a “<a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/03/snobbery-with-violence/">tremendous snob</a>” – was also capable of bringing racism into his novels. In <a href="http://www.ianfleming.com/products/goldfinger/profile/">Goldfinger</a>, published six years after the messy end of the Korean war, Fleming, perhaps still smarting from a conflict that Britain and American <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1285708.stm">came out of quite badly</a>, has the eponymous villain tell Bond: “Koreans are the cruellest, most ruthless people in the world”. So, of course, Goldfinger employs a Korean by the name of Oddjob as his chief henchman. </p>
<p>Fleming was born in London, went to Eton and tried to find work in the diplomatic service after learning French, German and Russian before finally landing a job at Reuters news agency. He worked there for three years and honed his trademark sparse writing style. At the onset of World War II, Fleming joined the navy and with his talent for languages went into <a href="http://www.ianfleming.com/timeline/war-declared/">Naval intelligence</a>. Fleming credited that time with helping inform his Bond books.</p>
<h2>Cold War echoes</h2>
<p>The Cold War haunts Fleming’s novels. In 1955 Britain was less than a decade out of World War II and was now in the throes of a long and troubling stalemate with the USSR. The legacy of war was everywhere. Rationing had only just ended in 1954 and the meals, drink, drugs and lifestyle described in the Bond books were unimaginable to the majority of the public. This was a time of dreary poverty, National Service, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/spies_cambridge.shtml">the Cambridge spies</a> and high-profile defections to the USSR, such as <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/10790144/Kim-Philby-had-no-regrets-about-betraying-Britain-to-the-Soviet-Union-recordings-reveal.html">Kim Philby</a>. The war in Korea had ended only two years before. In 1954 the French were defeated in their Indochinese colony (Vietnam) by Ho Chi Minh’s nationalist army, setting the scene for America’s entry into the Vietnam War which lasted until 1975.</p>
<p>Moonraker was Fleming’s third novel featuring secret agent, Commander James Bond. In this book Hugo Drax – on the surface a millionaire war hero – promised to make Britain great again by creating an ICBM before any other country has one. Drax plans to use the kind of Nazi rocket technology that had sent the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140905-the-nazis-space-age-rocket">V2 rocket</a> to bomb Britain during the war and would be the next big advance in nuclear warhead delivery. Drax publishes an open letter to the Queen promising that Britain will become a first-rate power with an ICBM and becomes a national hero as Britain will be ahead of the Americans and the Russians.</p>
<p>But Bond’s boss, M, who like Drax is a member of the <a href="http://www.007james.com/locations/blades.php">London club Blades</a>, does not trust Drax because he thinks he cheats at cards. Bond humbles the villain at a card game and quietly exposes him as a cheat. The pair meet again when Bond goes to Drax’s plant where the IBCM is being made. Our hero eventually discovers that Drax and his men are indeed Nazis, backed by the USSR, who plan to fire the ICBM at London. His evil plans are, of course, foiled by Bond.</p>
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<p>Not all fiction of the period ends with heroes saving the day. In Neville Shute’s atmospheric <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beach-Nevil-Shute/dp/1520805209/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=9JKCZJX1EVDR438JATN3">On the Beach</a>, nuclear conflict occurs by accident and survivors go to Australia where the last humans will exist until the nuclear cloud reaches them. <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nuclear-Weapons-Short-Introduction-Introductions-ebook/dp/B003E1BGL4/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">Siracusa asserts</a> that the Cold War demonstrated “two ironclad, unwritten rules: first, no nuclear power may use military force against another nuclear power and, second, a nuclear power using military force against a non-nuclear nation, may not use nuclear weapons”. As more nations continue in the quest for nuclear bombs, we can only hope those rules still apply because Bond won’t be there to save the day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81642/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Gardner works for Anglia Ruskin University. </span></em></p>The tensions between North Korea and the US over its long range ballistic missile programme echo a well-known James Bond plot.John Gardner, Professor of English Literature, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/775722017-05-12T12:03:54Z2017-05-12T12:03:54ZJames Bond needs a new attitude, not a new actor<p>As someone who has recently taken to reading Ian Fleming’s books, I am drawn into the debate surrounding <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/joanna-lumley-idris-elba-radio-times-interview-james-bond-007-daniel-craig-a7725651.html">Joanna Lumley’s</a> comments about actor Idris Elba not being the James Bond that Fleming created. </p>
<p>Film writer Caspar Salmon’s column in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2017/may/09/idris-elba-james-bond-joanna-lumley">the Guardian</a> made several valid points. The most persuasive being that we should abandon the “emotionless character that belongs to a grotesque tradition”. Bond is a “hero” who is heterosexist, <a href="https://theconversation.com/james-bond-is-still-a-sexist-dinosaur-but-audiences-love-it-50092">misogynistic</a>, and <a href="http://www.papermag.com/slightly-shaken-james-bonds-legacy-of-racism-1427637497.html">racist</a> – so inherent in <a href="https://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/flemingi-liveandletdie/flemingi-liveandletdie-00-h.html">1954’s Live and Let Die</a> that getting beyond the first chapter proved too much for this reader – more needs to be done than just another change of actor. </p>
<p>Yet the “who-will-be-the-next-Bond” discussions never stop. <a href="https://theconversation.com/casting-idris-elba-as-the-first-black-james-bond-wouldnt-make-the-films-less-troubling-35879">According to the press</a>, Elba is equally <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/22/idris-elba-on-james-bond-odds-rumours-good-morning-america">not interested</a>, a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/07/next-james-bond-tom-hardy-tom-hiddleston-idris-elba">contender</a>, and a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4390998/Oscar-winner-lets-slip-Idris-Elba-set-007-role.html">sure thing</a>. We’ve even had a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-names-bond-james-bond-or-should-it-be-jane-60650">Jane Bond</a>” social media campaign which saw Gillian Anderson throwing her metaphorical hat in the ring.</p>
<p>Given that the creative minds behind the BBC’s Doctor Who – a series predicated on the doctor’s <a href="http://metro.co.uk/2013/12/24/doctor-who-what-are-the-rules-of-time-lord-regeneration-4239202/">ability to regenerate</a>, which gives completely free reign over the actor who is cast – have managed to reincarnate the good Doctor a mere <a href="http://www.doctorwho.tv/50-years/doctors/">13 times as a white man</a>, do the chances of real diversity seem beyond even science fiction, let alone upper-class Cold War imperialism?</p>
<h2>The eternal playboy</h2>
<p>Historian Tim Stanley <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/05/25/the-names-not-jane-bond-why-007-can-never-be-a-woman/">argues</a> that to give Bond “breasts” would be to “lose the magic behind the character” – so we can safely assume that Bond is merely a powerful metaphorical penis. In keeping what have become the stock symbols – the fast cars, expensive suits, the Martinis and the exotic locations with their equally exotic women – the films have arguably become more one-dimensional than the novels. Books which, for all their issues, can still be located within a different social and historical context. So what is our excuse now? </p>
<p>In the conclusion of <a href="https://theconversation.com/elegiac-melancholic-spectre-would-be-a-fitting-if-strange-end-to-james-bond-50658">2015 film Spectre</a>, there is an inevitability to which the final shot – of Bond and Madeline Swann walking across London Bridge – seems fated to result in the kind of brutality with which Teresa di Vincenzo met her abrupt end in <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/far-flung-correspondents/on-her-majestys-secret-service">On Her Majesty’s Secret Service</a> (1963). In the novel, if not as explicitly on screen, Bond’s joy at the planning of his future wedded bliss extends to the imagined home-making in his London flat, long and loving phone conversations between them as he works to bring down super-villain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and the growing awareness that his life finally holds richer meaning. </p>
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<p>Teresa, like Madeline, was Bond’s match: flighty, adventurous, fearless, daughter of a high-ranking criminal with an understanding of the necessity for “real men” to carry concealed weapons. Both women are victims of their own violent pasts – they are strong but need rescuing from themselves. Bond, however, has to be a playboy, he can save them, avenge them even, but he cannot be “tamed” by them. </p>
<h2>Self-destruction</h2>
<p>Spoof spy character Austin Powers ridiculed the constant disruption of the spy’s romantic bliss in the beginning of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGVjoLlgHbM">The Spy Who Shagged Me</a> (1999). His new wife turned out to be a fem-bot, which must self-destruct or risk bringing down the spy himself. Even Judi Dench, after 20 years as M, met her end as a foolish female victim – how could the head of the secret intelligence service inexplicably use a torch on a dark Highland escape? Forget a female Bond when so few of the women in the films last beyond the end credits.</p>
<p>Perhaps the bigger question is not who should play the next Bond but why haven’t we moved on? Looking back at the original stories, and even ignoring the problematic 1950s cultural landscape, they are a mixed bag. Some are gripping, well-paced and thrilling, others loose and unwieldy, slow or confusing. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Casino-Royale-novel-by-Fleming">Casino Royale</a> (1953) is almost entirely focused on a card game that no one understands any more (when not playing cards, Bond is busy calling Vesper Lynd a “bitch”). <a href="https://nudge-book.com/blog/2012/10/ian-flemings-moonraker-1955/">Moonraker</a> (1955) takes place in Dover not California, Venice or Rio. There are episodes in which even Bond is bored; chapters where he sits at his desk and complains about paperwork, moving it from in-box to out-tray.</p>
<p>All of this is a far-cry from the jet-setting man of mystery in our cultural imagination – the whirlwind of cocktails and casual sex, heightened by theatrically high kicks and slow-motion punches, casual Western imperialism, and upper-class patriarchy. More important than who will play him, is the question of why we have unnaturally prolonged the life of Ian Fleming’s spy. </p>
<p>Guardian readers were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2017/may/09/idris-elba-james-bond-joanna-lumley">quick to call</a> Salmon’s assertion that Bond is effectively the same age as Prince Philip unfair, and they’ve got a point. We don’t hold Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple to their fictional birth dates. We do, however, recognise the need to update the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, taking the essence of their detection and applying it in modern ways. Bond, on the other hand, has all the latest gadgetry, new global enemies, and even an invisible car, but his “essence” has sadly stayed the same.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77572/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicola Bishop does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why are we so desperate to cling on to the heterosexist, misogynistic, and racist character?Nicola Bishop, Senior Lecturer in English/Film and Television, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.