Tuesday 19 December 2017

Aldi spoofs Bond in its Christmas advert

The Christmas TV campaign for the supermarket Aldi is likely to be of interest to Bond fans. Featuring a talking carrot called Kevin, the campaign draws inspiration from well-known films or film genres as it showcases the supermarket’s Christmas range of food and drink. Naturally, James Bond is one of the genres given the spoof treatment.
 

 

Aspects of the Bond films are referenced in one of the special adverts that focuses on wine and champagne. It begins as (most) Bond films do with a gun barrel sequence. As Kevin the carrot tries out his new water pistol retreived from his Christmas cracker, he passes the cardboard tube of the cracker, which from our perspective resembles the gun barrel of the Bond films. (Kevin, incidentally, wears a bow tie.)

The sequence then passes seductively over some of the supermarket's festive products – the wine from Bordeaux ‘had a licence to chill' – before we see Kevin again with his Bond girl (or, rather, carrot), Katie. A party popper, serving as a Thunderball-style jetpack, is attached to his back. 'You only live twice,' he says before shooting into the air and dropping into the wine cooler.
 

The advert is short and sweet, but long enough to express a few of the essential Bond memes in a mini film adventure. The advert is interesting, not just because it features a carrot as Bond, but because, in a way, the subject is highly appropriate for the season. After all, no Christmas is complete without a Bond film. Judging by the TV listings in the festive edition of the Radio Times, this Christmas will be no different, with several Bond films, including Spectre, on offer.

Monday 11 December 2017

Ian Fleming in A Constant Heart

Until the publication this year of her diaries, Maud Russell’s pivotal role in Ian Fleming’s James Bond career largely remained unknown. Were it not for Maud’s loan of £5000, Ian Fleming may not have been able to buy Goldeneye, his winter retreat in Jamaica where he wrote all the Bond novels. In addition, Maud’s husband, Gilbert, may have had a hand in Fleming’s wartime appointment to the Naval Intelligence Division (NID), from which Fleming derived so much inspiration.


The diaries, edited with care by Maud Russell’s granddaughter, Emily Russell, focus on a seven-year period from the eve of the Second World War in 1938 to the end of hostilities in 1945. Ian Fleming and Maud first met in December 1931, or possibly early 1932, and their friendship – and intimacy – deepened, especially during the war, when Maud became Ian’s confidant and she herself gained a position at NID. The diaries are not clear on the matter, but it is likely that Maud and Ian were lovers.
 

The diaries offer a personal view on the course of the war – Maud alludes to momentous events in passing as she writes about her own life and those of her family and friends – and for students of Ian Fleming (and James Bond), they provide insights into the very foundations of Fleming’s life as a novelist.
 

Reading the diaries, I was struck by several aspects. Ian Fleming became enchanted by Jamaica while visiting the island for a naval conference in 1942, and had vowed to return there after the war and build a home. Maud’s diaries after this time, however, suggest that it was the thought of escaping to a tropical paradise that had really attracted Ian, and that, to some extent, the choice of island had been a secondary consideration. Maud records in October 1943 that one evening she and Ian discussed ‘Tahiti – or any escape island – and the formidable future till after 12 o’clock.’ Tahiti came up again in conversation in January 1944. Maud wrote that almost every time she saw Ian, he wanted ‘to talk about cottages, seashores, Tahiti, long naked holidays on coral islands and marriage’. Tellingly, that evening, Ian had also spoken about writing ‘a novel or two’ after the war.
 

The diaries give us, too, an insight into Ian Fleming’s activities at NID. We tend to assume that Fleming barely saw any action during the war, and largely stayed out of harm’s way in Room 39 at the Admiralty. Maud’s diaries, however, reveal that Fleming participated in several secret missions in France and elsewhere that placed him in danger.
 

In November 1940, Maud records that Ian ‘has been on some dangerous job again,’ and indeed Fleming had escaped serious harm when a house at which he had been staying was ‘blown away’. Maud also described Fleming’s journey close to the end of the war to Schloss Tambach in Germany to retrieve military documents. I was surprised to read, as well, that, earlier in 1941, Ian Fleming had considered resigning from his NID duties and joining a motor torpedo boat crew where he would see more action. Of course, the idea may never have been a serious one, but it perhaps reveals an early fascination with underwater action that would be expressed later in his novels Live and Let Die and Thunderball.
 

These and other incidences to which Maud Russell refers confirm the impression gained from other accounts that the war was the making of Ian Fleming and that it was a very formative period for him. More generally, the diaries reveal Maud’s humanity, warmth and intelligence, and identify her as an essential witness to aspects of the war that are often left out of the history books. Emily Russell’s book is enthralling and deserves a place on the bookshelf of every Fleming aficionado, alongside those other indispensable first-hand accounts, the letters of Ian Fleming (edited by Fergus Fleming) and those of Ann Fleming (edited by Mark Amory).
 

A Constant Heart: The War Diaries of Maud Russell, 1938-1945, edited by Emily Russell, is Published by the Dovecote Press

Tuesday 5 December 2017

An interview with Henry Hemming

The latest issue of MI6 Confidential, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of You Only Live Twice, has just been published. In this special issue, the film's dubbing editor, Norman Wanstall, talks to Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury, there is an article on a never-produced film treatment inspired by the novel of You Only Live Twice, and, poignantly, the magazine contains the final interview with the late Karin Dor, who played Bond girl Helga Brandt.

I'm honoured also to have contributed to the issue. Away from You Only Live Twice, the magazine includes my interview with historian Henry Hemming about his book, M: Maxwell Knight, MI5's Greatest Spymaster. In the interview, we talked about Maxwell Knight's life, his motivations, his extraordinary success running agents, and, of course, the extent to which Fleming's M was based on the spymaster.

 
It's a fascinating issue, and anyone interested in James Bond and the world of espionage, fictional or otherwise, should buy a copy. For details of how to purchase a copy, or subscribe to the magazine, click here to visit the MI6 Confidential website.