In an article in the Times published on April 20th, journalist Oliver Moody reported on the opening up of the archives of one of the UK's most famous high-street retailers, Marks and Spencer. Of special interest was the description of how, in the decades following the end of the Second World War, Marks and Spencer introduced new foods, often to bemused, suspicious, and culinary conservative consumers. Looking at some of the foods mentioned, the piece could have been describing James Bond's typical diet, which serves to remind us just how unfamiliar and exotic Bond's food was to the early readers of Ian Fleming's novels.
One of the items that consumers had particular trouble with was the avocado, or the 'avocado pear'. The fruit was introduced into Marks and Spencer's stores in 1959, six years after Fleming described James Bond eating an avocado in Casino Royale (1953). In the intervening time, avocados remained a rarity, and so when they appeared on the stores' shelves, naturally consumers were confused about how to eat them. According to Marks and Spencer records, consumers routinely attempted to eat avocados as a dessert fruit. Apparently one lady stewed the fruit and served it with custard. (That's not to say that the avocado can never be used as a dessert fruit, avocado fool, a preparation made with blended fruit, cream, icing sugar and lemon juice, being a perfectly good exception).
If only consumers had turned to Fleming for guidance. Admittedly, in Casino Royale (chapter 8), Bond eats half an avocado as a dessert to accompany Vesper Lynd's strawberries and cream, but at least the preparation – the avocado is served with a little French dressing – is correct. And in Live and Let Die (1954), Quarrel serves Bond and Solitaire an 'avocado pear salad', which we know is intended as a savoury course, because for dessert guavas and coconut cream is on the menu (chapter 23).
Returning to the Times' piece, Oliver Moody lists spaghetti bolognese, hamburgers and prawns as some of the items that began to find a regular place on the British dinner tables during the 1960s and 70s, items with which James Bond was again already familiar. In New York Bond enjoys a 'flat beef Hamburger' (Live and Let Die, chapter 1), and lunch with Goldfinger includes a prawn – well, shrimp – curry as a first course (Goldfinger (1959), chapter 11). And in Thunderball (1961, chapter 4), while recuperating at Shrublands health farm, Bond fantasises about eating 'a large dish of Spaghetti Bolognese containing plenty of chopped garlic'. No doubt the reference reflected Fleming's own tastes, and during 1960 Fleming became something of a connoisseur of Italian food. Describing his visit to Naples in June that year in his Sunday Times' 'Thrilling Cities' series, Fleming recommended the local speciality, spaghetti alla vongole, although a postcard written by Fleming and his wife Ann to Evelyn Waugh mentions the “feelthy sphagetti” [sic], with Fleming commenting that he'd prefer Naples to London “if the food were better”.
Today, Bond's diet seems mundane, old-fashioned, even. Much of the food that Bond consumes that was once exotic and exciting is now commonplace, and indeed in Britain has long been incorporated into the national culinary identity. Retailers, such as Marks and Spencer, along with the growth of foreign travel, have played a significant role in this transformation, but James Bond was responsible in part, at least, for introducing the idea of the food to a public emerging from the restrictions and austerity of the 1940s and 50s. As Fleming said, “My contribution to the art of thriller writing has been to attempt the total stimulation of the reader all the through, even to his taste buds.”
References
Amory, M (ed.), 1985 The letters of Ann Fleming, Collins Harvill
Biddulph, E, 2009 'Bond was not a gourmet': An archaeology of James Bond's diet, Food, Culture and Society 12.2, 131-50
Fleming, I, 1963 Thrilling Cities, Cape
The title of William Boyd's James Bond novel, due to be published in the UK on 26th September, was announced at the London Book Fair. The book will be called 'Solo'. As the HMSS Editors point out, Solo recalls the 1960s TV series, The Man From UNCLE, and specifically the character Napoleon Solo, which Ian Fleming had a hand in creating. A Mr Solo of the Unione Siciliano was also a character in the novel Goldfinger (chapter 17, Hoods' Congress). It seems unlikely that these references were in William Boyd's mind when he settled on the title, although a villain with a Napoleon complex might count as a nod to Fleming's role in The Man From UNCLE!
More seriously, the official press release includes a statement by William Boyd, which provides a strong indication as to the significance of the title. In the novel, Bond will "go solo" on a "self-appointed mission of his own, unannounced and without any authorization." What's more, Boyd has confirmed that the book will be set partly in Africa. Given Boyd's interest in the continent, there had been speculation that he'd send Bond there, and in an earlier post, I suggested that Bond would visit West Africa, possibly Nigeria (perhaps relating to the events of the Biafran War). However, 1969 proved to be momentous year for many reasons, and I also reflected on the events that Boyd might allude to in the novel, if not directly involve Bond.
For more information and discussion about William Boyd's Solo, I also recommend The Book Bond, The James Bond Dossier, and the novel's official website.
I recently listened to a short extract of Ian Fleming’s interview on the BBC’s radio programme, Desert Island Discs. Little of the broadcast, originally made in August 1963, survives, although we have a record of the music, books and luxury item Fleming would have taken with him to the hypothetical desert island (a list that all 'castaways' appearing on the long-running programme have to provide).
Fleming's responses to presenter Roy Plomley's questions are likely to be familiar to any student of Fleming, and concerned Fleming’s early career, his war exploits, how he came to write the first Bond novel on the eve of his wedding, his writing regime, the origin of Bond as a mixture of wartime commando and secret service agent, and so on. But the interview also offered, for me at least, some additional information. At one point in the interview, Plomley asked Fleming about criticisms of violence and sadism in his books. Fleming replied that “the old days of getting a crack on the head with a cricket stump have rather gone out”, continuing that he thought it “ridiculous to go on writing thrillers in the old Bulldog Drummond, John Buchan way.” The response was similar to something he said in interview with Jack Fishman (published in 1965 in For Bond Lovers Only): “I didn't believe in the heroic Bulldog Drummond types. I felt these types could no longer exist in literature.” His Desert Island Discs interview reveals that he had added Buchan's Richard Hannay to his list of out-dated heroes.
I wonder, though, whether Fleming's later interviews incorporated a relatively new response that had been repeated and honed to provide a neat explanation for the style of his books, but wasn't necessarily in Fleming's mind when he began to write them. In his discussion with Raymond Chandler on thriller writing, broadcast in 1958, Fleming addressed the subject of torture and violence. “I was brought up on Dr Fu Manchu and thrillers of that kind”, he said, admitting that “even Bulldog Drummond gets in the grips of the villain.” The implication is that Bond wasn't the first hero to be routinely tortured by the villain, and that the Bond novels follow a tradition that existed in the books Fleming read as a child. Certainly, Fleming didn't reject those books as old-fashioned in that discussion, but it is possible that over time Fleming developed a narrative to explain his style and to offer in response to criticisms of 'sex, sadism and snobbery'. It was a narrative that looked more strongly to American style thrillers and away from Bulldog Drummond and other 'clubland' heroes.
While the Bond books have a pace, a sense of location, and a level of sex and violence that clearly derive from hard-boiled thrillers, in particular Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, connections to the books of Fleming's childhood, notably in relation to his villains, cannot be ruled out. Moonraker's Sir Hugo Drax, for example, has more than a passing resemblance to Carl Peterson, the villain of Sapper's Bulldog Drummond novels, while Dr No could come from the pages of Fu Manchu (which Fleming admits in his Fishman interview influenced his writing).
When tennis champion Andy Murray returned to the beach after a swim in the sea in Florida recently, the UK's tabloid press was struck by a remarkable similarity. In that moment, Andy Murray was Daniel Craig's James Bond emerging from the sea in Casino Royale (2006). “Watch out Daniel Craig! Andy Murray has his very own James Bond moment as he emerges from sea after Miami Masters win,” read the Daily Mail headline. The Daily Express reported that Murray “jumped into the sea before emerging to show off his toned torso just like 007 star Daniel Craig.”
Even a cursory glance at the photograph of Andy Murray and the image of Daniel Craig in the sea in Casino Royale shows that the comparison is superficial to say the least. Murray's shorts weren't even close to Craig's La Perla trunks, and the only factors to support the comparison were that both Murray and Craig happened to be in the sea, they were walking towards the beach, and were well-toned. But while the comparison was tenuous, it was also inevitable, as Andy Murray follows a long line of celebrities who have been compared to James Bond simply after being photographed wading out of the sea.
In July 2010, when fashion designer Giorgio Armani was photographed in the sea wearing a pair of unflattering Emporio Armani Speedos, a headline in the Daily Mail read, “Giorgio Armani, 76, fails to pull off the Daniel Craig look in his tight white swimming trunks.” A year later, however, Armani had chosen a better pair of trunks, and this time the Daily Mail reported that he “looked fighting fit on the beach” on the island of Formentera, adding that Armani's reception the previous year, which the Mail reminded readers drew unfavourable comparisons with Daniel Craig, was perhaps what prompted the change of trunks.
Singer Rod Stewart was matched against Daniel Craig when he was seen on the beach of St Tropez in 2007. The Daily Mail's headline read, “Rod looks less 007 and more double oh no in his alarmingly tight trunks.” And in January that year, TV and radio presenter Jonathan Ross caught the eye of the Daily Mail when he was photographed on a Florida beach. Admittedly, his trunks were similar to those worn by Daniel Craig, though for the Mail the comparison was again not in his favour. “He cut a slightly less dashing figure than the muscular Craig as he played Frisbee at the water's edge”, opined journalist Kristina Pedesen.
Female celebrities enjoying a swim in the sea have not escaped the tabloid gaze either, and inevitably the media turn to another classic image from the Bond films for their principal reference point: that of Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder emerging from the sea onto the beach of Crab Key in Dr No (1962).
In March 2012, lawyer Nancy Dell'Olio was compared to Ursula Andress as she posed on a Jamaican beach for a Hello! magazine shoot. Despite the fact that Dell'Olio's bikini was frilly and purple, while that of Ursula Andress was white with belt and knife accessories, the Mail ran the headline, “Making waves: Nancy Dell’Olio, 50, strips down to a bikini to re-create THAT Dr No beach scene.” Later, in June 2012, Sally Bercow, the wife of House of Commons Speaker, John Bercow, was snapped returning to the beach after a swim in Barbados. The Daily Mail reported that she “appeared to be doing her best to impersonate Bond girl Ursula Andress.”
The use of the comparison isn't confined to the Daily Mail. A September 2010 edition of the Daily Express reported on a fashion shoot on a Florida beach at which former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, modelled a white bikini. “Geri spices up the beach in a Bond girl bikini”, ran the headline. An earlier edition, published in April 2006, reported that Scarlet Johansson was holidaying at the Goldeneye resort. Prompted in part by the significance of the location, as well as the fact that Scarlet Johansson was photographed wearing a bikini, the Express commented that “she is more than a match for the legendary Ursula Andress.” A rather weaker link to the beach scene in Dr No was made in the Express in January 2002. Tennis star Anna Kournikova, playing in a tournament in Auckland, happened to be wearing belted shorts, but that was enough to prompt a comparison with Ursula Andress' iconic scene. The shorts were “designed in a style similar to Bond girl Ursula Andress’s famous bikini in the 1962 film, Dr No”, the paper reported.
In fact, it is not difficult to find celebrities being compared to Daniel Craig or Ursula Andress when trawling through any UK tabloid newspaper. For example, a quick search of The Sun website brought up articles in which comedian Jimmy Carr and actor Adam Sandler had been photographed on the beach and compared to Daniel Craig, and singers Sarah Harding and Ashlee Simpson had been compared to Ursula Andress.
Yes, it's lazy journalism (and it's debatable whether any of these features actually merit publication), but it nevertheless provides evidence that two iconic scenes in the Bond series have a life beyond the films and the context of James Bond and function successfully as memes in their own right. The scenes are memorable, they are frequently recalled and are persistent.
That said, it is notable that none of the newspaper stories pre-dates 2002. Obviously no one could be compared with Daniel Craig before 2006, but it seems that routine comparisons with Ursula Andress weren't made until after well after 2000. It is possible that a rise in such comparisons in the media reflects a change in the style of journalism over the years, but a resurgence in the popularity of the Bond series evident since Pierce Brosnan's tenure as Bond and during three significant anniversaries over the past 10 years (40 years of the Bond films, Ian Fleming's centenary, and 50 years of the Bond films) is likely to have been an important factor. Such renewed interest has led, for example, to endless polls of favourite Bond scenes or celebrity recreations of iconic scenes. The Bond films themselves have brought fresh attention to Ursula Andress' beach scene, specifically Halle Berry's nod to the scene in Die Another Day, and Daniel Craig's own beach scene, which, while not necessarily written as a homage to Ursula Andress, naturally invited comparisons in the media. And any interest that Ursula Andress' scene gains reflects back on Daniel Craig's scene, which then attracts more attention, setting up something of a feedback mechanism.
With the beach scenes of Daniel Craig and Ursula Andress equally well established in cultural space, comparisons are irresistible to newspaper editors, who now have instant reference points every time a female or male celebrity is photographed staggering out of the sea after a swim.
While the James Bond of the cinema is rarely seen carrying a book (a volume on heraldry in On Her Majesty's Secret Service is a rare example), the literary Bond is, well, more literary. You can find a general discussion of the books on Bond's bookshelf here, but in this post I want to focus on one particular volume – Profiles in Courage by John F Kennedy and published in 1956.
Profiles in Courage appears in Ian Fleming's final full-length novel, The Man with the Golden Gun (1965). Bond is in Jamaica on the trail of professional hitman Francisco Scaramanga. In chapter 7, Bond arrives at his hotel, settles into his room, calls room-service, and reads Profiles in Courage as he sips an ice-cold bourbon.
Fleming undoubtedly knew the book well. The chapter to which Bond turns, which is an account of US senator Edmund G Ross, who at the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868 saved the president from conviction, is indeed subtitled, 'As I looked into my open grave'. This is chapter 6 out of 11; the book also includes profiles on president John Quincy Adams, 19th-century senators Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, Lucius Lamar, and George Norris, and 20th-century senator Robert A Taft.
By referencing Kennedy's book, Fleming returned the compliment that Kennedy paid him when in 1961 he included From Russia, with Love in a list of his top ten books. Fleming's reference was also something of a tribute to Kennedy, who had been assassinated in November 1963. Earlier that year, Fleming had dined with Kennedy, and the two had got on enormously well, especially when Fleming suggested some innovative ways of dealing with Fidel Castro. It is notable that in the reference in his novel, Fleming uses the more familiar 'Jack Kennedy', rather than 'John F Kennedy'.
The edition shown here is a 1961 paperback. We don't know what edition Bond reads, but no doubt Bond would have found a paperback convenient for travelling, being easily packed in his suitcase.
Reference:
Lycett, A, 1995 Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond, Turner
Charles Helfenstein has done it again. After astounding the Bond-fan community with his exhaustive account of the making of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the author has returned with another extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at a Bond film. Why Helfenstein settled on The Living Daylights is not explained, but like On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Timothy Dalton's first Bond film represents something of a milestone for the series, heralding a more serious Bond firmly rooted in Fleming, which continues to resonate today in the era of Daniel Craig.
Helfenstein's examination of the film begins with Ian Fleming's short story of the same name. The origins of the story lay in the murky landscape of 1960s' Berlin, the front line of the Cold War where defection, assassination, clandestine meetings, shady deals and acts of notorious individuals were a near-daily occurrence. As usual, Fleming distilled a tremendous amount of research into the story, having for example visited important locations, read up on the latest sports rifles, and perused catalogues of classical recordings for the perfect music to defect to. Fleming also took a personal interest in the illustration to accompany the story's publication in the Sunday Times Magazine. The image, a heart pierced by an arrow, had originally been considered for the dustjacket of The Spy Who Loved Me, and recalled the bleeding hearts motif of the Casino Royale first-edition cover art. Unfortunately for Fleming, the design was rejected for a second time.
Most of the Helfenstein's book, though, is naturally concerned with the film adaptation. After Roger Moore resigned from Bond duty in 1985, early drafts of the Bond film to follow A View to a Kill presented an origins story for Bond, taking him back to his time as an officer in the Royal Navy and his early brushes with British intelligence. Bond is introduced to the key personnel – M, Q and Moneypenny – and, 26 years before Skyfall, is returned to his ancestral home in Scotland. The ideas of Skyfall may seem radical, but their seeds were planted long before.
The treatment, however, was rejected, and screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Michael G Wilson began work on what would become The Living Daylights. Helfenstein dispels the myth that screenplay was written with Roger Moore in mind, although it is notable that the film's story boards show a Bond that looks remarkably like (a youthful) Roger Moore.
But with Roger Moore hanging up his Walther PPK, who was going to play Bond? That Pierce Brosnan had actually been awarded the role before his commitments to the TV show Remington Steele pulled him away is well known, but there were a host of other candidates in the running. There were, as well, many more names mentioned by the press, which has served to confuse the history of the casting. While Helfenstein is correct to name Mark Greenstreet as one of the actors who auditioned for the role, I am not certain that his information on Trevor Eve is so accurate. Though the author, citing John Glen, names him as an official candidate, Trevor Eve, in response to my enquiries, told me that he was never screen-tested, though he did have an informal meeting with Barbara Broccoli.
Ultimately, the prize of playing Bond went to Timothy Dalton. Reading Helfenstein's book, one is reminded of just how committed Dalton was to the role. He read and analysed the Bond books for clues to his portrayal, and was quoted as saying that he approached the role with a responsibility to Fleming's writing. Dalton was keen to perform as much stuntwork as he could (“I was terrified”, said second-unit director Arthur Wooster), while director of photography, Alec Mills, remembered Dalton's intensity: “You really believed he was going to kill him [Koskov]”.
For director John Glen, filming in Austria reacquainted him with the locations of The Third Man, on which he was assistant editor, and these, along with the shared themes of subterfuge and intrigue, allowed Glen to repeat some of the tricks of The Third Man and in places give The Living Daylights the look of a classic film-noir.
The Living Daylights opened to very healthy ticket sales and a generally favourable reaction. Helfenstein has assembled a collection of reviews, both positive and negative, that remarkably could have been written today in response to any of Daniel Craig's films. Variety thought the film a “cut above the series norm of super-hero fantasy”, while Time suggested that “the film forfeits sniggering humor [sic] to accentuate action and character.” Some of the negative reviews focused on the villains, who were thought not sufficiently larger than life or deadly enough, and pointed to the film's relative lack of humour. “Fight scenes are conducted in grim silence and in the most swift and expedient fashion”, wrote the BBC's Tom Coates.
Charles Helfenstein's book, lavishly illustrated, is a superb achievement, and deserves to be read by every Bond aficionado. In light of Daniel Craig's portrayal, the book also reminds us that, while Timothy Dalton's Bond was not necessarily ahead of its time – The Living Daylights packed cinemas and Dalton's tenure was assured into the 1990s – the direction in which Craig's films have been taken was a path first trodden back in 1986/87 (and indeed intermittently through the Pierce Brosnan era).
Sebastian Faulks, author of the continuation James Bond novel, Devil May Care, is to turn his attention to another English literary institution and continue the adventures of PG Wodehouse's best-known characters. Invited by the Wodehouse estate to revisit the world of Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves, Faulks' novel, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, will be published in November.
Just as with Bond, Faulks encountered Jeeves and Wooster from an early age, reading his first Jeeves story by the age of 12 (he first read Fleming aged 13). And both Bond and Wooster have been victim to Faulks' ingenious literary parodies, initially written for the BBC radio quiz, The Write Stuff, and subsequently published in the 2006 volume, Pistache. In his Fleming parody, Faulks imagined Bond shopping in a supermarket. For Wodehouse, Faulks gave Wooster the voice of Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled detective, Philip Marlowe.
Beyond these rather loose connections, the worlds of Wodehouse and Fleming have only fleetingly coincided. When we are introduced to Donovan 'Red' Grant in Fleming's From Russia, with Love, we learn that Grant is reading, or at least carries for form's sake, a copy of Wodehouse's 1913 novel, The Little Nugget. As far as I can tell, Wodehouse doesn't appear to have returned the compliment by having one of his characters read a Bond novel, but there are suggestions in his novels written after the release of the film of Dr No in 1962 that Wodehouse responded to the success of the Bond films.
Frozen Assets, published in 1964 (the year Goldfinger was released and a year after the release of From Russia With Love) features a sub-plot in which one of the main characters, Christopher Biffen, or Biff, is persuaded to take who he thinks is a Russian spy to a club to get him drunk and reveal his secrets. But “aren't international spies inclined to be on the cagey side?”, Biff wonders. In Do Butlers Burgle Banks, Wodehouse's novel published in 1968 (a year after the release of You Only Live Twice and Bond spoof Casino Royale), burglar Horace Appleby, having been away, asks one of his gang-members, Ferdie the Fly how he occupied himself during Appleby's absence. “Went to the pictures...one of those spy things”, is the response. And in The Girl in Blue, published in 1970, we learn that Crispin Scrope, owner and resident of Mellingham Hall had not acquired the taste for any book with spies or a couple of good murders.
Well, as George Baker's Sir Hilary Bray says in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, “It's not the sort of thing we rely on”, but it is possible that these references to spies reflect an awareness of the Bond films (and novels) and growing 'Bondmania', just as a passage in Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (published in 1974) in which Bertie Wooster encounters a protest march in London, reflects a period of protest against the government and the Vietnam War, among other issues.
In any case, there is one more certain connection between Fleming and Wodehouse – a dislike of a particular way of serving boiled eggs. In Live and Let Die, when Bond and Solitaire eat at a diner in Jacksonville (chapter 12), Bond complains of the American habit of serving boiled eggs mixed up in a teacup. Galahad Threepwood has the same complaint in Wodehouse's Galahad at Blandings (1965). “When you ask for a boiled egg, they bring it to you mashed up in a glass”, he complains.
