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James Bond, the most famous secret agent in the world.
From author Ian Fleming came a series of spy novels that spawned one of the most iconic movie franchises in history. Is Bond anything like a real-life secret agent, or is it all pure fantasy? And how much do the films reflect Fleming's own life
In short, who is the real James Bond? The 007 character was the turbocharged version of Ian Fleming himself. It's really the best Ian Fleming could be. That the physical demeanor, love for fast cars, the fact that he golfs, he draws upon things he loves so much.
Bond was a case of wish fulfilment. He sort of wrote himself into this very sort of suave, sort of spy, a man of action and adventure that perhaps he'd always wanted for himself. There were elements of Ian Fleming in James Bond, but James Bond was not Ian Fleming. So you have a spy, you have a womaniser, but in the case of Fleming, it's not quite as glamorous.
Fleming worked very closely not only with naval intelligence, but he was the liaison between naval intelligence and the Special Operations Executive and other intelligence agencies. So he had a very real sense of what spies were actually like. James Bond is a world-famous British icon. It's believed that over a billion people around the world have seen at least one James Bond film. Created by the writer Ian Fleming, he is the quintessential secret agent.
He's the man that has it all: the gadgets, the guns, the women, and the cars.
Ian Fleming was the celebrated English author who wrote James Bond and in doing so drew upon some really unique experience he had in Royal Naval Intelligence. Things like Operation Goldeneye and a couple other top secret projects that he oversaw. So he wrote about exactly what he knew.
I think with so many American heroes, it was time to have a quintessentially British hero. James Bond has fitted that bill, you know, with his Union Jack parachute, but also, you know, there with the gun, the wry smile, very well turned out, quintessentially upper middle class Englishman. And his, you know, his tastes, his prejudices, his fighting the wicked enemies, you know, he is totally English.
Ian Fleming wrote his James Bond novels on a 30-year-old typewriter in his villa, Goldeneye, on the island of Jamaica. To try and understand the character he created and get under the skin of Bond, you have to start with the guns. One of the key premises of James Bond is his so-called "license to kill." This seemingly gave him almost free reign to dispatch his enemies in cold blood.
And in the course of 24 films, Bond has killed nearly 400 people. Investigative reporter Jamie Theakston has come to EJ Churchill Shooting Ground to meet John Baker, who's an armorer and weaponry expert. He wants to experience for himself what it's like to have your finger on the trigger of the very guns Bond himself used.
Let's start with the Beretta. It's very similar to the Model 418 that Bond had in Doctor No in about 1962-63 when the film was made. Then we have the Walther PPK that Bond would have used at the time. Again, he was forced by Geoffrey Boothroyd who wrote to Ian Fleming, who said he had the wrong gun, it was a woman's gun. There was a big discussion about the whole thing that Bond had a lady's gun. Although this is a 9mm version, the earlier one was a .25 ACP which was much smaller.
Now, this is a classic Bond handgun, right? Absolutely correct, yeah. Bond's weapon of choice is the Walther PPK. It's a German weapon, stands for Polizei-Pistolen-Kriminal, the police criminal pistol. And the reason why it was recommended to Fleming that this is what Bond should carry is because its 7.65mm round was widely available anywhere. So Bond, being a type who travelled widely, would never be out of ammunition.
A gun is what a stethoscope is to a doctor for a secret agent. You couldn't have him with a big rifle or a machine gun, it would be impractical. The Wolf of PPK, which recurs in the books and the films, is a natty little thing. It can be discreetly tucked away in a tuxedo,
But also I believe it was chosen because this is a gun that genuinely was used all over the world, not just in Britain but also in Russia and all the other Eastern European countries that he visits in the course of the various plots. So it's there to add a touch of historical fidelity.
Keep in mind, this was sort of Cold War era inspired, the James Bond character. So all those weapons, all those gadgets, all the kind of top secret stuff that we look at and think, "That's really funny. That's kind of ridiculous. That would never..." Well, that actually did happen. You know, there were those kind of concealed weapons. There were those kind of gadgets. It's surprisingly realistic. Guns weren't the only thing Bond carried.
His pockets were also bulging with the latest creations from Q Branch, a division of the spy service that supplied him with an array of gadgets. These took center stage in the films, from pens that were made for far more than writing to invisible cars with deadly modifications.
Film memorabilia today is big business, with collectors all around the world prepared to part with huge sums of money for their own little bit of bond.
I mean, there's two things that have happened to the Bond franchise, if we want to talk about it in those terms. One is it's been going a long time, but now it's a global franchise and people are reaching back for memorabilia right back to the earliest films. And of course, it's extremely stylish. You know, it's always been top brands, you know, and the fact that you can buy a top brand associated with James Bond, you know, gives it so much kudos, hugely attractive to collectors.
The Bond memorabilia market is extraordinary. I mean, so many people seem to want to get their hands on a genuine prop. People are willing to pay £50,000, possibly even more, to get their hands on what they see as an authentic slice of cinematic history. And that's before we've even got into all the sort of postcards and all the albums and various little pieces of merchandise as well.
There is an astonishing market in Bond memorabilia and associated objects. As a woman, I find it slightly amusing, I have to say, because I doubt very much whether there's an awful lot of even very rich women who actually go to the auctions and buy the stuff. Perhaps it's because men want to be James Bond and women want to be with him. The ultimate prize for the Bond fan is to own an Aston Martin DB5.
the car that made Bond famous in seven films and cemented the connection between Bond and fast cars. Peter Kroll has achieved a childhood dream and has lovingly restored this Aston Martin DB5 from rusty barn find to an exact replica of the car from Goldfinger. So how long have you had the car, Peter? I've had it since 2002, so about 15 years now. And what kind of state was it in when you bought it?
It was a total restoration. It was in various states of repair, if you know what I mean. Bits taken off and in boxes. It was a car with loads of boxes. It didn't have any glass in it or anything like that. Everything was with it. And what's it like to drive? Yep, it's nice. The longer you drive it, the better it gets. It sort of warms up and becomes...
more refined the more you drive it. But yeah, it's nice to drive. A bit heavy steering at parking, but other than that it's lovely. So I guess this is like the ultimate piece of 007 memorabilia, isn't it? I think so, yeah. I mean, there was two stars in that film, Goldfinger, was it? And there's Sean Connery and the car, really, wasn't it? It sort of made them both. I mean, cars have been very central to the Bond movies, to the Bond proposition.
I tend to find the Roger Moore era where it went off under the sea rather silly and some of the gadgets later on a bit naff. I mean my personal favorite is Goldfinger, the Aston Martin. It's the fact that gadgets also are great dramatic devices. You know when Connery's told there's an ejector seat but he uses it in a very precise way at a very precise moment. And the gadgets and the drama really match. I don't think it's ever been better actually than that film.
The films have certainly gathered a legion of fans around the world, but it all originated with Ian Fleming and the books. Jamie Theakston has arranged an odd job of his own. And to find out where Bond all began, he's meeting A.J. Chowdhury, co-author of Some Kind of Hero and an expert on all things 007.
What I'm trying to figure out, AJ, is how similar was Fleming's Bond to a real-life secret agent? I think James Bond in Fleming's books was actually not really a spy. He was more of a sort of commando and SOE type person that Fleming would have come across during the war. He was more of a counterinsurgency, a sort of SAS type. And that's why his Bond is a lot more adventurous, much more kind of action-packed.
than a George Smiley, Le Carre type. Yeah, so he wasn't... I mean, was Fleming himself a sort of pen pusher or was he an active agent in naval intelligence? Well, during the war, Ian Fleming was more like an M character, giving the orders. He was a commander in naval intelligence, but he sent commandos like James Bond out into the field in behind-the-line German lines and in continental Europe. And... But...
James Bond then represented the sort of agent Fleming probably wished he could have been, a man of action. Where does the whole sort of license to kill come from? Is that Fleming's invention or was that an actual... Well, the license to kill, the 00 in the 007 is the license to kill prefix. That probably is fictional, but I think during the war, Fleming was keen to emphasise that
Agents had to do the unthinkable. They weren't always wearing white hats and, you know, on the side of angels. Sometimes they had to be as ruthless as the enemy and I think that underpins some of the ethos of the James Bond character.
As with most authors, a significant degree of the character is actually autobiographical. So there are definite similarities between Fleming and Bond. They're both commanders, they both have a naval link, they're both womanizers. But there are also real differences.
I mean, Bond is who Fleming would probably like to have been. Fleming is involved in his intelligence work in some pretty hairy and gritty things, but he's resolutely a desk man. He sits in the Admiralty in Whitehall and he comes up with these ideas. Yeah, Bond is who he'd like to have been. And we mentioned the 007 moniker. Did agents have numbers? I mean, was that a thing that was given to them or...?
I'm pretty sure agents had all sorts of code numbers and what they call legends. They had different names. Most famously, there was Agent Zigzag and people like that. And Fleming obviously drew from that, although the 007 is widely believed to be drawn from Rudyard Kipling. There was a 007 train that featured one of Kipling's books and Fleming was a Kipling fan.
But the actual realistic background to all these things is a combination of myth, reality and Fleming's own imagination.
So like James Bond, Ian Fleming was an intelligence officer. In fact, he was involved in some very complex operations, training people in guerrilla warfare, in being spies and so on. So he had that in common. He liked the same drinks as Bond. He liked to gamble. He liked to play golf. He certainly liked to womanize. And there's also a kind of a slight element of rough play with Fleming. But I think his play was rougher than Bond's.
One of the reasons Bond was a cut above the other thrillers was due to Fleming's vivid, fast-paced writing style, which took the reader right into the heart of Bond's world. In a grey and dreary Britain, still adjusting to the reality of life post-war, his novels added a dash of colour.
The Bond books were a tearaway success and one of the most important factors you have to remember is what the 50s were like. We often think of the 50s as glamorous. We think of America and Fender guitars and Cadillacs and all that great stuff. England wasn't like that. England was really depressed, really dreary, coming out of the war still with rationing.
I think James Bond came at the right time for Britain. It was the end of the Second World War, and along comes a character who, if you want, is best of British. You know, reminds British people what they like about themselves, and also there's a tinge of luxury, of glamour, you know. So Fleming drops in the brand names. It's stuff that people at that time couldn't necessarily afford, but they could live that life through James Bond.
Of course, one of the things most closely associated with Bond was his signature drink, the vodka martini. Fleming is said to have been inspired by the evenings he spent drinking at Duke's Hotel in London. Alessandro, how are you? Very well, hi, Jeremy. Nice to see you. I think you know what I'm going to order. Vodka martini. Bondstein. Schäfen-Noster. Schäfen-Noster. We just wanted to say that. Okay.
So why Alessandro, is Duke's bar so synonymous with James Bond? It's mainly because Mr. Fleming used to come here during his time when he was in Jamaica. Like a few people, the hotel was mainly patronized by people in politics and in the army. So the bar was only this very small bar, it was quite exclusive. As we are in St. James, all the clubs, all these
Wonderful people did their business, their lunch in the club. But when you want to do something that be secret, you come here. And then of course an olive. Oh yes. And why did James Bond like his martini shaken non-stop? That's a very good question. In those days you would not dare to shake the martini.
It was completely taboo. Now, when Mr. Flemmi started writing about Bond, Bond in the books broke all the rules to be different. Because Bond, I mean, is the epitome of the class of English class. Whatever he does is perfect. Everybody will copy. Right. But that is in the imagination of Mr. Flemmi. So he was a bit of a renegade. On the Bond. But Bond, not only, is also, as a fashion...
Whatever he does, like when he created the Vespa, the way he dressed, the watch, everything, people copy. So that's what he's trying to achieve. That's wonderful. It's nice, isn't it? Yeah, I like that. When the novels first came out in the '50s,
Few people had even heard of vodka. You know, it was the most astonishingly glamorous Russian thing. Certainly very few people, apart from the upper crust like Fleming himself, would have actually drunk it. But there's something else about it, of course. It's Russian. And this was during the Cold War and he was on Her Majesty's Secret Service.
So what was really going on here? What's the message? Maybe the seeds of the anti-establishment 007 that we see today in Daniel Craig actually started there with a vodka martini.
Even though elements of Bond, strictly speaking, are quite old-fashioned, nevertheless, he still managed to be stylish. And it even comes down to his preferred tipple, you know, the vodka martini, which actually describes his character. The drink is him. You know, it's ice cold, it's strong, it's shaken but not stirred. You know, it is Bond. He drinks what he is. When not hard at work on the latest scheme to thwart villains,
Fleming immersed himself in London's nightlife, and with German bombs raining down, he lived a life of drinking, dining, and women. Like the character of Bond that he would go on to create, Fleming was not much of a one-woman man, and his own experiences would go on to provide the templates for many of the women that Bond encounters in the books. However, the way he portrayed such women did, on occasion, land him in hot water.
One definite connection between Bond and Fleming is their attitude towards women. Both of them were fairly mechanical, were fairly ruthless. Yes, there was charm, yes, there was lovemaking, but these weren't romances. These were people who left the hotel room early in the morning. And that's something that Fleming, at least, was pleased to see, was carried through in the early Bond, in the Connery Bond, on film.
Apparently it was true that Fleming was well into his 30s before he actually spent a whole night with a woman. So that's telling about his idea about relationships and when he got married, Fleming, he basically was an open marriage. So he had real problems with commitment.
Hello, I'm Violet Manners and welcome to Hidden Heritage, the podcast that brings you inside Great Britain's favourite destinations. From the same team that brought you the number one history podcast, Duchess, Hidden Heritage will uncover the fascinating stories behind the UK's brightest, shining hidden gems.
You'll hear from top experts in British heritage, including custodians, historians, artisans, experts, and even the craftsmen and restorers who've worked on some of the most celebrated historic buildings.
We will share the untold and unique stories that celebrate UK heritage, from landmarks to architecture, artefacts to myths and legends. Hidden Heritage will highlight a side of British history you have never seen before. I'm your host, Violet Manners, and founder of HeritageX, and I invite you all to join us on this exciting journey. This is Hidden Heritage. You can find Hidden Heritage wherever you listen to your podcasts.
The Bond girls were equally, if not more important in the films. With cinema goers eager to learn the identity of Bond's latest love interest, Miriam Dabo played the Bond girl Kara Milovi in The Living Daylights in 1987. It was in this film that the filmmakers decided to try a different approach in giving the Bond girl a far more substantial role to play.
As a Bond girl yourself, how do you think the role of the Bond girl has developed? Well, the Bond girl has definitely developed from Bond girl to Bond woman. Right. Am I... should I say Bond woman? I was a Bond girl. I consider myself a Bond girl. But now, you know, the actors say, "No, no, Bond woman."
But they have, of course, they've completely changed and evolved over time. In the 60s, it was that whole period of, you know, Action Girl, which Ursula Andress played, but sort of had sort of innocent, naive, or the girl with the superpowers, you know. And then you had these wonderful names, so much humor, you know, Pussy Galore on
on a black man playing, you know, the villainess, the head of a whole little empire of girls, sort of champion in judo and had sort of powers. So there was a lot of humor and they were bigger than life and they were, yeah, they were cartoon characters, but with a wink, you know, a lot of fun. I actually think they're hilariously funny when you watch them now.
It's often said that Bond women, you know, get short shrift. Who can forget Sean Connery actually deflecting some bullets by putting a woman into their path? You know, it's not very gallant. But at the same time, there are women in the Bond movies who are very strong. I mean, Pussy Galore, even despite the silly name, is a very strong character. Honey Rider and Cara Milovi, who was in The Living Daylight, are all strong, independent women. You know, they're not fluff.
And even though Fleming's attitude to women wasn't great, nevertheless he did create strong female characters and those come through in the movies. - Maryam Darval from Living Daylights was sort of a new Bond woman. I mean, she was beautiful just like the rest, but she was kind of on a par with Bond, a bit more intelligent. They worked together as a team and it kind of changed the public sort of perception of what a Bond woman could be.
I came along in '86, '87 with Timothy Dalton, so they brought a new style of Bond. And they wanted to go for a less cartoon character and bring more of a heart to the character, more of a relationship between Bond and his leading lady. Because that was interesting because in your role, he hadn't really had a relationship
in the past. They were sort of one-night stands. Yes, he did. One-night stands. He was a loner, just like in the books.
The films took one very major departure from the books in the creation of the Bond girls. Because in the books, Bond is the hero. But in the films, actually, people are much more interested every year in finding out who is going to be the Bond girl in this year's Bond film. And the status they have is iconic in cinema. And the range of Bond girls that have been used over the years is incredibly diverse.
The way in which filmmakers tried to modernize the role of the Bond girl in the living daylights to reflect more current attitudes to women is not the only way in which the films have differed from the books. And this calls into question how far the films actually represent Ian Fleming's creation.
The Bond that we see in the films and the books, it's hugely romanticised. It's much more of a glamorous, fast-paced lifestyle than what being a spy is and was actually like, because much of the art of being a spy is not being conspicuous, and Bond is probably one of the most conspicuous people you could ever imagine.
Imagine, because he turns up in his fast cars, he's always got a beautiful woman draped over his arm. This is a man who'd rapidly become famous if the whole thing were real. What the books and the films have in common are the Bond trappings of fast cars and women, guns, gadgets, and boats. But Bond was an agent for Her Majesty's Secret Service, which in the films became MI6.
So Alan, how accurate was Fleming's depiction of a spy back then?
Well, I think the first thing is, was Fleming actually depicting a spy in James Bond? I mean, Bond is not a spy as we normally understand it. We normally understand a spy to be someone who goes somewhere to find something out, to get information. Bond doesn't actually get information. He's usually there to kill someone or blow something up or get something, get hold of something. So he's much more like a special operations operative from the World War II.
World War II. Right. And that was the world from which Fleming came as part of the Directorate of Naval Intelligence, a world in which you were doing things, or if you were finding out things, you were finding them out in order to do something about them. Right. In the early days of the Bond books and movies,
007 was quite like a real spy. You know, the adventures that he had, you know, this is inspired by the Cold War, so there were all sorts of crazy espionage events going on. But as the Bond films and books go further and the action sequences get a little out of hand, it no longer is based in any kind of reality. There's no spies.
in the last 30 or 40 years who are having dinners with the queen and driving fast cars and sleeping with whoever they wanna sleep with and getting away with it. Everyone would have known. So at the beginning, yeah, it resembled in reality what some spies were like back in the day. But in modern times, no, it's strayed pretty far from reality.
A lot of what being a spy is about is spying, is watching from the shadows and collecting information and reporting back. They're often faceless men and women who don't enjoy the kind of glamorous lifestyle as depicted in the books. That's not to say, no.
Some spies don't get killed or don't have to make tough calls and sacrifices and to occasionally have the odd gunfight. But I think what Fleming did was take some of these isolated incidents and some of the characteristics of the spies and sort of compound the whole thing into this sort of action man who is James Bond.
Tell me about some of the other similarities that you find in Fleming's books with the way in which spies operate today. Well, what is similar is that Bond might be summoned by M and told there's someone in, I don't know, in Cairo who we believe is a very bad man and we want to find out what he's doing. We want someone to get alongside him and find out more about what he's doing.
Can you go and meet him? You know, that kind of thing is based on some sort of reality. Sure. What about being sent to seduce an attractive lady in a...
casino generally i'm not sure seduction yeah is always a useful thing in intelligence these germans did make very good use of it in the cold war right the stars is stasi yes seducing west german secretaries and that sort of thing they did a lot of that but as a general rule pillow talk doesn't involve the radioactive qualities that you're looking for you know you're talking about what
the latest nuclear power station or something like that. You don't generally turn over and say... It struck me from reading the books and watching the films that he did it more for pleasure rather than information. I'm sure he sought to combine business and pleasure as so many people do. And what about martini, shaken not stirred? Is that the drink of choice amongst the intelligence community? It's much more likely the drink of Fleming's choice.
I think probably the intelligence community went for gin and tonics a lot. Stirred, not changed. Yeah, that's what the forces did.
People endlessly argue about how real a spy Bond was. But what one can say is that Fleming knew spies. He worked in naval intelligence and he was the liaison officer with the other spy and intelligence agencies in Britain. He worked with the SOE, he worked with MI5 and he worked with MI6. So he had a very real first-hand experience of Britain's spies in the period. The more you look into the character of James Bond and where he came from,
the more you realize that if there is a real James Bond, it's actually Ian Fleming himself. The books are an account of Fleming's life in the Admiralty during the war, and they do reflect the kind of spies that both World War II and the post-war era had. I mean, over the last 55 years, Bond has really changed dramatically. You know, in the 60s, Connery was confident, smooth, suave.
Then via Lazenby, you go into the kind of comedy era in the '70s, which became completely ridiculous. You then have Dalton, I suppose, in the kind of yuppie 1980s. And then we're into Brosnan, who I think unfortunately got overwhelmed by the gadgetry. I mean, all, you know, we had an invisible car at the end, all looked very silly.
Daniel Craig, I think, really sums up the zeitgeist today, which is this kind of super serious, slightly psychotic, probably needs to go into therapy, but, you know, he's, you know, he's at the same time extremely cool and clearly appeals to a global market. Bond is firmly on the map and Bond is here to stay. Where we are now with Daniel Craig, this is superstar status. The Bond franchise has never been so popular and there's every indication it'll go on being so.
You know, the entire debate on whether or not Bond can continue any longer
Rages on but I've got to tell you that you know an intelligent good-looking leading man with with fast cars and Faster women, you know, that's a recipe for success that it's gonna continue I think into the future just look at Skyfall the first Bond film that grossed over a billion dollars in ticket sales This whole drama is not ending anytime soon each bond was unique and
With each leading man defining his own brand, at times the movies became so full of gadgets and slick one-liners that they shared little more with Fleming's dark gritty novels than the titles. It's with the Daniel Craig films that they've returned back to Fleming's original character, and therefore back to the real James Bond.