James Bond at the Intelligence and Security Committee

Intelligence chiefs at the ISC ('C' in the centre). Photo: The Guardian

When UK’s spy chiefs appeared before the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee last week, it was inevitable that James Bond would be referenced in the extensive media coverage of the event. James Bond is a standard cultural touchstone for any espionage-related story, but allusions to Bond were especially relevant on this occasion, as Judy Dench’s M faces the same committee in Skyfall (2012). In the film, the committee was chaired by Gareth Mallory, played by Ralph Fiennes. His role in reality was taken by Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP.

A trawl through the coverage in British media brought up various James Bond references. The headline for a comment piece by Julian Huppert in The Guardian read, “Spy chiefs can give evidence without the sky falling in – so let's reform oversight,” an obvious reference to Skyfall. An editorial in same paper contrasted popular perceptions of spy work with reality by alluding to Bond villains, white cats, and steel-rimmed bowler hats. In a parliamentary sketch in The Daily Mail, Quentin Letts wrote of “a petite Miss Moneypenny, taking notes” behind Sir John Sawers, chief ('C') of MI6. A piece by Alex Stevenson in the online edition of Metro had the headline, “Spy chiefs grilled: James Bond’s bosses hit back hard,” and suggested that C's performance at the committee hearing was not as exciting as the portrayal we're used to in the Bond films. In the print edition of Metro, a cartoon by Robert Thompson showed a Blofeld-like character (of Donald Pleasence type) in a chair stroking a white cat. He says to an image of Bond on a TV screen, “Ah, Mr Bond, I've been expecting you.” “Yes, sorry there's a two minute time delay,” Bond replies, referring to the small transmission delay in the broadcast of the proceedings.

On BBC Radio 4, Eddie Mair, presenter of the PM programme began his broadcast with the words, “On Her Majesty's Not So Secret Service,” and the BBC's security correspondent, Frank Gardner introduced his report by saying, “It wasn't Skyfall.” Even before the committee met, the BBC was reaching for references to Skyfall in its reporting on the upcoming event. On Radio 4's Today programme, a segment by correspondent Gordon Corera used clips of M's scenes in front of the committee.

As for the appearance of the spy chiefs themselves, fact mirrored fiction as some of what the committee heard was not too dissimilar from what M tells the committee in Skyfall. In his opening remarks, Sir John Sawers said, “It is not like it was in the Cold War. There are not states out there, trying to destroy our Government and our way of life, but there are a very wide range of diverse threats that we face.” This could have been one of M’s lines. She tells the committee, “I'm frightened because our enemies are no longer known to us. They do not exist on a map. They're not nations, they're individuals. And look around you. Who do you fear? Can you see a face, a uniform, a flag? No. Our world is not more transparent now, it's more opaque. It's in the shadows.”

I was also reminded of M’s speech when Andrew Parker, Director General of MI5, told the committee, “The task that we are all paid to do is to keep the country safe. That is challenging and difficult work to do; and where the techniques we have are compromised, that makes our work even harder.” This echoes the appeal about operational matters that M makes: “So before you declare us irrelevant, ask yourselves, how safe do you feel?”

James Bond has long been something of a recruiting sergeant for the intelligence services (at least unofficially), but it was still remarkable to hear Sir John Sawers mention him: “I think the idea of sending an agent off into the field like James Bond and then he comes back two months later and reports... That does not work that way. Our people in the field will have constant communication with us through our stations or direct to head office. And they can communicate very rapidly.”

Ironically, far from being unrealistic, MI6 as portrayed in recent James Bond films has increasingly been working in a manner that Sir John Sawers would recognise. James Bond, particularly in the Daniel Craig era, is less a lone wolf sent out by M and relying on his wits and judgement (and some gadgets) to complete the mission, and is more part of a team which provides backup and feeds information and resources to Bond while in the field. M has also played a more active role, staying in regular contact with Bond and even going out into the field.

As I suggested in an earlier post, this in part reflects the fact that communication is much easier today than it was in the early days of the Bond films. As technology has evolved, the Bond films have naturally kept pace with it; Bond without a mobile phone is now unthinkable, and there is now no reason for Bond to stay incommunicado (except perhaps when held prisoner or in a situation where to attempting to communicate would be dangerous). A more active M also reflects the reality of accountability and oversight that Government (and society) demands of our intelligence services. The Bond films have moved, again probably without too much deliberation, with this trend. Besides, given his experience on the Intelligence and Security Committee, I expect the new M, Gareth Mallory, will be no different to his predecessor and will continue to direct, or be regularly updated on, Bond's next mission.

Returning to the media references to Bond, memes that emerged in the Sean Connery era – the Blofeld of You Only Live Twice, the white cat, Oddjob's hat – continue to endure. It is no surprise, too, that given its huge success, Skyfall has also provided elements that, a year after the film's release, have retained their cultural currency. M's appearance at the Intelligence and Security Committee is one element that is likely to be as enduring in cultural space.

Ian Fleming's top ten books

I was honoured to be asked to write a guest post on the top ten books of Ian Fleming and James Bond for the excellent blog, Artistic License Renewed: An Art and Literary James Bond Blog and Tribute to Richard Chopping. My list of Ian Fleming's top ten books based on his interviews and writing and other sources has now been posted. Click here to read the article.

The music of For Your Eyes Only – by Bill Conti, with a hint of Ennio Morricone

There’s a scene in For A Few Dollars More (1965) where Clint Eastwood's Monco and Lee Van Cleef's Colonel Mortimer watch the bank of El Paso and wait for the arrival of El Indio and his men, who are going to rob it. The music, reflecting the tense mood and anticipation of the robbery, is a nerve-jangling and unpredictable sequence of piano chords, bells and percussion. But as I was watching the scene the other week, the score reminded me of music from another film, For Your Eyes Only (1981).

The music leading up to the bank robbery in For A Few Dollars More is characterised by a discordant sequence of drum rolls, short combinations of low notes on the piano, random beats of more drums, the striking of low piano chords, and chimes of a bell. And then, as El Indio arrives, we hear the blast of a horn that goes on forever. With a cut to a view of the safe timed with the striking of a bell and low piano chord, the music sequence ends.

Listen now to the scene in For Your Eyes Only in which Bond, after leaving Bibi Dahl at the biathlon event, is pursued by Kriegler. As Bond skis through the trees, and Kriegler attempts to get a clean shot, we hear an unsettling sequence of staccato motifs (mainly from the piano), muted rolls of the snare drum, a few searching strings (or other instrument), and crashing piano chords. And when Bond skis off the roof of a building and manages some impressive spins over the heads of henchmen on motorbikes, we get a long blast of a horn. The music sequence terminates with a few more piano chords and the striking of a bell that coincides with a shot of the ski jump building.

To me, the similarity between the two scores is uncanny. Structurally they are very close, and both employ the same devices of piano chords, drum beats, bell chimes and that wonderfully long horn blast. The pieces of music no doubt utilise a range of standard musical tropes that typically accompany such scenes of tension and suspense, but I wonder too whether Bill Conti was to some extent inspired by Ennio Morricone's music when he scored his sequence. Indeed, Jon Burlingame suggests as much in his excellent book, The Music of James Bond. In a very small way, the sound of the spaghetti western is present in the world of James Bond.
 
Note: I was unable to find the clips on YouTube, but the relevant DVD chapters are 21 (For A Few Dollars More) and chapter 12 (For Your Eyes Only).

The rise and fall of Bondmanship

Reading the latest MI6 Confidential, which is excellent as ever, I was intrigued by the reprinting of a 1963 article on 'Bondmanship: the latest rage', which charted the rise of James Bond fan-clubs in 1962 and 1963. The James Bond phenomenon has been responsible for coining (or perpetuating) a number of words and phrases – Bond girl, Bond villain, kiss-kiss-bang-bang, among them – which have entered cultural consciousness and have to lesser or larger extents endured. Bondmanship (at least, in relation to James Bond) is one of those words which have proved less successful. But what is Bondmanship, and why is the word little used today?

In the MI6 Confidential article, Bondmanship is explicitly linked to James Bond fan-clubs. Unlike Bond fan clubs today, whose function is usually to publish newsletters and magazines, keep members up to date on Bond news, and offer forums for discussion of all things Bondian, some of the earliest James Bond clubs brought together people who wished to experience something of the James Bond lifestyle (or at least their version of it), whether that was gambling at exclusive casinos, mixing vodka martinis, drinking the best wines, or seducing elegant ladies (the MI6 Confidential article suggests that these clubs tended to have all male memberships). This was in essence Bondmanship.

The rise of James Bond clubs was so phenomenal, that the Daily Express published an article in February 1963 about the University of Oxford's own James Bond club. Members (presumably male) had identified one Joanna Hare, an undergraduate and daughter of a government minister, as the university's answer to the sort of woman that James Bond meets. And William Plomer, Ian Fleming's literary editor, mentioned the “admirers [who] have formed James Bond clubs” in his address at Ian Fleming's memorial service in September 1964.

But this definition of Bondmanship, emerging from the activities of James Bond clubs, is not the only one. An article in the US newspaper, the Daily Times, dated July 1963 has the headline, “Real 'Bondmanship': Film Makes The Brave Braver as James Bond Rides Top Herd.” For the author, Erskine Johnson, Bondmanship is what differentiates Sean Connery's James Bond, as portrayed in Dr No and From Russia With Love, from other film heroes. Thus, Bondmanship is sweeping “beautiful ladies off their feet” while outwitting “the bad men”, being “braver than Errol Flynn”, or, in the context of “James Bond vs. Russia”, turning "the borsht [sic] into bitter tea.”

By mid 1963, then, the meaning of Bondmanship, still a new word, had begun to diverge, possibly precisely because it was a new word. No one meaning was yet firmly embedded in cultural space, and the word, spreading without any associations except James Bond in a broad sense, was sufficiently adaptable to gain several meanings.

Ultimately, however, Bondmanship was a meme with a short life. It seems to have fallen out of use after the decline of 'Bondomania', which also halted the rise of James Bond clubs, and may even have been little heard by 1965. It is notable that Kingsley Amis' The Book of Bond (1965), which is devoted to what would be recognised as Bondmanship, uses the phrase '007ship'. And in The Bond Affair (1965), edited by Oreste Del Buono and Umberto Eco, there is a description of 'the Bond style'. Today we tend to talk about experiencing the James Bond lifestyle, rather than practising Bondmanship.

It is uncertain why Bondmanship as a phrase didn't catch on, but it seems that Bondmanship didn't achieve a sufficient level of cultural penetration to give it longevity. After all, the word cannot be passed on from one person to another if no one's using it.

What's in store for Young Bond 2?

As announced by Ian Fleming Publications, the adventures of Young Bond will be continued by children's author Steve Cole and pick up where Charlie Higson's first series left off, with James Bond expelled from Eton College and about to resume his education at Fettes in Edinburgh. We know something of Bond's life at Fettes from his obituary in You Only Live Twice, and in an interview for the regional UK newspaper The Bucks Herald, Steve Cole revealed that Bond will be aged 14 or 15, and that the stories will be set in the 1930s and describe Bond's encounters with the Secret Service and his uncle, a spy. But can we glean any further information about what to expect in the new series from Ian Fleming's own experiences and Steve Cole's work?

Bond's obituary (written by M) records that the atmosphere of Fettes was Calvinistic. Quite what this means in practice is unclear, but given the starting point of Calvinist teaching that humanity is totally depraved, and that no amount of good will redeem one in the eyes of God, the college's masters would probably have regarded all their charges as innately sinful, and presumably discipline would be strictly enforced to ensure that pupils' behaviour was acceptable (M hints at this when he describes standards as rigorous). In this oppressive atmosphere, the young Bond may become rebellious – if he was to be a sinner, he might as well have a proper bash at it and sin in style – just as Ian Fleming rebelled at Eton. Andrew Lycett records that Ian Fleming racked up a series of misdemeanours and was birched for them, and that after befriending Ivar Bryce (who would become a lifelong friend), he'd play truant and chase girls. Possibly young Bond's behaviour will mirror Fleming's to some extent.

According to the obituary, Bond was inclined to be solitary. This individualistic nature is reflected in the sports at which Bond excelled: athletics, boxing, and Judo. Like his creator (Fleming also excelled at athletics, winning a long-jump competition and a hurdles title at Eton, and achieving the very rare feat of becoming champion athlete or victor ludorum two years in a row), Bond is likely to eschew team sports and be happiest away from the classroom competing on the track or in the ring.

The information in the obituary that Bond set up a Judo club, the first for a British public school, is especially interesting. This reveals that Bond has a good knowledge of martial arts, and we should expect him to use it in the course of his adventures. But it also demonstrates natural authority, commitment, determination, and the ability to plan and think innovatively, possibly in the face of opposition (qualities that Fleming showed during his time in Naval Intelligence during the war).

So much for Bond's school life. Do Steve Cole's published books give any clue about the nature of his adventures? The author is probably best known for his Astrosaurs, Cows in Action and Slime Squad series. These are written for younger children, but his books for teenagers are just as acclaimed. One of his series for older children features a protagonist who has something of a Bondian quality about him. In the Tripwire series, teenager Felix Smith, avenging the death of his father at the hands of terrorists, is recruited into a secret service, Minos Chapter, and becomes a bomb-disposal expert. Each adventure pits Felix against a diabolical organisation with an evil plan, and sees him race against time to solve the clues and find and defuse the bomb set for devastation. Possibly the young Bond will also find himself racing against time to beat that ticking clock. Tripwire was co-written by bomb-disposal expert, Chris Hunter, demonstrating a desire for accuracy that would have pleased Ian Fleming, and we may expect the new Young Bond series include its fair share of technical and authentic details.

Z. Rex is another series for older children. In this, thinking, talking mutant dinosaurs are brought to life and threaten the world. Fourteen-year-old Adam Adler befriends one (Zed) and together they battle beasts – and the beasts' masters – intent on wreaking havoc. While the Young Bond series is likely to have little in common with Z. Rex, the use and abuse of science (an aspect of course touched upon in Fleming's Moonraker and On Her Majesty's Secret Service) might be a theme common to both. Steve Cole's The Wereling series, which is about a family of werewolves, seems much further removed from the type of adventures we can expect young Bond to have, although I wouldn't be surprised to see aspects of the occult creeping in from time to time (and indeed given Fleming's apparent interest in the subject, expressed for example in Live and Let Die, this too would not necessarily be un-Bondian).

As Steve Cole says in interview, the main source for Bond's teenage years is the obituary in You Only Live Twice. But taking a memetic perspective – acknowledging that authors writing about James Bond tend to look to Ian Fleming's experiences to fill gaps in Bond's, and suggesting that authors' interests and background are likely to influence their writing – we can put forward a few ideas about what we can expect in the forthcoming Young Bond series. I for one can't wait to read it!

Reference:
Lycett, A, 1995, Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond, Turner

Newspaper reviews of Solo: some observations

After I finished reading William Boyd's Solo, I caught up with some of the newspaper reviews of the book, which I had been avoiding. The reviews were the usual mixed bag – some were positive towards Solo, others negative, some I enjoyed, and felt offended (as a Bond fan) by others – but as I read them, I noted a few points of interest that made me think about the relationship between the film and book Bonds.

Let's start with basics confusions between Fleming's Bond and the Bond of the cinema. To my knowledge, the worst culprit was Robert Crampton, who wrote a review for The Times. The headline of his piece, “Neither shaken nor stirred”, summed up his opinion of the book, but perhaps he would have been better disposed to the book had he not expected it to be a novelisation of a Bond film. Crampton bemoaned the absence of 'sexual banter' between Bond and Moneypenny, and thought Bond's falling in love with 'one of his conquests' (doesn't Bond want to marry his companion at the end of practically every adventure?) and his feelings of ambiguity towards his mission (you mean, as expressed in Casino Royale, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and You Only Live Twice?) were a sop to modern values. In fairness, Crampton hasn't been the only one to complain that the villain, Kobus Breed, is more of a henchman than a Bond villain, but hollowed-out volcanoes, death rays and minions in pyjamas, the sort of things which Crampton would have liked to have seen, are hardly a staple of Fleming's novels. And Crampton also spoke of the 'regulation two shags', which also owes more to the films than the books.

But Robert Crampton hasn't been the only reviewer confuse the books and the films. Sarah Warwick's review of Solo in The Northern Echo mentions that Q is “present and predictable” (but not in Fleming, of course), and Jon Stock, writing in The Telegraph, lists Bond's meeting with Q as one of the standard Bondian tropes that would “satisfy Bond aficionados”. (Mind you, it has to be said that Boyd's Quentin Dale of Q Branch – and for that matter, John Gardner's Ann Reilly – would probably not have existed had there not been a Q character in the films.)

Something else I noticed was that if Jeffery Deaver's Carte Blanche, the last continuation novel before Boyd's effort, was mentioned at all in the reviews of Solo, it was usually mentioned in neutral or negative terms. This is surprising, because a trawl through the reviews of Carte Blanche in the main UK newspapers reminded me that Deaver's novel was generally received positively, more so, it seems, than Solo has been. But I wonder whether this reflects uncertainty about what reviewers (and perhaps other readers) expect from a continuation novel. Should it be modern-set and updated like the films, or a period piece to follow on from Fleming's last novel? The consensus appears to change with each new continuation novel. Deaver's novel was widely lauded on publication, then dismissed as an oddity after the publication of Solo. But then reviewers of Solo have criticised Bond as a character out of place and out of date, who should be resurrected no more. Continuation authors can't win. As David Leigh says, the authors have a thankless task.

One other observation concerned the use of images to accompany the reviews. Most reviews of Solo that I read were illustrated by an image of the cover, or were not illustrated at all. Where images of Bond actors were used, however, these were either of Sean Connery or Daniel Craig. I thought newspapers missed a trick by not using images of George Lazenby, whose tenure as Bond dates to the same period in which Solo is set, but evidently there was a trend for selecting images of the first and current Bond actors. The reasons are obvious enough. Connery's Bond – or at least certain traits or memes associated with him – is so firmly embedded in popular culture that he has become a fixed point of reference. Daniel Craig's Bond also has cultural prominence, but the absence of previous Bond actors suggests that this will decline; any review of a continuation novel published during the tenure of Craig's successor is likely to feature images of that actor along with those of Connery.

The reviews of Solo have been entertaining, and occasionally annoying (just like the book itself, perhaps), but they have revealed that the literary Bond cannot be completely isolated from the cinematic Bond, and with the use of film series memes in the continuation novels themselves, the Bond of those novels has to some extent become a hybrid of the two Bondian traditions or species. The reviews have also suggested that Sean Connery's Bond continues to loom very large in the popular perception of the character.

A review of William Boyd's Solo

Ian Fleming said that the recipe for a bestseller was to “get the reader to turn over the page”. Early book sales notwithstanding, on this basis, William Boyd's own James Bond novel, Solo, has succeeded. It is a fast-paced adventure, by turns exciting, surprising, reassuring, and sobering, that at times takes Bond, and the reader well out of their comfort zones.

The story begins at the Dorchester hotel in London. Bond is in reflective mood as he celebrates his 45th birthday alone and recalls a dream which explores his wartime service (an ingenious nod to Bond's creator). Later returning to the office, M briefs him on the civil war in the fictional West African country of Zanzarim, sending Bond there with the vague mission to end the conflict. In Zanzarim, Bond meets his contact, the beautiful Blessing, and encounters the horribly disfigured and very dangerous mercenary, Kobus Breed. Events ultimately lead him to Washington on a solo mission of revenge. There he meets with an old friend as he pursues his unauthorised mission and attempts to make sense of events.

James Bond is his familiar self, and Boyd has peppered the books with the usual Bondian traits and foibles. Bond consumes scrambled eggs, wears shoes without laces, refuses offers of tea, smokes incessantly, and is always in reach of a drink. To be honest, the 'Bondisms' become a little distracting, as the narrative pauses yet again to describe Bond's latest meal or the clothes he wears. Certainly, Fleming indulged in such descriptions, but Bond's traits emerged gradually over the course of twelve novels. Not even Fleming described every meal of Bond's in detail. It is a trap that is evidently all too easy for continuation novelists to fall into, but a degree of restraint is important, and makes the difference between classic Bond and pastiche.

Still, this is of minor concern, as William Boyd impresses in other areas, in particular his convincing descriptions of Zanzarim. Boyd's knowledge and affection for West Africa is evident, and his portrait of the fictional landscape will have readers almost reaching for the atlas. The late 1960s is also effectively evoked with references to the moon landing, the Vietnam war, mini skirts and cinema releases. And with Solo being his fourth espionage novel, Boyd knows his spy lore. Readers might recognise Bond's rule that “if it looks like a coincidence then it probably isn't” from Boyd's earlier work (Restless, if memory serves).

We can trace some tropes or memes further back. Boyd lifts the idea that one vomits after being struck on the head from Fleming ('Risico'), who in turn borrowed it from Raymond Chandler. And despite Boyd's assurance, given at the recent Boyd on Bond event at the Southbank Centre, that Solo contained no traces of the cinematic Bond, inevitably elements of the film series have crept in – a quip or two that could have been uttered by Sean Connery's Bond (or even Roger Moore's), Bond's relationship with Moneypenny, and a Q-like character, for example.

Solo is shaped by all the essential Bondian ingredients, and still allows Boyd to assert his own voice. But even with the exotic African location, the familiar faces, and Bond doing what he does best, my thoughts kept returning to Bond's role in the Second World War. Boyd's writing here is at its most Fleming-esque, and I wanted to read more. Is there scope for a full-length wartime-set Bond adventure? I really hope so. Indeed, any author tackling it might find it a more rewarding proposition than penning a straight continuation novel, being less constrained by the habits and peculiarities of the older, weary 007. The adventures of Young(er) Bond? I'd definitely read those.