Who did Number 2 work for before SPECTRE?

Anyone who’s read Thunderball or seen the film will be familiar with how SPECTRE conducts itself at meetings. Members of the criminal organisation are identified by number (in the novel, numbers are changed monthly, Blofeld being Number 2 during the events of the novel; this contrasts with the film, in which Blofeld, as chairman, is always Number 1) and quizzed about their criminal fund-raising activities before getting down to the main item on the agenda, in this case the theft of two atomic bombs. This set-up has been imitated and parodied since – Austin Powers hit the mark pretty accurately – but apparently SPECTRE wasn’t the first criminal organisation to adopt this model.
 

Cover of the first edition, published by The Bodley Head (artwork by Ernest Akers)

Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary, published in 1922, features the pair of amateur sleuths, Tommy and Tuppence. In the novel, they’re on the search for a young woman, who’s gone missing after taking possession of a packet of secret documents, the contents of which would be dangerous in the wrong hands. 

The adventurous pair soon run up against members of a secret organisation who have a nefarious interest in the documents. At one point, Tommy follows one of the criminal agents to a house that transpires to be organisation’s headquarters, and finds himself eavesdropping on a meeting of the agent’s fellow members, an international cast of criminals that includes a Russian, an Irishman and a German. 

Hidden away, Tommy notices the arrival of another individual, who is allowed to enter the meeting room when he reveals his identity – Number 14 – to the doorman. Someone else arrives, gives his number, and gains access. Within the room, and at the head of the table, is Number 1, who, like Largo in the novel of Thunderball, is not himself the head of the organisation (who is known mysteriously as Mr Brown). 

Once everyone is assembled, they get down to business. One of the members requests more money from the organisation to pursue his part in the grand scheme. They read reports from various unions, which they have been infiltrating in order to spread discord and lay the foundations of revolution, which will be achieved with the release of the information contained in the missing documents. They agree that a certain union member, who might be a fly in the ointment, ‘must go’, and they discuss how they could induce the young woman to reveal the whereabouts of the package (‘In Russia we have ways of making a girl talk’).

Reading this, naturally I was reminded of Thunderball, and certainly there are similarities between the organisations in Ian Fleming’s and Agatha Christie’s novels: the use of numbers, the discipline, the international membership, the involvement of the unions, the threat of violence, and the business-like manner of planning world chaos. 

It seems that even in criminal organisations, there’s a standard way of doing things. Now there’s a thought – did Mr Brown and Blofeld attend the same evil business school?

From Thunderbird to Thunderball to Bond: what Ann called Ian

Classic 1956 advertisement for the Thunderbird

In an article published in the Spectator in April 1958, Ian Fleming revealed to readers that he was in love with his car. A Ford Thunderbird, to be precise. Fleming bought the car some two years earlier (for the sum of £3000), and could not get enough of its reliability, acceleration, economy, and streamlined looks.

His wife Ann was not so enamoured about the vehicle or Ian's enthusiasm for it, however, and complained that riding in the passenger seat gave her neck ache. Ian was so preoccupied with the Thunderbird that Ann began to refer to Ian as Thunderbird in her letters to her close friend, Evelyn Waugh. For example, she signed a letter dated May 1959 as Mrs Thunderbird, and wrote in another, dated July 1960, that “Thunderbird thundered into an ice-cream van.” Occasionally Ann abbreviated Thunderbird to T-B or Thunderb., but generally continued to use the name until Ian's death in 1964.

This was not Ann's only pet name for Ian Fleming. Inevitably, Ann's names began to reflect Ian's burgeoning success with James Bond. During her stay at Goldeneye early in 1961, Ann mentioned in a letter to Evelyn Waugh that she “found a giant octopus” and “fetched Thunderball expecting him to collect it.” Curiously, a month earlier in letter to Waugh, Ann wrote, “I shall refuse to be moss on a thunderball,” evidently playing on the expression 'a rolling stone gathers no moss.'

It is little wonder that the title of Ian's ninth Bond novel had been on her mind; at the time Ann wrote to Evelyn Waugh, she had been living with Thunderball well over a year. In early 1960, Ian wrote his first draft of the novel, which was based on film scripts written in 1959. The novel was to be published in March 1961.

With Ian Fleming's increasing success and fame, particularly following President Kennedy's inclusion of From Russia, With Love in his top ten books in 1961 and the cinematic release of Dr No in 1962, came another pet name. In a letter to Evelyn Waugh dated February 1964, Ann wrote, “At least I have persuaded Bond to give his public a rest,” and later that month, wrote again to Waugh to say that, “The Gleaner newspaper gave a luncheon party for Beatle Bond.” The names reflected the view, expressed by Ian Fleming himself as well as others, that there was much of Fleming in Bond, while Beatle Bond acknowledged the coincidence of two cultural phenomena – Beatlemania and Bondmania.

Meant as private jokes between close friends, Ann Fleming's pet names for Ian Fleming chart changing preoccupations and cultural events and offer a fascinating insight into Ann's attitude towards Ian's interests and the rise of the James Bond phenomenon.

References:
Amory, M (ed.), 1985 The Letters of Ann Fleming, Collins Harvill
Fleming, I, 1958 Automobilia, The Spectator April 1958

James Bond and the frogmen of World War Two

I've long resigned myself to the fact that the chances of finding a first-edition Fleming at a jumble (or rummage) sale are very remote indeed, certainly since the emergence of Amazon and ebay. But I still go to jumble sales in a hopeful frame of mind, and invariably manage to pick up other items that are of peripheral interest to the world of James Bond. Recently, for example, I acquired a paperback copy of The Frogmen: The Story of the Wartime Underwater Operators (Pan, 1950), by T J Waldron and James Gleeson. Ian Fleming drew on the exploits of wartime divers and frogmen when describing James Bond's exciting underwater episodes in Live and Let Die (1954) and Thunderball (1960), and so I bought the book to find out more.

In chapter 10 of Thunderball, Fleming tells us that SPECTRE used a “two-men underwater chariot identical with those used by the Italians during the war” to tow a sled to transport the captured atomic weapons from the submerged Vindicator aircraft. Later, in chapter 23, as he leads a unit of US submariners in an underwater battle against Largo's men, Bond encounters Largo sitting astride the chariot.

As The Frogmen reveals, the Italians were the pioneers of the chariot when engaging in underwater sabotage, and it was only when Italian 'charioteers' in 1941 successfully attacked the Denbydale and other British ships in the Mediterranean that Britain first became aware of this special means of warfare.

The Italian chariot, or human torpedo, was a 22 foot-long cigar-shaped craft that incorporated a detachable warhead containing 500lb of explosives. Two men sat astride the chariot, and, by means of a battery-powered propeller and compressed-air tanks to regulate depth, they moved slowly toward the target ship. Once there, the frogmen fixed lines across the ship's hull, tied the warhead to the lines, released the warhead and made their escape.

Realising the threat from the Italians, and not without a little grudging admiration, British naval chiefs turned to their technical divisions in early 1942 to create a similar craft and a range of other equipment, including rubber wetsuits and breathing apparatus. The British had managed to acquire Italian machines – 'Buster' Crabb was one of the first Britons to test out the Italian chariot – but they knew that if they were to stand any chance against the maritime threat and also conduct their own underwater operations, in colder waters, as well as in the relative warmth of the Mediterranean, they needed to research and develop, practically from scratch, their own capability.

By summer 1942, the British-built two-man chariot known as a jeep was ready for operations, along with other machines, such as 'X' craft, or four-man midget submarines, and single-seater underwater craft. (Incidentally, the smallest and least detectable of the single-seater craft was developed by a Quentin Reeves, known as Lieutenant-Colonel 'Q'.) At this time, a call went out for volunteers for 'special service', who, after a period of intense training, began their work.

British charioteers using a two-man torpedo

In Live and Let Die (chapters 18-19), Ian Fleming describes how Bond swims underwater to Mr Big's vessel, the Secatur, to plant a limpet mine. This was another weapon that saw much development during the Second World War; operatives became known as 'limpeteers'.

At one point during his swim, Bond is grabbed by an octopus and dragged towards its lair. Such a threat perhaps seems fanciful, but during the war, the risk to frogmen operating in the Far East from octopuses was considered serious enough by naval chiefs for guidance to be issued. This recommended that an operative grabbed by a tentacle stay absolutely motionless until the octopus become bored and let go. The guidelines added, not entirely seriously, that if the octopus became frightened, the operative should tickle the octopus underneath its armpits until it released its tentacles. Failing that, the frogman should jab it in the eye with a knife.

In his preparations for his underwater mission, James Bond orders cakes of shark repellent copper acetate and nigrosine dye, which had been developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory. Research by the Americans into anti-shark devices was active during the Second World War, and Waldron and Gleeson state that the products of that research – packets of black dye (the authors do not mention its ingredients) and containers of chemical crystals – were issued to British frogmen swimming through shark-infested waters.

Another of Bond's habits which alluded to wartime practices was his use of benzedrine tablets, which, in Live and Let Die, he takes ahead of his swim. Benzedrine is a form of amphetamine (colloquially known as speed), and during the Second World War its use was widespread, particularly by aircrews and frogmen on long, dangerous missions. Waldron and Gleeson describe how, for example, the crew of an 'X' craft engaged in a mission against a Japanese cruiser took benzedrine tablets to ward off sleep.

The Frogmen provided useful background information to episodes described in the Bond novels, but in reading it, I learned a lot about an extraordinary group of people, who undertook dangerous missions (such as clearing the waters off the northern French coast of mines before D-Day) using equipment that had been rushed into production with limited testing. I was certainly glad to have found a copy of the book in the jumble sale.

James Bond or Iron Man? Cultural references in jetpack-related stories

Think of jetpacks, and chances are the image of James Bond from Thunderball (1965) leaps to mind. Or maybe, at least for the younger generation, an image of Iron Man leaps rather higher. Judging by a number of recent jetpack-themed stories in newspapers and other media outlets, Iron Man is now competing with James Bond as the main cultural reference for journalists reporting on developments in the jetpack industry.

The most recent jetpack-related story to receive widespread coverage concerned Martin Aircraft Co. Ltd, a New Zealand-based company that's planning to become listed on the Australian stock exchange to raise capital to develop its jetpack prototype, the Martin Jetpack. This was essentially a business story, and much of the coverage was characteristically dry as one might expect from the business pages.

Some of the articles, for example in the Sydney Morning Herald and the New Zealand Herald, contained no cultural references, but there were a few nods to popular culture in others. The Australian Financial Review, for example, ran the headline, “Martin Jetpack Brings James Bond to Life.” ABC Online commented that the jetpack was “every child's fantasy, with imaginations fuelled for decades by film and television,” including, it suggested, Thunderball. The Wall Street Journal's article, in contrast, focused on inventor Glenn Martin's own inspiration, The Jetsons, and other American science-fiction shows of the 1960s.

As with buses, one waits ages for a jetpack story, then two stories come along as once. A few days before the Martin Jetpack story hit the news, media outlets were excited by the craze for water-powered jetpacks, which are being offered as tourist experiences around the world. The Telegraph reported on the Jetlev-Flyer, a jetpack experience based at Wyboston Lakes, near Bedford, UK, with the headline, “Unleash your inner James Bond: strap on a jetpack,” which was described as “part 007 gadget, part oversized garden sprinkler.” Co-owner of the franchise, Catherine Wheeler, asked as she strapped reporter Ben Saunders into a jetpack, “So do you want to be James Bond or Iron Man?”

Another water-powered jetpack experience, run by Jetpack America, is available near Las Vegas at Pahrump, Nevada. The Los Angeles Magazine reported on the facility and alluded to “Rocketeer” fantasies. Last year, Yahoo News reported on a similar facility in Hawaii, though its story focused on concerns raised by Hawaii's fishermen, marine biologists and state officials. The story's headline stated, “'Iron Man' jetpacks spark concerns in Hawaii,” and asked, “Want to fly like George Jetson or Iron Man?”

In May this year, another type of jetpack, the 'Go Fast Jet Pack', was featured in the Daily Mail with the headline, “Travel like Iron man! Mini wingless jet-pack lets man zoom around at speeds of 77mph (but only for half a minute).” There was a second Iron Man reference within the article: “The 'Go Fast Jet Pack' may not be a sleek as Iron Man's but it allows people to fly after 100 hours of lessons, much like the fictional super hero.” The absence of references to Thunderball in this case is curious, as the jetpack's manufacturer, Jet PI, based the design on the model developed in the 1960s by Bell Systems, which was responsible for James Bond's jetpack. 

It is reassuring, and testament to the significance of James Bond, that after almost 50 years, the Thunderball jetpack meme retains cultural currency. But Iron Man is nipping at James Bond's heels, and it is to the superhero that editors are beginning to turn in their jetpack stories. The likelihood of there being an allusion to James Bond also appears to depend in part on where the story is published. A US-based media outlet is perhaps more likely than a UK-based one to refer to American aspects of culture, while British outlets will lean more strongly to British cultural memes. In other places, such as Australia, there might be more of a mix, though in the case of jetpacks, James Bond remains important.

Why was Dr No the first Bond film?

My bedtime reading at the moment is David V Picker's memoir about his time in the film industry, Musts, Maybes, and Nevers: A Book About the Movies. In this very entertaining book, David Picker recalls his time as a film producer and, primarily, a studio executive, first at United Artists, then Paramount and Columbia. As head of production at United Artists, David Picker's job was to identify worthwhile and potentially profitable projects, help develop them, secure the money, and ensure that the films were delivered on time and to budget. Among the films he 'green-lit' were Midnight Cowboy, A Hard Day's Night, and, to the gratitude of millions of Bond fans, Dr No.

David Picker's account of how he said yes to Dr No offers an interesting perspective to the well known, and complex, story of how Fleming's novels made it to the screen (big and small), involving false starts, split ownership of rights, expiring options, and Fleming's idiosyncratic way of doing business. There are two aspects of Picker's tale, however, that differ from the standard narrative: the question of why Dr No and not Thunderball was chosen as the first Bond film, and Fleming's attitude towards films.

In his autobiography, When the Snow Melts (1998), Cubby Broccoli tells us that he and co-producer Harry Saltzman decided to film Thunderball as the first Bond film, but switched to Dr No to avoid legal complications when Kevin McClory, who had co-written the screen treatments on which Fleming's novel was based, filed an injunction to stop the film's development. This has long been the accepted version and is repeated in a number of books chronicling the history of the Bond films, among them Andrew Lycett's biography of Ian Fleming (1995), The Incredible World of 007 by Lee Pfeiffer and Philip Lisa (1995), and Bond Films by Jim Smith and Stephen Lavington (2002).

According to David Picker, however, the issue was simply about money. United Artists had set a budget of $1.1 million and David Picker felt that Thunderball would be too expensive to film. Dr No, on the other hand, seemed more achievable based on the parameters UA set. Picker implies that the suggestion of Dr No was his and that he persuaded Broccoli and Saltzman to consider the change. How far this is true is uncertain; everyone has their own view of an event, and it may be the case that the prohibitive cost of filming Thunderball was raised by Picker in addition to any discussion about pending litigation.

As for Ian Fleming's attitude to films, David Picker writes that his early attempts (independent of Saltzman and Broccoli) to secure the rights to film the Bond rights came to nothing, because, as he puts it, “Mr Fleming didn't like movies” and refused to sell the rights. I was surprised by this, as according to Andrew Lycett, Ian Fleming very actively pursued film and TV deals. Indeed, Fleming deliberately made Moonraker cinematic to attract film makers, and his novel Dr No was based on one of his screen treatments, Commander James Gunn. While Fleming's interest flagged after so many expressions of interest and preliminary developments stalled, it doesn't appear likely that Fleming ever refused to sell the rights to his novels.

I have to admit being sceptical of both David Picker's claims. That they have gained little foothold in 'Bond history' may be a reflection on the degree of their veracity. From a memetic perspective, they have had little chance of competing with the established narrative, not least because David Picker's version has been little known. In contrast, the memes that legal action prevented Thunderball from being the first Bond film and that Fleming was willing to make a deal for film rights have become well established in the cultural environment, and reinforced through repetition with the publication of each new history of the Bond films.

Enton Hall - the real Shrublands

In 1956, Ian Fleming entered Enton Hall, a health farm near Godalming in Surrey, for a course of naturopathic treatment; his wife Ann had visited the clinic earlier in January of that year, and would be a regular guest. Andrew Lycett tells us that Ian Fleming did not take his treatment seriously, and often escaped the hall with another patient, Guy Welby, whom he had befriended, for drives in Welby's Rolls Royce. Nevertheless, Fleming's stay at Enton Hall had sufficient impact on him to provide the inspiration for Shrublands, a health farm which James Bond visits in Thunderball (chapters 2-4). Despite the different name and location (Sussex), Shrublands is a thinly-disguised Enton Hall, as a comparison of Fleming's text with a contemporary brochure issued by the health farm reveals.

The brochure sent out to prospective guests at the time of Fleming's visit is Enton Hall: A Residential Clinic and Health Farm Devoted to the Renewal and Preservation of Health by Natural Biological Methods. It is undated, but a copy I managed to acquire includes a price list dated October 1963. It was almost certainly unchanged from the brochure issued in 1956. Ann Fleming mentions the brochure in a letter to Evelyn Waugh dated 13 January 1956, noting that while the dining room looked melancholy, she was encouraged by the plates, which were heaped with food. The plates were still there in the brochure issued in 1963.

In Thunderball, James Bond arrives at Shrublands in a taxi. As stated in the brochure, Enton Hall similarly sent taxis to collect guests from the local station, and no doubt Fleming used this service. We know from Bond's earlier conversation with Miss Moneypenny that he's staying in the Myrtle room in the Annexe. Enton Hall also had rooms in an annexe (the Oak House), and the charge for these was 22 guineas a week (about £23), a figure very close to the 'twenty quid' for a week's stay that Bond's taxi driver mentions. As Bond enters the grounds of Shrublands, he passes an “imposing, mock-battlemented entrance”, a description that applies equally well to the gateway of Enton Hall.

Enton Hall gateway

Bond's taxi continues round the gravel drive to the front of the main house, a “red-brick Victorian monstrosity”, where the sun-parlour and terraced lawn are situated. Again the description matches Enton Hall, a red-brick Victorian building with a sun-lounge and south-facing lawn at the front.

Enton Hall: front of building

After being shown to his room, Bond flicks through a copy of Alan Moyle's Nature Cure Explained, which had been left beside the bed. Enton Hall's brochure does not mention the book, but the health farm's methods were utterly in keeping with its principles. As stated in the brochure, treatment “is based on the biological approach as incorporated in Osteopathic and Naturopathic Philosophy.” It is possible that Fleming was introduced to Alan Moyle's book during his visit to Enton Hall in 1956.

Walking around Enton Hall, he notices that his fellow guests wear “unattractive quilted dressing-gowns.” This no doubt reflects the rules of the clinic; at Enton Hall, the brochure instructed patients to bring a warm dressing gown, as patients were not to dress fully until after consultation and treatment. Alas the brochure does not show 'the rack', the motorized traction table to which Bond is grievously subjected, but we do see a photograph of the 'Gentlemen's treatment room' (and staff wearing short-sleeved 'smock-like' coats), which, just like the gentlemen's treatment room at Shrublands, was divided into compartments by plastic curtains.

Enton Hall: Gentlemen's treatment rooms

Before Bond faces 'the rack', though, he enjoys 'dinner' (hot vegetable soup in a mug) in the sun-parlour at a “little café table near the windows overlooking the dark lawn.” If an illustrated version of Thunderball were ever produced, then the illustrator could do no better than reproduce the image in the brochure captioned 'View from sun lounge'. The photograph, showing two men at a little café table at the window overlooking the lawn, precisely illustrates Fleming's description, which was almost certainly written with Enton Hall in mind.

Enton Hall: The sun lounge

The brochure produced by Enton Hall confirms that Shrublands was closely modelled on the health farm that Fleming visited in 1956. The scenes Fleming describes are there in the brochure, and one also wonders whether the treatment Bond receives (with the exception of 'the rack') is identical to that given to Fleming. As with much of his fiction, the Shrublands passages are detailed and convincing, not only because of Fleming's desire for accuracy, but also because they describe his own experiences.

References
Amory, M (ed.), 1985, The Letters of Ann Fleming, Collins Harvill
Lycett, A, 1995, Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond, Turner

Photographs by Enton Hall Ltd

More on Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

In an earlier article, I discussed the origin of the phrase, 'Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'. The phrase, which became widespread around 1964/5, is usually attributed to the Italian fans or press, but I revealed that Ian Fleming had used a similar phrase. His version – 'bang, bang, kiss, kiss' - appears in an article based on a 1963/4 interview published in 1965.

In fact, we can place Fleming's usage some seven or eight years earlier. In 1959, The London Magazine published a tribute written by Fleming to his friend Raymond Chandler, who had died that year. In his article, Fleming presented a selection of correspondence between him and Chandler in which they discussed, among other matters, books, writing, and authors (they both admired Eric Ambler and Dashiell Hammett).

In a letter dated 27th April 1956, responding to Chandler's view that, despite his favourable review of the book, Diamonds Are Forever contained some bad parts, Fleming admitted that he probably didn't take his own writing seriously enough. Fleming suggested that while Chandler's novels were 'sociological studies', his were 'pillow fantasies of the bang-bang, kiss-kiss variety'. 

Of course, we needn't make a direct link between Fleming's 'kiss, kiss, bang, bang' phrase, and the later variant used in Italy. But the closeness of both variants points to something of a 'common ancestor' from which both originated. In other words, the phrase already had a degree of currency in cultural space, certainly before the phrase gained greater prominence with the release of Thunderball in 1965, and probably before Fleming put his words in a letter to Raymond Chandler in 1956.

References

Fishman, J, 1965 007 and me, by Ian Fleming, in For Bond Lovers Only (ed. S Lane), Panther
Fleming, I, 1959 Raymond Chandler, The London Magazine, vol. 6, no. 12

Hitchcockian moments in the Bond films

The website Letters of Note recently publicised the telegram from Ian Fleming to fellow novelist Eric Ambler in which Fleming asks whether Alfred Hitchcock would be interested in directing the film project that he and Kevin McClory were developing (and which would become Thunderball). While Hitchcock never directed a Bond film, his influence can be detected throughout the Bond series. Let's look at some of those key Hitchcockian moments.

If Hitchcock had directed a Bond film, then it probably would have looked something like From Russia With Love, which is the most Hitchcockian of the whole series, and there are characteristic elements from the very start: the opening pre-titles sequence, which misleads the viewer into thinking Bond has been killed; the Lektor decoding machine, which provides a strong macguffin to drive the plot; duplicitous or ambivalent characters (Red Grant and Tatiana); the use of a restricted location (the Orient Express); and naturally the homage to North by Northwest as Bond is attacked by a helicopter.

North by Northwest is recalled again at the climax of A View to a Kill. The sequence on top of the Golden Gate Bridge, as Bond battles Zorin and rescues Stacey Sutton, brings to mind Hitchcock's use of famous landmarks, such as Mount Rushmore (North by Northwest) and the Forth Rail Bridge (The 39 Steps). Indeed, this element is use twice in A View to a Kill, as earlier in the film the narrative takes us to another landmark, the Eiffel Tower.

Then there are moments in the Bond films of genuine Hitchcockian tension. Of particular note is Bond's escape from Piz Gloria in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the pursuit by Blofeld's men down the mountain to the village. Just as tense is Bond's attempt to defuse the nuclear bomb in the middle of the circus in Octopussy. Both sequences allow the tension to build before being resolved, and the tension is heightened by the juxtaposition of danger and jeopardy with celebration and happiness (a Christmas event and a circus). These recall films such as Strangers on a Train, which ends at an amusement park, and Notorious, which features a scene where Devlin (Cary Grant) and Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) surreptitiously investigate a wine cellar in the midst of a party.

Before the party, at Devlin's request, Alicia had taken the cellar key, from her father, a Nazi sympathiser, without his knowing. There is a similar Hitchcockian element in Thunderball, when Bond asks Domino to locate nuclear bombs on Largo's boat, thus putting her in danger.

Like From Russia With Love, For Your Eyes Only has a very strong macguffin, in this case the ATAC device. The film also presents a classic Hitchcockian character in Kristatos, who we think is on Bond's side, but is actually the villain. The concealed intentions of Live and Let Die's Rosie Carver is rather Hitchcockian, as is her checking into Bond's hotel as Mrs Bond, which along with all uses of false names at hotels in the Bond films, recalls The 39 Steps and the scene where Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) and Pamala (Madeleine Carroll) stay at a Scottish Inn under false names.

There are doubtless other Hitchcockian moments in the Bond films. While the involvement of Hitchcock in the Bond series presents an interesting 'What if?', we can see shades of his style throughout the series.

James Bond and alternative medicine

Recently I acquired an addition to James Bond’s library: Nature Cure Explained (1950), by Alan Moyle. The book is waiting for Bond on the bedside table of his room at the Shrublands sanatorium. As described in Thunderball (1961), Bond is ordered there by M to undertake a two- to three-week abstemious regime to improve his physical fitness. Bond turns to the book shortly after his arrival (Thunderball, chapter 2) and manages to get through 12 of its 19 chapters, discovering in the process that Nature Cure, or naturopathy, is ‘the application of natural laws’ through fasting, balanced and special dieting, exercising, and hydrotherapy among other means to maintain good health and prevent disease. Evidently M has read the book too. His views on denatured food, the harm of conventional medicine, and his reference to pioneers (usually Austrian or German) of the naturopathy movement (chapter 1), are taken direct from the pages of Moyle.

To some extent, naturopathy sits on the milder end of the alternative medicine spectrum. Alan Moyle’s manifesto for a balanced diet includes the consumption of whole foods, abundant fruit and vegetables (preferably raw), fair quantities of dairy products, and little meat. Sixty years on, much of Moyle’s assertions would find little disagreement. We accept without question the health benefits of wholegrain products, and pass on the ‘wholegrain-is-good’ meme to the next generation as naturally as we transmit our genes. Society, too, has long rejected foods that contain additives and preservatives, something much despised by Moyle. Words like ‘natural’, ‘pure’, and ‘fresh’ are scrawled over food packaging like graffiti under a railway bridge, and while the food displaying such labels is not necessarily those things (as Which? noted), it is nevertheless a recognition that consumers seeking a healthy lifestyle form a significant population.

One also cannot argue with Moyle’s claim that exercise is very beneficial, although his insistence of exercising in the nude, as well as his view that the ‘uplift [in morale] arising from the freedom from clothes’ leads to ‘a healthier outlook on sex’ reminds us of naturopathy’s links with the naturism movement, and recalls the film of badminton-playing naturists eagerly watched by Sid James in Carry On Camping.

Moyle is likely to have fewer supporters, however, for his preference for sour milk (replacing pasteurised milk, which Moyle claims is robbed of nutrients), the recommendation to fast once a year for seven days (ideally in the ‘eminently suitable’ period of spring), and his special diets, like the potato diet (breakfast: potato and onion broth; mid-morning: potato and onion broth; lunch: baked or steamed potatoes; supper: baked or steamed potatoes and potato and onion broth). More worrying is Alan Moyle’s assertion that a cold is the body’s way of telling us that it is clogged with poisons from unhealthy living and needs to be brought back into balance; fried food, he maintains, is one cause of colds.

But Alan Moyle’s rejection of conventional medicine is dangerous. Drugs, he claims, suppress disease, not cure it. The only way to treat disease is to rectify the underlying cause – a result of a violation of the natural laws – by fasting, dieting, water treatments, and so on. Maintaining Nature Cure obviates the need for medicines, as one is less likely to become ill. To be fair, Moyle expressed his views a long time ago when research into viruses or the causes of cancer was at its infancy. However, today’s naturopathy movement retains this principle, though acknowledges that ‘short term measures which assist in the removal of symptoms for the comfort or safety of the individual’ are sometimes necessary.

Returning to Thunderball, how does James Bond cope with his nature cure? He is put on a course of strict dieting, massage, irrigation (presumably colonic), hot and cold sitz baths, osteopathy, and some traction. This final treatment, incidentally, is not mentioned by Alan Moyle, and may have been an plot device original to Fleming or derived from another source. We learn that Bond consumes vegetable soup and, later, orange slices. He has massage, including effleurage, which, ‘acts on the cutaneous nerves and superficial vessels’ (Moyle 1950, 155). The results? Reduced blood pressure, weight loss, osteopathic lesions gone, and clear eyes and tongue (chapter 4). On his release from the clinic, Bond initially maintains the diet, replacing his usual breakfast of boiled eggs, toast and coffee with yoghurt. But the regime is short-lived. SPECTRE has stolen two atomic missiles and Bond is ordered to the Bahamas to investigate. For this, Bond needs some proper food, and he breaks his diet with scrambled eggs, smoked bacon, hot-buttered toast (‘not wholemeal’, he tells May, his housekeeper), and double-strength coffee.