Boris Johnson, James Bond fan

Photo: Huffington Post

When former Mayor of London and chief 'Brexiteer' Boris Johnson was announced as the UK's new Foreign Secretary, it's fair to say that the decision was met across the world with incredulity and much amusement. Given the nature of the position, it wasn't too long before internet was rife with talk about Boris as James Bond's boss. 

It's not the first time that Boris has been linked with James Bond. Back in October 2015, Daniel Craig told reporters, with tongue firmly in cheek, that Boris was the new James Bond. And when Boris was left dangling on a zip-wire during a live-screen event for the London Olympics in 2012, the stunt was labelled by the national media as James Bond-like.

I don't suppose Boris minds about this coverage, and may actually be flattered by it, as, judging by some of the comments he's made about Bond, he's something of a Bond fan. Most recently, during the EU referendum campaign, Boris appeared to compare the EU with a SPECTRE-like criminal organisation. In a speech, he reminded the audience that the last Bond film, Spectre, had been filmed in his mayoral offices, ‘where James Bond shoots the evil baddie who is hell-bent on subverting democracy around the world through a supra-national organisation. I think there’s a metaphor there,’ he said.

In 2013, during a visit to China to promote London as a place open to investment, Boris told an audience of students that the Chinese-owned Trinity Square in London had doubled as the replacement MI6 headquarters in Skyfall. Boris said, 'if that isn’t openness to China, I don’t know what is.'

Shortly after his zip-wire mishap in 2012, Boris took Arnold Schwarzenegger for a cable car ride across the Thames. To a certain generation, cable cars are synonymous with Where Eagles Dare and Moonraker. I certainly can't ride in a cable car without thinking of the films and judging the distance between my car and the oncoming one as they pass, assessing the practicalities of a jump from one to the other. Boris and Arnie are evidently of a similar mind. In the cable car, Boris reminded Arnie of Where Eagles Dare, in which 'they get out and wrestle on top of the cable car.' Arnie replied that 'they did the same thing in a James Bond movie', before mentioning Jaws. Boris' face lit up. 'Jaws! That's right!'

In addition to his political duties, Boris Johnson is also a columnist. He's referred to James Bond. In some of the columns he's written for the Daily Telegraph,  In a piece published in 2010 about the use of helmets on the ski slopes, Boris wrote: 'Each of us must make his or her choice. But I ask you this: does James Bond wear a helmet, when he out-skis the baddie in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service?' Earlier, in 2006, Boris argued that it might be better to talk to the regimes of Iran and North Korea, rather than threaten them, but added that 'if there was some way of quietly disabling Kim's bombs... we should certainly consider it. Where is James Bond these days?' And back in 2003, Boris wrote about his love of the James Bond films and his memory of being taken to the cinema by his father to watch Diamonds Are Forever.

However Boris Johnson will be judged as Foreign Secretary, he's certainly flying the flag for James Bond. Part of that comes from his fondness of the Bond films (and, presumably, the books, which I imagine are required reading at Eton). But for Boris, James Bond is also a source of national pride and a proxy for Britain's position in the world. However illusory such use of James Bond may be, it's been this way ever since Fleming wrote the Bond books, which from the start provided a counterpoint to the national soul-searching in a post-Empire Britain rocked by spy scandals and politically damaged by the Suez crisis.

Where does James Bond live?, and other observations from Bond in Motion

Where does James Bond live? We know where the literary James Bond lives – in a ground-floor flat in a house located in a square lined with plane trees off King's Road, London. Fleming and Bond biographer John Pearson identifies the square as Wellington Square, while John Griswold suggests that Markham Square is equally likely. Griswold notes, however, that neither possibility fully matches the details in Fleming's writing, which instead may have described a fictitious location inspired by real places.

Me, about to enter Bond in Motion

It is less certain, at least from the action on the screen, where the cinematic Bond lives, despite audiences seeing the inside of his apartment twice (in Dr No and Live and Let Die). That is not to say, however, that the film makers have not given Bond a home address. When I visited the Bond in Motion exhibition at the London Film Museum recently, I was interested to see some of the props prepared for some of the more recent films on display. These included passports, driving licences, and even a car rental contract, all prepared by or with the support of government agencies and commercial companies. They were in many respects genuine documents. Such attention to detail never ceases to impress me, especially considering that the props are barely seen on screen, if at all.

What especially intrigued me was the fact that the same home address was used in all documents on display from Pierce Brosnan- and Daniel Craig-era films: 61 Horseferry Road, Westminster, London, SW1. There were occasional variations – the Avis car rental agreement produced for Tomorrow Never Dies misspelled the first line of Bond's address as 61 Horsen Ferry Road, and gave the postcode as S1 – but essentially the same address has been used for some years through different Bond actors and changes in prop department staff.

Horseferry Road is not far from Bond's literary residence – King's Road is about two miles west – but fans wishing to add the address to their Bond-tour itinerary will not find the property. As Gary Giblin notes in his comprehensive reference work, James Bond's London (2001), 61 Horseferry Road does not in fact exist, which is just as well for a spy. The closest visitors can get to Bond's home is 65 Horseferry Road, which is the Westminster Coroner's Court, and, on the other side of the road, 62-64 Horseferry Road, which is home to the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.

Incidentally, while the passports produced for the Bond films were no doubt prepared with the help of HM Passport Office, some of them do not meet its strict official requirements. The passport prepared for Casino Royale's (2006) Vesper Lynd, on display at Bond in Motion, carries a photograph of Eva Green, who is smiling and has her head turned slightly to the side; the rules state that the individual must be facing forward, looking straight at the camera and wearing a neutral expression.

There were two other points of interest from my visit to the exhibition. One concerned the manual for the Aston Martin V12 Vanquish, which is also on display. This is the thick document that Bond 'shoots through' in a second or two in Die Another Day (2002). The front of the manual bears the words MI6 Q Division. I am not sure why or when Q Branch became Q Division (possibly the change reflected organisational realities in MI6), but the change does not appear to have survived the long absence of Q in subsequent films, which obviously precluded any replication of the term 'Q Division' either in the script or on props, or competition from the term 'Q Branch', which remains more culturally prominent. In Skyfall (2012), which reintroduces the character of Q, Daniel Craig's Bond shows Raoul Silva “the latest thing in Q Branch. It's called a radio”.

Something else that caught my eye was the two pairs of skis on top of Tracy's Mercury Cougar from On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). These were made by the Franz Kneissl ski company and, as the legend on the skis proclaim, are from “the world's first factory for plastic skis”. This is an interesting detail, and adds to the types of skis that James Bond uses. In the novel (published in 1963), Bond borrows a pair of aluminium skis made by Head, and reminisces about the steel-edged hickory skis he used in his youth.

The Bond in Motion exhibition was fascinating not just because of the many Bond cars it had on display (as exciting as they were), but also because of the props and other items of incidental interest on show. These gave an insight into the care and level of detail given to the production of props, and revealed intriguing information about James Bond.

References:

Giblin, G, 2001 James Bond's London, Daleon Enterprises
Griswold, J, 2006 Ian Fleming's James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies for Ian Fleming's Bond Stories, Author House
Pearson, J, 1973 James Bond: the authorized biography of 007, Sidgewick and Jackson