The man in the street would no doubt recognise that James Bond has been going a long time. But how long, and how does he do it?
Let us begin with some history. James Bond was created by Ian Fleming over the twelve years 1953 to 1964. Fleming published twelve Bond novels in his lifetime, at roughly one a year, beginning with Casino Royale and ending with You Only Live Twice. Two more were published posthumously: The Man With The Golden Gun (1965) and Octopussy And The Living Daylights (1966). Fleming, who smoked and drank heavily, sadly succumbed to heart failure at 56.
As to career, Fleming failed to make it into the Foreign Office or to succeed in City finance but his service in Naval Intelligence during WW2 developed in him an ability to write concise and striking prose and gave him copious material for the Bond novels. In 1944 he announced that, “When we have won this blasted war, I am going to live in Jamaica. Just live in Jamaica and lap it up, and swim in the sea and write books.”
And he did. In 1946, on six acres of land on Jamaica’s north coast, he built Goldeneye, a large bungalow complex where all his Bond novels were written. There he hosted celebrated friends too, among them Errol Flynn, Lucian Freud, Princess Margaret, Prime Minister Anthony Eden and Noël Coward. Coward particularly disliked the angularity of Goldeneye, and when once asked for directions to it replied, “Go to the top of the hill, dear boy, turn right, and it’s the first ear, nose and throat clinic on your left”. A lesser known but highly significant caller was an American ornithologist specialising in birds of the Caribbean, a subject that interested Fleming. He was James Bond. Fleming liked his name and simply appropriated it.
Launching Bond took several years: Fleming was 44 before Casino Royale found a publisher. Bond immediately enjoyed acclaim in Britain but not much abroad. Then in 1961 President John Kennedy told Life magazine that From Russia With Love was one of his ten favourite novels, and that did it. Bond instantly created an avid readership in the US, and Hollywood took Bond to its heart – and its bank.
“While thrillers may not be literature with a capital L,” said Fleming, “it is possible to write what I can best describe as thrillers designed to be read as literature.” Other novelists agreed. Raymond Benson described “the “Fleming sweep”, the use of “narrative hooks at the end of each chapter to heighten tension and pull the reader into the next”. Anthony Burgess characterised Fleming’s prose as “a heightened journalistic style which produces a speed of narrative which hustles the reader along.” As to characters, Umberto Eco noted that Bond’s villains, always memorable foreigners, “tend to come from Central Europe or from Slavic or Mediterranean countries and have a mixed heritage and complex and obscure origins… [they are] generally asexual or homosexual, inventive, organisationally astute, and wealthy”.
Ian Fleming’s literary estate is managed by Ian Fleming Publications Limited. One of its aims is to keep the Bond literary brand alive through the publication of new novels (“continuation novels” as they are known) by front-rank authors. They include Kingsley Amis, Anthony Horowitz, William Boyd and Sebastian Faulks; interestingly, Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher thrillers, declined. There are, of course, the films as well. But to my mind, while the novels impress, the films depress, with their mindless sequences of fighting, explosions, car chases, gadgets, and predictable sex of the Friday-night-in-Yorkshire type. Judi Dench doesn’t persuade me as M, while in No Time To Die Fleming’s ingenious inventor, Q, has morphed from a middle-aged character straight out of The Repair Shop into a gay young geek. Ludicrous.
Colonel Sun (1968), written by Kingsley Amis under the pen name Robert Markham, was the first commissioned post-Fleming novel. It provoked much dislike, novelist Malcolm Bradbury dismissing it as “Neither vintage Fleming nor vintage Amis”. But author and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz declared, “I have always considered Colonel Sun to be the best non-Fleming Bond ever written.” I’m entirely with Horowitz, who amusingly describes continuation writing as “…an act of ventriloquism…it’s not entirely your own book but you still have to own it.” Horowitz has written three excellent Bond novels, among which I recommend his latest, With A Mind To Kill (2022). I also strongly recommend Sebastian Faulks’ Devil May Care (2008), wherein the chief villain seeks to destroy Britain with an overwhelming tide of drugs. Ring a bell?
Bond continuation novels now outnumber the originals by at least three to one, so if literary escapism is your thing you have plenty of escape routes. I have merely scratched the surface of continuation, but Google around and you will find much more: works from John Gardner (highly prolific), American authors Raymond Benson and Jeffrey Deaver, and Fast Show actor Charlie Higson, who writes about a young Bond for young readers. Sadly, though, Bond’s worldwide reputation has somehow missed Northallerton, so NYC libraries stock only a few Bond titles, whether original or continuation.
Hmm. See to that, Moneypenny, will you?
