Ian Fleming 1908-2008 Centenary
Celebration Article - 28 May 2008
Today, 28 May 2008, Ian Fleming
is having his centenary celebrated by his many fans and admirers around the
world, and he has rightly been placed firmly at the top of the James Bond tree
once again, due to the efforts of the Fleming family through Ian Fleming
Publications. There have been commemorative stamps featuring various James Bond
novel covers issued by the Royal Mail in January 2008; an exhibition at the
Imperial War Museum entitled ‘For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming + James Bond,’
detailing the similarities and differences between the creator and his
creation, the most famous fictional secret agent in the world, and today there
has been the hotly-anticipated ‘literary event of the year,’ the publication of
the new “period” James Bond novel, DEVIL MAY CARE, with best-selling author
Sebastian Faulks “writing as Ian Fleming.” In October 2008 Daniel Craig is set
to return in his second appearance as James Bond in QUANTUM OF SOLACE,
appropriately an off-beat previously little-known short story (outside of the
realms of Bond fandom) by Ian Fleming, in this his centenary year. This
refocusing on Ian Fleming on the occasion of what would have been his 100th
birthday also serves to remind us of the ubiquitous nature of Fleming’s
enduring creation, James Bond. James Bond, as both a literary and cinematic
character really does turn up everywhere, and this sometimes results in him
also turning up in the strangest of places.
Focusing on the character of
James Bond in the printed medium, it will be observed that Bond has cropped up
in many weird and wonderful, as well as unexpected, places. It illustrates the
fascination James Bond has engendered throughout the decades since his creation
that he has turned up in so many interesting places. It is also a joy for the
Bond fan to uncover these often hidden gems between the pages of the most
un-Bondian looking of magazines, journals and books. Such finds often uncover
some interesting facts as the writers are looking at Bond from perhaps an
off-beat angle or in a new way that a Bond fan might never consider.
Kingsley Amis, later the first
official continuation James Bond author, in his excellent study of the literary
Bond, THE JAMES BOND DOSSIER (1965) wrote of one such interesting encounter he
had with Bond in a rather bizarre place:
“A much more thorough
arms-inspection than Mr Boothroyd’s was carried out more recently by Bob Glass,
evidently an American handgun specialist, in an article called ‘The Gunnery of
James Bond’. I read this in a magazine called Snakes Alive (Trinity,
1963) which, since it’s the journal of the Belfast Medical School, is probably
not generally circulated among Bond fans. For all I know, Mr Glass’s piece
appeared elsewhere earlier, but I can find no trace of this. In any event,
it’ll do no harm to recall here some of his observations...”
(Kingsley Amis, ‘The James Bond
Dossier,’ Pan Books Ltd., London, 1966,
pp. 118-9.)
Another example of James Bond
turning up in an unexpected place occurs between the pages of an issue of Practical
Television magazine, again I suspect, to use Amis’s words, a publication
“probably not generally circulated among Bond fans.” In the May 1967 edition of
Practical Television, in the section entitled ‘Underneath The Dipole’
there is a photograph of Mr Osata, Helga Brandt and a Japanese technician
sitting around the control panel in Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s hollowed-out
volcano, with a guard standing in the background. The caption below the black
and white photograph reads:
“The latest James Bond film “You
only live twice”, [sic] to be released in the autumn, is also to include
electronic gadgetry. This time a television control centre, bristling with all
the latest gear, in the side of a volcano. The photograph – wait for it, it’s
classified information – was taken at Pinewood Studios.”
(Iconos, Practical Television,
Volume 17, No.8, Issue 200, May 1967, p. 351.)
There had been no mention made of
James Bond earlier in the two-page round-up of what was going on “underneath
the dipole.” A “dipole” in the television context is an aerial consisting of a
horizontal metal rod with a connecting wire at its centre. So “underneath the
dipole” here means the television set itself. The photograph was seemingly just
included to highlight the fact that the “white heat” of British and other
television technologies would soon be turning up in a significant new British
film, and that everyone clearly knew who James Bond was. It could be
seen as a small way of adding a little visual sparkle, through a Bond
reference, to an otherwise “routine” Practical Television section.
Although there is no specific mention of James Bond in the articles which
accompany the photograph from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, there is interestingly a
mention made of the television series THE AVENGERS, which was featuring future
Bond stars Patrick Macnee (as John Steed) and Diana Rigg (as Miss Emma Peel) at
the time. Iconos, the bespectacled author of the section, under a heading of
“Credit – where credit’s due” writes:
“I would be a strong advocate for
credits, both for actors and technicians – providing the viewer was given time
to read them easily, without disturbing background flashes and “jump cuts” or
loud brash musical discords. For example, everyone knows who the stars are of The
Avengers; but without keen eyes it is difficult to see who the excellent
supporting actors are – unless you know them by sight, anyway!”
(Iconos, Practical Television,
Volume 17, No.8, Issue 200, May 1967, p. 350.)
One more recent example (though
there are certainly countless more out there waiting to be discovered by Bond
fans) occurs in Criminal Law Textbook by Russell Heaton LL.B. At the end
of each section in the textbook, Heaton places a typical Criminal Law problem
question for students to practice what they have learnt so far. In Question 4.2
Heaton falls back on the novel, or perhaps film of, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE for
inspiration on writing a problem scenario that will surely not unfairly
reference too many of the students, or other academic readers, surnames:
“Bond hails a taxi, but when it
stops Kleb rushes into the taxi ahead of him and slams the door in his face
jeering, ‘Ladies before gentlemen, Mr Bond.’ Bond shouts obscenities at her and
Kleb yells, ‘You’re going to pay for that Mr Bond. I’m going to shoot you.’
Bond, fearing he is about to be shot, panics and leaps over a wall into the
river running alongside the road. He is swept away by the current and, although
he is pulled from the river, his breathing has stopped. His breathing is
restarted by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but it is discovered that he has
suffered permanent brain damage, even though he does not die.
Discuss the criminal liability,
if any, of Kleb.”
(Russell Heaton, ‘Criminal Law
Textbook,’ Second edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, pp. 521-2.)
Heaton has here taken the
characters of James Bond and Colonel Rosa Klebb from both the novel and film
version of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and played out a neat little scenario with
them, only slightly amending ‘Klebb’ to ‘Kleb,’ and having Bond panic and jump
into a river due to Kleb’s possible ‘technical assault,’ as opposed to being
kicked by Klebb’s poisoned-tipped blade shoes which leads to the harrowing
final sentence in Fleming’s fifth novel,
“Bond pivoted slowly on his heel
and crashed headlong to the wine-red floor.”
(Ian Fleming, ‘From Russia, with
Love,’ Pan Books Ltd., London, 1964, p. 207).
The reference in the scenario by
the villainous Kleb to ‘Mr Bond’ is also another unmistakably knowing Bond
element Heaton mentions. Heaton’s suggested answer to the problem question is
given at the back of the textbook and it covers sections 18, 20 and 47 of the
Offences Against the Person Act 1861, each covering grievous bodily harm (GBH)
with intent, inflicting GBH and assault occasioning actual bodily harm (ABH)
respectively. On Kleb’s criminal liability Heaton concludes:
“Therefore there is a probability
that she would be convicted under s. 47 but acquitted of offences under ss. 18
and 20.”
(Russell Heaton, ‘Criminal Law
Textbook,’ Second edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, p. 523.)
Heaton’s Criminal Law Textbook
is again another unexpected place to find a Bond reference, especially as it is
one that appears so knowing of the Fleming canon.
From these three disparate
examples of James Bond turning up in the strangest of places it can be
concluded that Ian Fleming’s enduring creation is a truly ubiquitous
phenomenon, and in his centenary year of 2008, we can be assured that Ian
Fleming’s memory and work will live on for many years to come. James Bond’s
ubiquity after fifty-six years since his creation in 1952, nearly forty-four
years after Fleming’s death in August 1964, and one hundred years after
Fleming’s birth, is certainly a fitting tribute to the remarkable talents of
his too often forgotten creator. In the spirit of Ian Fleming’s own research,
it would be interesting to hear of any of the other strange, bizarre and
unexpected places other James Bond fans have encountered the world’s most
famous fictional secret agent. Such encounters can cover James Bond articles,
photographs or general references in initially unexpected or strange places.
With all of this in mind, the
next time you see a copy of the likes of National Geographic, The
Economist, Reader’s Digest or the Financial Times don’t just
pass on by the newsstand uninterested but take the chance to delve into their
pages. With the evidence of the strange examples quoted above, in passing by
you conceivably might just miss an unexpected nugget of James Bond “gold”!
This article is written in memory
of Ian Lancaster Fleming (1908-1964) thanking him for the great pleasure he has given readers of many
different hues the world over, and wishing him all of the recognition he richly deserves on the 100th anniversary of his birth, 28 May 2008.
TBB Article No. 11
© The Bondologist Blog, 2008.
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