Simply submit a picture or two on the associated thread of you in Bond clothes, in a Bond situation or living the Bond lifestyle.

Why should you do this?

For the prizes of course!  Companies that support the Bond lifestyle have donated some wonderful prizes that will certainly enhance anyone’s collection. A small panel of judges will be judging your pictures throughout the contest.

If you want to increase your likelihood of winning simply combine as many components into the pictures themselves. For example you in a Sunspel shirt is good but you in a Sunspel shirt by an Aston Martin is better!

As an example see our very own Quartermaster The Mantis:

By the way, there are NO extra points for showing expensive clothing and accessories so an outfit from Walmart has as much a chance of winning as a Tom Ford suit…it’s all about capturing the moment and emotion of Bond…be creative!

The contest starts TODAY and will continue through to the end of August so you have plenty of time to get yourself into all types of “situations” that might make a great photo entry or two.

Enter now on Absolutely James Bond…

So what can I win?!

Absolutely James Bond and The Zaritsky Archive are offering some amazing prizes for the aspiring James Bond, some which are coming direct from the The Zaritsky Archive!

1. First prize: Fernando Guillén Cuervo’s screen used shirt from Quantum of Solace. Fernado was the Colonel of Police that betrays Mathis and Bond.
2. Second Prize: James Bond wardrobe from Sunspel including a special boxed set of James Bond clothes.
3. Third Prize: James Bond Prop set including a The World Is Not Enough Talkabout, a You Only Live Twice piranha, a diamond and Marching Band Tape from Diamonds Are Forever and a ballast ball from For Your Eyes Only.
4. Fourth Prize: A Mixer recipe book from Smirnoff, Heineken Bond bottle opener, and a set of Cartumundi Cards.

I think you will agree some amazing prizes and well worth having a go! So what are you waiting for agent 007…

How do I enter?

It’s simple, photograph yourself (or have someone do it for you) looking like James Bond. Upload the photo to the James Bond Lifestyle Competition topic. You may post up to two photos of yourself, any further photos will be removed.

When posting on Absolutely James Bond you will see a new option underneath the posting toolbar. The ‘Add image to post’ link opens a new window which allows you to upload your photo.

1. Enter any text then press return to enter a couple of new lines. It is best to insert your images one line under any text.
2. Click the ‘Add image to post’ link.

1. Click ‘Browse’ to locate your image file on your computer or memory stick. – Leave all other options as they are. Adult content is not supported on Absolutely James Bond.
2. Click the ‘Upload It!’ button and your photo will be uploaded.
3. The code to display your image will automatically appear in the post box at position 1 on the first image.

Visit the James Bond Lifestyle Competition topic and post your pictures.

Competition Extended!

Due to popular demand the competition has been extended until the end of August, that’s a whole extra month to photograph yourself. If you’re going on holiday why not take some Bond props along!

Competition Terms and Rules

By submitting your photo(s), you agree to the following rules, terms and conditions:

All photos entered will be evaluated. Images will be judged on originality, creativity, overall photographic and artistic quality, and how much it is an original representation of an ‘ultimate Bond moment’.

Limit of TWO entries per person!

The contestant must own all rights to any photographs entered in this contest. It is the responsibility of the contestant to ensure that publication of the photographs raises no legal claims. Anyone under the age of 16 must have parental consent before publishing their photos.

The photo does not have to be taken by you, but the photograph’s author must be aware of the submission.

Digital enhancement is permitted! International entries are not only welcome but encouraged.

All prizes must be accepted as awarded, and are not convertible to cash.

Photos thought to be outside of the above criteria may be removed from consideration without the contestant being notified. The judges decisions are final.

Additional Terms and Conditions
By participating in the contest, you agree to release and hold harmless Absolutely James Bond (ajb007.co.uk), sponsors, affiliates, and advertising and promotional agencies from any and all damages, injuries, claims, causes of actions, or losses of any kind resulting from your participation in this contest, including infringement of intellectual property rights. Absolutely James Bond, sponsors, affiliates, and advertising and promotional agencies assume no responsibility or liability for any damages, injuries, claims, causes of actions, or losses of any kind arising in whole or in part from this contest.

Enter before it’s too late…

Visit the James Bond Lifestyle Competition topic to see others entries and post your own.

Restored versions of Dr. No (7th June), From Russia With Love (14th June), Goldfinger (21st June) and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (28th June) will show at 60 cinemas around the UK. Each has been digitally restored frame by frame, with fading, dirt, scratches and other defects removed to leave the movies as sharp as the day they were filmed.

If you want to see what that looks like in practice, check out the Park Films website for a full list of venues.

http://www.parkcircus.com/jamesbondsundays/

A Breitling 806 Navitimer and Rolex 6238 Pre-Daytona Chronograph

It should be noted that this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every watch worn by Bond in every scene, but rather a list of watches that the filmmakers intended that Bond wear and that the audience be aware of. Likewise, this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every watch that every villain or ally major or minor has worn, but rather a listing of the more interesting watches that can’t help but be noticed on the wrists of Bond’s allies and villains

This is part 2.2 of two articles, continuing the watches of Thunderball to The Man With The Golden Gun in case you missed part 2.1 it covered the watches From Russia With Love to Thunderball. Don’t forget part 1 of Bonding With Time looks at the Rolex Submariner watch.

Thunderball’s Breitling Top Time

The Breitling Top-Time is the only other watch besides the Rolex Submariner that Sean Connery as Bond is noted for wearing. This watch is also the first issued watch by Q-Branch in the Bond cannon. In the movie Thunderball, the Top-Time has the Q-function of working as a Geiger counter. I have spent many years looking for the Top-Time as worn by Connery in various books as well as on-line all to no avail. After having several conversations with various Bond aficionados including the doyen of Bond props and co-creator of Yoda’s lightsaber Ed Magianni, I have concluded that although the Top-Time is an actual watch, the case of the watch as it appeared in Thunderball was custom made by the EON prop department.
My belief in the custom cased Top-Time is based on:

1. The Thunderball Breitling Top-Time does not appear in any reference material that I’ve seen related to Breitling.
2. The Breitling Top-Time as made by Breitling is a two register chronograph and has two pushers on the case at approximately two O’clock and 4 O’clock on either side of the crown, however the Thunderball Top-Time has no pushers evident on the outside of the case. Moreover, the Thunderball Top-Time has no crown.
3. Chronographs of this nature are susceptible to water incursion at the pushers, and it is a reason why Rolex ultimately started using screw down pushers on its Daytona’s. A fully encased Top-Time used by Connery in and around the water in Thunderball would suffer little water damage with a customized case devoid of pushers or crown.
4. The bigger watch case simulated the geiger counter Q-function as well as the diver function as imagined by EON productions.

It should be noted that in Thunderball the novel, Bond is given a geiger counter watch, after a fashion, by Felix Leiter. However, the watch itself is really just the display for the actual Geiger counter which is a Roliflex camera. The watch is connected to the camera via wires up the sleeve and out through holes in a jacket pocket to the camera while slung over the shoulder. A waterproof version is later used by Bond while looking over the hull of the Disco Volante. The watch, the brand of which is never mentioned, then takes the radioactivity count via the sweep hand. A very ponderous affair. It’s no wonder the movie producers chose to make these two separate and autonomous Geiger counters, a Calypso/Nikonos camera that Bond ultimately gives to Domino and the Breitling Top-Time that Bond uses.

The Top-Time as issued by Breitling existed in both round and cushion cased varieties with alternate case, and dial colors as well as different style pushers. There is also a three register version of the Top-Time with various dial and pusher configurations. One of the most handsome of the Breitling issued Top-Time series is the stainless steel, round case, round pusher variety with black dial, twin silver sub-dials, and silver outer tachymetric scale. I suspect that it was this version used by EON and that the whole watch was encased in an outer faux case designed by the props department. On its own, the watch has an understated elegance fit for both the boardroom and the bedroom, and will work equally as well in the field. If you want to sport the Bond look but want to stand out from the sea of Rolexes and Omegas while doing it, the round case/round pusher silver/black Breitling Top-Time sans faux case is the way to go.

The Count Lippe Watch

The watch Count Lippe wears in Thunderball, is one that is rarely talked about by watch aficionados or Bond aficionados for that matter. The watch itself has always appeared to me as a gold coin watch. Although I have no definitive proof of this, close-ups of the dial reveal irregularities consistent with a gold coin. It’s anyone’s guess what make or model, but I suspect it was something cheaply manufactured by the EON prop department. The watch along with the unique split twin gold band/bracelet, apart from covering Lippe’s “Tong sign” tattoo (a red square with a spike through it), served as a device for the audience to follow who was messing about with Bond’s motorized traction table, refereed to as the “rack” in both the movie and the novel. The Count Lippe watch can be replicated expensively using a 20 dollar gold coin watch from Corum or Piaget, although these appear somewhat larger than the watch Lippe wears in the movie. An economical and probably more appropriate way to go would be to use any number of inexpensively made coin watches and a modicum of gold paint or gold leaf. The real trick is getting a jeweler or metal-smith to make that unique bracelet.

Again, I have no direct knowledge of what in fact the Count Lippe watch is. The Thunderball novel is not much help either, because it simply refers to a watch used to cover a red tattoo that “looked like a small zig zag crossed by two vertical strokes” on Lippe’s wrist. My belief in the gold coin watch is merely an informed guess based on close-ups of the watch and knowledge that many of Fleming’s villains are often expensively, if ostentatiously, turned out. Chapter 4 of Thunderball says the following with respect to Count Lippe’s personal effects while Bond is doing a reconnaissance of Lippe’s room at Shrublands:

“All he learned-from the clothes-was that the Count was a much traveled man-shirts from Charvet, ties from Tripler, Dior, and Hardy Amies, shoes from Peel, and raw silk pyjamas from Hong Kong. The dark red morocco suitcase from Mark Cross might have contained secrets, and Bond eyed the silk linings and toyed with the Count’s Wilkinson razor.”

I believe EON took a cue from Fleming’s description of Lippe’s personal effects in creating a movie version of the novels non-descript watch. A watch made out of a gold coin would certainly be expensive and ostentatious, at least according to Fleming’s sensibility. However, if any of you have direct knowledge and supporting documentation to the contrary with respect to the Count Lippe watch please let me know.

George Lazenby’s Pre-Daytona Cronograph Model Reference 6238

Rolex 6238 Pre-Daytona Chronograph

In the movie On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, George Lazenby as James Bond is seen wearing two different Rolex watches. Bond’s main watch was a Rolex Submariner model reference 5513. Since the 5513 Submariner was one of the subjects of my previous article, it will not be discussed here. Bond dons another watch when going undercover as Sir Hilary Bray Baronet. That watch was a Rolex chronograph model reference 6238.

The 6238 is often referred to as the pre-Daytona because it preceded the 6239, the first chronograph in the Rolex stable to be called a Daytona. Initially, the 6239 had only “Cosmograph” printed on the dial. Later, the 6239 had both “Cosmograph” and “Daytona” printed on the dial. The 6238 shares the same case as the 6239, however the 6239 had the tachymetric scale engraved on the bezel rather than on the outer edge of the dial like the 6238. Apart from dial colorations, this is the only real difference between the 6238 and the 6239. The 6239 was apparently the model worn by Paul Newman in publicity photos for the movie Winning and also apparently appeared on his wrist much later while on the cover of an Italian magazine. The 6239 worn by Paul Newman had an exotic colored dial with the base dial one color and the sub-dials a contrasting color. Today Daytona Cosmographs with an exotic dial are referred to by some collectors as Paul Newman dials regardless of the model reference number and are particularly sought after, commanding outrageous prices.

I’ve always thought the 6238 was an interesting choice for Bond to wear undercover as an expert in heraldry because chronographs are associated with race car drivers and pilots. It is used for timing or stopping time and is not something one would associate with a stodgy academic. However the 6238 worn by Lazenby as Bond undercover as Bray is a particularly understated watch especially with its silver dial and silver sub-dials. So, its understated elegance works very well within the context of the movie. It’s also interesting to note that the Rolex chronographs, including the early Daytona’s were the only watches that Rolex ever discounted because they just did not sell very well. It’s a watch that an academic might very well buy particularly during the time frame of 1969.

The Rolex 6238 Chronograph existed in three series and lasted from approximately the mid 1960’s to about 1967. The first series had dials similar to the 6034 and 6234 reference numbers and existed with or without the tachymetric scale. The second and rarest series had the handsome two tone dials with the dial being one color and the three sub-dials being another contrasting color (the precursor to the so called Paul Newman dials), for example a black dial with silver sub-dials. The third series is the one with the monochromatic dial, where the dial and sub-dials are all one color. It is from this third series that EON culled the 6238 that Lazenby wore for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. This third series 6238 existed with three different dial variations. One was a black dial and was the rarest of the third series dials, one was a dark silver dial, sometimes referred to as graphite and one was a light silver dial and is the one Lazenby wore.

The hand wound movement in the 6238 was either the 72B or the 722. Both movements are based on the hand wound Valjoux Caliber 72A. Rolex essentially took the base model Valjoux 72A and modified it by upgrading and engraving certain parts. The 6238 housed the 72B until approximately 1965 and was replaced by the 722 from 1965 on. It is interesting to note that all Rolex chronograph movements were based on the Valjoux Caliber 72A from about 1960 until roughly 1987, and that’s quite a testament to the greatness of the caliber. It powered the various later Rolex chronograph model references as the 722-1 and lastly the 727. The Valjoux 72A was also widely used by other watch companies in their chronoraphs including but not limited to Heuer (now Tag Heuer), and Longines. For a short while the Valjoux 72 even powered the Breitling 806 Navitimer and is considered a rarity amongst Navitimer collectors. Rolex finally replaced the Valjoux 72A based movement in their chronographs by the heavily modified automatic Zenith caliber 4030 in 1988.

Apparently, the 6238 that was purchased for Lazenby by the production department was supposed to have an additional Q type function beyond timing the Piz Gloria cable car ride. As the story goes, the watch was to also function as a compass. The red sweep hand was to function as the compass pointer. Since 6238’s were not made with red sweep hands, and the Lazenby/Bond/Bray 6238 does have it, this appears to be an accurate statement.

Roger Moore’s Hamilton/Time Computer Pulsar P2 Model 2900 Astronaut

Hamilton Pulsar P2 model 2900
© www.oldpulsars.com – Z Holtelius

The Hamilton Pulsar P2 model 2900 was the first watch to appear on the wrist of Roger Moore in his first outing as James Bond in 1973’s Live and Let Die. Bond/Moore checks the P2 while cradling Miss Caruso in his arms after he is awakened at an early morning hour by M and Miss Moneypenny at his front door.

Although I am not a big fan of digital quartz watches, the P2 is one of the must haves for any watch collection either Bond related or otherwise. The fact that it was the first of its kind and initial models were marketed in high-end stores and jewelry shops and sought after by celebrities and politicians only adds to its mystique. The April 2004 article in WatchTime Magazine entitled Pulsar A Space Odyssey by Lucien F. Trueb had this to say:

“The Pulsar triggered a worldwide sensation. The emperor of Abyssinia, the shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan, U.S. presidents Nixon and Ford, Soviet head-of-state Leonid Brezhnev, actors Jerry Lewis and Roger Moore, as well as numerous other celebrities had already ordered their Pulsars in 1970 – and were obliged to wait nearly two years before they could accept delivery. The first series of 300 specimens sold out in just three days. This model was equipped with a solid gold case and an integrated wristband and retailed for an extravagantly high $2,100. Despite the steep price, Hamilton received thousands of orders. A version in a steel case was soon launched, selling for the more moderate price of $275.”

I’d like to point out that despite the fact that Hamilton was at the time one of the most successful watchmakers in the United States they actually purchased the technology for the P2 and its predecessor models form a small electronics company called Electro/Data located in Garland, Texas for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This was done as a time saving measure because Bulova had already made incursions into Hamilton’s market share with their Accutron’s tuning fork technology and the Swiss and Japanese were about to make significant inroads with their own new quartz technology. Hamilton was behind the eight ball in terms of electronic watches when Electro/Data called Hamilton and said they had, according to the aforementioned WatchTime article:

“A functional model of a digital clock with a point-matrix light-emitting-diode (LED) display.”

After entering into a contract with Hamilton, this technology was subsequently shrunken down to watch size by Electro/Data and the clock’s creator an electrical engineer named Willie Crabtree. The name Pulsar had previously been registered after John Bergey, Hamilton’s research director, had recognized Pulsar as a great sounding name for a new electronic watch that had been envisioned for Hamilton’s future. It was thus that the Hamilton Pulsar was born.

Unlike the later LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) watches made by Seiko and others, the Hamilton the P2 had an LED display (Light Emitting Diode). Different than the constant on feature of LCD watches, the LED watch could only display time by the push of a button. It makes the watch a cool gadget and can be considered gee whiz technology especially within the context of 1973. The case, bracelet and dark red display are very pleasing to the eye and have a very organic shape. Although I don’t presently have a Hamilton Pulsar P2, I do intend to add one to my collection because, apart from it being in a Bond movie, it represents a first in the world of horology.

Scaramanga’s Rolex King Midas Model Reference 9630

In The Man With The Golden Gun, Scaramanga obviously has a penchant for all things golden. Apart from his golden gun (made of a pen, a lighter, a cigarette case and a cufflink), gold bullets, and gold rings, Scaramanga also sports a solid 18 karat gold Rolex King Midas with asymmetrical case and integrated gold band. As I said earlier, the villains in Fleming’s world are often expensively, if ostentatiously, turned out, and the screen version of Scaramanga is no different. Kudos to EON for having insight into Fleming’s world and getting it right. Although the King Midas is not in keeping with my particular taste, it certainly broadcasts to the world that you have money, new money probably, but money nevertheless. Having said that, if I inherited one, I certainly would not throw it away.

The Rolex King Midas model reference number 9630 had a hand wound movement and the integrated gold bar link bracelet had a double deployant clasp. The King Midas was a limited edition of only 1000 watches originally introduced by Rolex in 1964 but apparently available into the 1970’s. Apart form the serial number, the King Midas also had a separate edition number. The watch was engraved on the side of the case on either side of the crown with the words “KING” and “MIDAS”. At the time, the King Midas was the most expensive Rolex watch money could buy. It was also the heaviest gold watch money could buy. It’s no wonder that Elvis Presley owned one. The King Midas was named after the king in Greek mythology that had the golden touch and was presented in very unique packaging. The outer box was decorated with Greek motifs and the inner box, made of wood, was shaped like an urn with more Greek motifs. A very special watch indeed, made for people with money to burn. Please note that the King Midas was later introduced as an unlimited edition as part of the Cellini line. Although similar looking, it is a different watch.

A Word About Books & Sources

If you have any questions or comments on the article visit the Absolutely James Bond Forums and the Bonding With Time Topic.

I am not a watch expert my knowledge of watches rests firmly on the hard work and determination of real watch experts who sought to commit their hard work and research to the written word. I am more or less a person who coalesces information taken from various and disparate sources. It does help a great deal, however, to like what you are writing about. And boy, do I like watches.

When I began to write this article, I came across the article about the Red Grant watch in the October 2007 issue of Hr: WATCHES LUXURY LIFESTYLE while browsing the watch magazines in the bookstore. It was indeed a fortuitous occasion because I was not looking for information about Girard-Perregaux. The article is titled “Girard-Perregaux’ Lasting Value A Fully Functional Full Calendar. I don’t know if you can purchase back issues but it’s worth a try and you can check on line at www.hrwatches.com.

One of my all time favorite Rolex books is the Best Of Time Rolex Wristwaches An Unauthorized History by Jefferey Hess and James Dowling, ISBN: 0-76430011-3. I borrowed generously from this book regarding the creation of Pussy Galore’s GMT Master reference 6542 and its association with aerospace. James Dowling still has his own website at www.ukwatches.com where he sells watches and continues to be a contributor on www.timezone.com and www.vintagerolexforum. Likewise, the book Vintage Rolex Sports Models A complete visual reference & unauthorized history ISBN: 0-7643-1496-3 by Martin Skeet and Nick Urul helped round out my knowledge of the GMT 6542 as well as its replacement the GMT 1675 of Casino Royale fame.

My references concerning the Breitling series of watches including the Navitimer and Top Time are many and varied. My first source was the second edition of BREITLING THE HISTORY OF A GREAT BRAND OF WATCHES 1884 TO PRESENT by Benno Richter ISBN: 0-7643-1006-2. I also consulted www.navitimer.net, a fantastic site about the various incarnations of the Breitling Navitimer. In the “50 years” gallery you can determine that the Derval Navitimer falls into the IV generation of the Navitimer issue because of the bezel, and the small size of the sub-dials. Luckily my personal Navitimer from 1967 falls into this IV generation. If you are looking for certified service or restoration work on a vintage or modern Breitling watch, look no further than www.horologicalservices.com. Mark and Theresa Heist along with Ronald Pfleger will do your ailing Breitling justice. I bought my vintage 806 Navitimer from them in September of 2005, and it was damn near new in appearance. It seems, however, after recently talking with Theresa Heist, that they are focusing more on repair and restoration work rather than sales.

The absolute best reference with respect to the Rolex Chronograph model reference 6238 was the book Rolex Daytona a legend is born by Carlo Pergola, Steffano Mazzariol and Giovanni Dosso. The book does not list an ISBN number but I purchased it directly from www.alfowatch.com. Although it is presently out of print, the last time I checked Amazon.com, there was a used one for sale. Do whatever you can to get this book, it is presented in both Italian and English and is wealth source of information about the Rolex Daytona including the Pre-Daytona. The original print date was 11/2006, Best Edizioni SRL, V. Londonio 22, 20154 Milano (MI), ITALIA. I must also mention the Christies auction catalog for a close up and description of the actual 6238 as worn by George Lazenby that went up for auction. The accompanying picture clearly shows a red sweep hand. The catalog is dated December 16, 2003 (Christie’s South Kensington, 85 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3LD).

My information regarding the Pulsar P2 Model 2900 came from, as noted above, the April 2004 article in WatchTime Magazine entitled Pulsar A Space Odyssey by Lucien F. Trueb. I’m not sure if they sell back issues, but you can check their website here www.watchtime.com. More information than you could ever imagine about the 2900 is available at www.oldpulsars.com. It also has links to other sites regarding LED watches.

Trying to find information about the Rolex King Midas was very difficult. Although the Dowling/Hess book had a picture of the asymmetrical Cellini version of the King Midas, not much is said about the watch. Then I found Jakes Rolex Watch Blog www.rolexblog.blogspot.com, and it had a mint of information regarding the original limited edition Rolex King Midas. Apart from just words the blog is liberally sprinkled with pictures. Moreover, Jakes blog also contains information about Rolex’ association with Astronauts as well as interesting articles concerning famous people and Rolex. Did you know that Chuck Yeager has worn a Rolex for over 50 years, or that he also at one time wore a 6538 Submariner of James Bond fame? If you didn’t now you do, go check out the picture and more information regarding all things Rolex at Jake’s Rolex Watch Blog.

Lastly, I wanted to mention the book 1001 Wristwatches From 1925 To The Present ISBN 978-1-4054-9463-2 (Editor: Martin Hausserman). I used it as a general reference and the book is separated into sections by watch type. The great things about the book are the numerous pictures and the low price I obtained it for in the bargain book section of my bookstore.

I have of course used other books, websites and references in writing this article that I may not have mentioned. However, the above represents what I feel are the best sources for obtaining real world information on the watches in Bond’s world. As the saying goes “scientia potentia est” which roughly translates to knowledge is power.

Article Copyright © 2009 Richard Dos Santos

The mushroom-shaped rock used by Scaramanga to hide the solar energy collector.

These rocks and islands are part of the beautiful island area of Phang Nga bay in Thailand. Phang Nga is a Thai province, located eastern to the province and Island of Phuket.

Two years ago, I have had the chance to visit “James Bond Island” for the first time during a stay at Phuket and I have just been returning from my second visit a week ago.

James Bond Island – Orientation

• The proper name for the island (where most of the island scenes have been shot) is Ko Khao Phing Kan. In Thai “Ko” means island as far as I have found out.
• The name of the famous mushroom-shaped rock is Ko Tapoo or Ko Tapu.
• There are altogether 42 of these limestone rocks and islands in the Phang Nga bay area.
• But if you are heading for the 007 island, simply ask the travel agent (how to book will be told later) for “James Bond Island” and everyone will understand, what you mean.

The only way to get to there is by boat, unless you have a Seabee plane like 007. Here is, what Ko Khao Phing Kan looks like on Google maps:

James Bond Island as seen on Google Maps.

All boats, which are heading to the island, land on the south side of the island (2)

Keep in mind, that there is a significant tide there (2-3 meters!) and the first time, we visited the island, there was not much left from the beach, so we landed right in front of the souvenir shops (5), no sand has been visible.

Approaching James Bond Island

To enter the main beach (3) at the north side, you have to leave the souvenir shops on your right and you will see immediately the famous huge crack (6) in the rock, which is also visible in the movie.

The famous “crack in the rock” on ?James Bond Island.

As said, on our first visit, there was not very much of the beach left due to an extreme high tide. Here is, what the beach (3) looked like with high tide:

An overview of the beach area on James Bond Island.

You will notice, that I had to wade thru reasonably deep water to take this shot from position (4) and there have some man-made steps in the rocks which lead to a small trail, which I did not follow as there was nothing interested to be expected there.

You may also be surprised, that besides a government office on the south side (gouvernment tax has to be paid for every visitor) and the various souvenir shops in the center of the island which I don’t want to comment further there is even a toilet on the island.

Two years ago, there had been a huge ugly concrete marker stone in the middle of the beach, it had fortunately disappeared for this visit!

As you are on the beach of James Bond island, you can’t miss the famous mushroom rock (1) and the chance to take some pictures.

Scaramangas Famous Mushroom Rock

That’s it for most tourists and time is very limited for every group.You have a maximum of 35 minutes to stay before your boat has to leave space for other groups, which are already waiting to land and the whole story begins again.

On your way back, you may notice these remarkable stone formations, which are also visible later in the movie, when Nick Nack meets the killer.

The rock formations where Nick Nack meets the killer.

So, far so good…

But where is Scaramanga beach??

After seeing the movie again I could see, that the fist scenes in TMWTGG haven’t been been done at this particular beach, impossible!!

I started worrying, where this particular beach (which I call now Scaramanga beach) may be.

After returning back home, I checked out the island in particular via Google Earth and discovered, that there is an alternative approach to the island and another beach (7)!

The route to Scaramangas Beach.

Checking the pics there, hope came up, that this beach could be the one, where Nick Nack opens the champagne bottle and the third nipple has been exposed for the first time… Two years went by before we returned to the island. Tide was extremely low and suddenly after taking the “normal pics”, we entered the little (red marked) trail, which was then accessible with dry shoes.

After hiking for some minutes, Bingo, here it was:

Scaramanaga Beach

A different view of Scaramanga Beach looking back towards the trail.

Looking back towards the trail to Scaramanga Beach.

I am sure, that <95% of all normal visitors don’t bother to use that trail. Entering it in a way without getting wet is only possible at low tide and I am sure, that most of them don’t expect something else interesting at the other end of the island but for James Bond fans it is a must! Shame that they destroyed the view with that huge wooden pier (which has been closed). Also, the sand appears to be less smooth and much more grey as in the movie.

The unique rock formations on Scaramanga Beach.

How to book?

Once you are on the island Phuket, you may be tempted to book your trip at the hotel, where you are staying. Don’t do it!

We have been asking this particular question on both hotels, where we have been staying and have been confronted with prices over US$ 100,– which is double than what we ended paying for the trips at the end.

If you are keeping your eyes open, you will find various offers for tours on the beach. There are various huts with offers almost everywhere and if you have a quick look over the brochure, you will surely find a small number of tours to James Bond Island along the usual trips to Phi Phi islands and others.

Keep in mind, that indicated prices can always be negotiated, depending on the season and your bargaining skills!

I would vote against doing prepayments to “flying” travel agents.

The first trip, that we have done over a “flying agent”, we paid directly before entering the boat to James Bond island, the second time, we found a permanent travel agent with a permanent shop next to our hotel and did a payment in advance though.

Which package to choose?

The first time, we booked the James Bond tour with a “flying” travel agent, who has been called by a pub, where we asked for James Bond Island tours.

They have been asking THB 2.800 each, after bargaining, we ended up with THB 1.800,–  (~US$ 50) each. The tour included a pickup at our hotel (which is common on every tour), a 40 min. minibus drive across the Phuket island to Poh bay, where we took a tour boat together with ~20 other people from all nations.

The trip took approx. 80 minutes and we had patience and time enough to capture the fantasic island world of Phang Nga in our hearts and in our camera.

We had free fresh soft drinks from an ice box on board all the time and the first delicious thai food in many variants as a late breakfast.

After visiting James Bond island, we went back to the boat and had an incredible warm Thai lunch, served on 8 different plates! After lunch, we went to a small lagoon, where the canoes were watered and we went canooing for like 45 minutes. Don’t worry, every canoe had 2 tourists and one local Thai, who did all the rowing. We felt a bit bad and lazy!

Back on the boat, we went to another place, where they had a mongrovia lagoon, time for another 45 minutes of canooing.

We then went to a remote island with a nice sand beach and we had time for another hour to swim inbetween these bizarre rocks. Desert followed, fresh fruits and as always, free softdrinks out of the ice box.

After a relaxed trip on our boat another 60 minutes, we returned back to Poh Bay, where our shuttle bus waited and took us back to the hotel.

All in all, most definitely, one of the finest days in my life!

This year, we have not been able to find the tour operator from our first James Bond island tour, so, we booked another trip:

The asking price was THB 1.800 and we ended up paying THB 1.400,– (~US$ 40) each.

I have asked the travel agent, if we are on a boat from Poh Bay, she said yes, later I found out, that this was not the case.

So, the next morning (at 11:00, 2 years ago, we started at 8:30!) the minibus met us at the hotel and took us for 1 hour across the entire island. First stop was a rubber tree plant and we had a short introduction to rubber tapping…  hmmm, interesting…..

The only thing, which I have learnt was, that fresh rubber smells like rotten fish..

After the obligatory souvenir booth, we went back to the minibus, which took us to a golden buddha in a cave. Hmmm. Interesting and all these monkeys in front of the cave waiting for tourists to buy them bananas.

Another 15 minutes drive and we entered a very small pier, where were equipped with one bottle of water (the first and only one) and a life vest. We entered a longtail-boat, which took us to a kind of  ancient fishermen-village, where we had lunch. The food was ok, no comparison to what we had 2 years ago, so lunch was finished after 10 minutes.

To kill time, we went around the fishermen village, which mostly consisted of souvenir shops, time to buy 4 postcards for US$ 1.

Then the longtail boat took us to James Bond Island, a fast and noisy ride, not much chance to enjoy the silent world of Phang Nga bay. It was even diffilult to take pics because of the bumps and the splash caused by the boat.

Thirty minutes for visiting James Bond Island, then we went to a lagoon, where some canoes awaited us for the well-known canoe-ride.

After 40 minutes, we went back to the longtail-boat, which took us back to the pier and then the shuttle brought us back to the hotel.

We would have been totally happy with this, if we would not have experienced the boat tour 2 years ago, so, here is my advise: If you are booking any tour to James Bond  make sure, that you end up on these bigger boats leaving from Poh Bay and not in a longtail-boat.

Make sure, check the brochure once, twice and ask the travel agent once, twice trice.

Enjoy the trip, it is definitely worth it!

One More Thing – A little Food!

If I may give you an additional info, which was very valuable for us:

The best and absolutely affordable food, which we had on Phuket was at the Lotus restaurant at Bang Tao Beach.

Check the internet for reviews and you may understand, why we ended up in paying extra for a taxi to go there for 3 dinners on our 5-nights stay.

Explore James Bond Island on Google Maps

View Larger Map

If you have any questions or any additional tips or photos then post them on the Absolutely James Bond Forum Topic.

A Breitling 806 Navitimer and Rolex 6238 Pre-Daytona Chronograph

It should be noted that this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every watch worn by Bond in every scene, but rather a list of watches that the filmmakers intended that Bond wear and that the audience be aware of.  Likewise, this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every watch that every villain or ally major or minor has worn, but rather a listing of the more interesting watches that can’t help but be noticed on the wrists of Bond’s allies and villains. 

Red Grant’s Fascinating Watches

To me, Red Grant is one of the most fascinating Bond villains of all time and the watches associated with him are equally fascinating.  In the movie From Russia With Love Donald Grant, AKA Donovan Grant, Red Grant or Krassno Granitski as he’s variously referred to in the novel From Russia With Love is seen wearing a keen bit of kit in the form of a time telling device that masked its truly deadly purpose.  It was a watch containing a garrote on a brown colored strap.  It’s one of those pieces that have always fascinated me.  The watch as seen in the movie had a very thick silver colored case, probably because it housed a mechanical movement along with a wire reel used to simulate a garrote.  Remember, this movie was made before the quartz watch almost killed mechanical watches.  It also had straight or wire lugs, Arabic numerals on a white or cream colored dial, and what looks to me like a pigskin strap that is the same width from lug to buckle (in other words, no taper in the strap).

Recently, a fellow Bond collector and top notch prop and model builder by the name of George Vasquez presented me with some compelling evidence in the form of an extreme close-up that suggests that Grant’s watch, as it appeared in the movie, had a sub-dial at the 6 o’clock position.  That close-up photograph shows a smudge near the 6 o’clock position but much higher than where the 6 would be.  Also, the photograph shows no “6″where it should be.  So, unlike the Grant watch pictured in the book James Bond The Secret World Of 007 (ISBN 0-7894-6691-0), it appears the real prop had a sub-seconds sweep hand rather than a regular full dial sweep hand.  Incidentally, the watch pictured (artist’s rendering) appears somewhat thinner than the movie prop.  Likewise the movie watch has a ring for the garrote rather than a crown within a crown as pictured.

I have seen various one off replicas of this watch over the years, but none have come close to the original.  Most of the replicas are made with the wrong style case.  The case needs to have strait or wire lugs similar to a World War I era Officer’s trench watch or perhaps a World War II era field watch. Another area where the replicas go wrong is in using a quartz movement.  The quartz movement did not exist in 1963, at least not to any great degree, so a true replica would need a mechanical movement.  Lastly, most of the replicas are too thin.  The watch in From Russia With Love had an exceedingly thick case.  It would have to if it were to house a mechanical movement and a wire reel.

From a horological perspective however, the watch Grant wears in the novel is far more interesting.  Chapter 1 (Roseland) paragraph 3 of From Russia With Love says the following with respect to Grant’s personal effects as they lie in a pile next to his naked body while awaiting a massage:

“To judge by the glittering pile, this had been or was a rich man.  It contained the typical membership badges of the rich man’s club-a money clip, made of a Mexican fifty-dollar piece and holding a substantial wad of banknotes, a well used gold Dunhill lighter, an oval gold cigarette case with the wavy ridges and discreet turquoise button that means Faberge, and the sort of novel a rich man pulls out of the bookcase to take into the garden-The Little Nugget-an old P.G. Wodehouse.  There was also a bulky gold wrist-watch on a well used brown crocodile strap.  It was a Girard-Perregaux model designed for people who like gadgets, and it had a sweep second-hand and two little windows in the face to tell the day of the month, and the month, and the phase of the moon.  The story it now told was 2:30 on June 10^th with the moon three-quarters full.”

Girard Perregaux 1966 Full Calendar Watch

The Girard-Perregaux that was in Grant’s tidy pile of membership badges to the rich man’s club is what is known in horological parlance as a calendar watch, or more precisely, a triple-date moonphase watch.  Such watches are fascinating to watch collectors because they have what are called complications that are added to the ordinary time telling function of the watch.  In this instance the complications enable the watch to tell the wearer the day of the month, the date, the month and the phase of the moon.  Watches with complications are more “complicated” to make and serve to exhibit the skill of the watchmaker beyond just mere time-telling.  I was almost positive that Fleming chose the name Girard-Perregaux because it was one of those “double barreled” words that he loved so much rather than because this particular Girard-Perregaux model truly existed or because Girard-Perregaux was one of the oldest swiss watch manufacturers with a long tradition of innovation and excellence.

I’ve looked for one of these watches for years to no avail.  Oh there were plenty of triple date moon phase watches that were available during Fleming’s time that could be bought, but none made by Girard-Perregaux.  It seemed more and more that this particular model did not exist, and that Fleming had appropriated the name creating a fictitious watch based upon details of real watches made by other brands.  Then I got lucky while searching EBay.  There it was a vintage Girard-Perregaux triple date moon phase watch.  Maybe Fleming had described a real Girard-Perregaux after all.  Although it was cool and looked suitably old, I’d never seen one of these before and something told me it was not quite right.  So I watched it, and it never sold.  It was re-listed, and then hastily removed from auction.   Then I stumbled across an article in the October 2007 issue of HR WATCHES Magazine entitled “Girard-Perregaux Lasting Value A Fully Functional Full Calendar”.  The article talked about a new calendar watch in its stable, one of which never existed before in the Girard-Perregaux line up, a triple date moon phase.  Here is anexcerpt:

 

“The Girard-Perregaux 1966 full calendarwith its once futuristic complication that displays the date, day of the week, month and phases of the moon might seem like something straight out of a James Bond novel.  That would be because, in a way, it is.  A watch with alarmingly similar specifications was described to a “T” by author Ian Fleming when he introduced the swashbuckling secret agent in ‘Casino Royale’.   It bears a striking resemblance to the watch originally described in the James Bond book by Ian Fleming where they talk about a Girard-Perregaux watch that has those functions”, said Ron Jackson, President of Girard-Perregaux in the United States.  There was no other watch that fit that description.  Ian described a watch that didn’t exist, but it does now.”

Casino Royale?  Not quite, but the article proved that Girard-Perregaux here-to-fore never made such a watch.  So the one on EBay was a fake.  As I’ve said before, if you intend to collect something, educate yourself about what is and is not correct.  That self education requires reading everything you can get your hands on about the items you intend to collect, and it’s a never ending process.  As for the comment about Casino Royale, it’s like I said in my last article, watch experts are not experts on Bond so be careful.  It should be noted too, that the Complete Price Guide To Watches (ISBN: 1-57432-592-2) shows a vintage 18kt Girard-Perregaux triple date moon phase chronograph most recently in the 2008 edition on page 766.  The problem is that the watch Fleming described did not have a triple register chronograph function.

Nevertheless, the fact that Girard-Perregaux now makes the watch that Ian Fleming first described in a book written in 1956 and published in 1957 is exciting news indeed.  It’s a case of life imitating art.  However, I’m afraid you’ll need somewhat of a rich man’s pile in order to afford the watch in Red Grant’s pile.  The Girard-Perregaux 1966 Full Calendar watch only available in rose gold retails for $14,250.00.  That’s what I’d call a high end Bond collectible, but it’s nice to know that if you just had to have it, you could.

Pussy Galore and the Rolex GMT Master – Reference 6542

Rolex 6542 GMT Master Watch

In the movie Goldfinger, Pussy Galore is seen wearing a Rolex GMT Master reference 6542 while piloting Goldfinger’s Lockheed Jetstar.  This is the early version of the GMT master without crown guards like the Connery Bond Submariner and it appears to have the black and red bezel rather than the blue and red so called “Pepsi” bezel.  It’s fitting that Miss Galore should wear a GMT Master because she is a pilot and this particular model has a long association with aerospace despite the fact that the Omega Speedmaster is touted as the moon watch and the watch of space.

According to Chapter 14 of the The Best Of Time Rolex Wristwatches An Unauthorized History, the GMT Master was created by Rolex at the request of Pan Am.  The newly designed Boeing 707, the first triumphant intercontinental jet passenger liner, was enlisted by Pan Am for various trans-Atlantic journeys.  However, because of this new faster jet airline, the journey times were cut in half creating a new phenomenon known as jet  lag.  Pan Am was concerned about the effects of jet lag on their pilots enough to commission research into this new phenomenon.  It was determined that pilots should be kept on home time while being simultaneously aware of the time at their various destinations.   A meeting of the minds between Pan Am and Rolex led to the creation of the G.M.T. Master model reference number 6542 first issued in 1954.

The GMT Master was named in honor of Greenwich Mean Time, the world’s standard time and the time at the Greenwich meridian.  It was powered at first by movement caliber 1035, followed by the 1065 and later the 1066.  It had four hands; hour, minute, seconds and a fourth hand that told the time in a different time zone.  This fourth hand was used in conjunction with a 24 hour rotatable bezel and enabled the wearer to keep track of the time in two different time zones simultaneously.

Chuck Yeager, a decorated combat pilot and the man who broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 wearing a Rolex Oyster, was known to wear aRolex GMT Master and so were most of the NASA astronauts.  Here is an excerpt from chapter 14 paragraph 6 of The Best Of Time Rolex Wristwatches An Unauthorized History, concerning the NASA astronauts:

 

“Almost all of the astronauts owned their own GMT-Masters, which had become the standard aviator’s timepiece, and continued to wear them at all times including during space flights.  Those from the NASA group who had flown the “X” planes would have been issued GMT-Masters. The Speedmasters were relegated to occasions when they had to be worn, such as during space walks when the special extended bracelet allowed them to be worn outside the space suits.”

The GMT Master was also on the wrist of Astronaut Jack Swigert during the infamous Apollo 13 mission that although not successful in terms of landing men on the moon, was successful in exhibiting coolness in the face of extreme danger.  It was a bright shining moment for NASA and proof that real pilots with “the right stuff” were the men needed to take the world into space.  Those pilots, rugged individualists in their own right, almost unanimously chose the Rolex GMT Master as their personal timepiece.

Pussy Galore’s use of the Rolex GMT Master model reference 6542 served to exhibit the fact that she was a consummate professional in her chosen field as an aviator.  The fact that she was wearing a man’s watch may have also been a device used to bolster the fact that she was a lesbian, a point that was directly talked about in the novel, but that could only be hinted at on screen.

As stated earlier, Miss Galore’s GMT Master 6542 is devoid of crown guards like the earliest incarnation of the Submariner and also appears to have the black and red bezel.  The 6542 GMT Master can be found with 3 bezel configurations.  The first and earliest configuration had a transparent acrylic bezel that had 24 hour markings printed on the underside.  This bezel insert was then mated to an acrylic bezel ring that was coated in an alloy to resemble metal.  Due to fractures and cracking of the acrylic bezel insert, Rolex subsequently replaced it with a metal insert that sat in the same alloy coated acrylic bezel.  Before the end of the 6542 model run, Rolex also replaced the bezel with an all metal version resulting in a metal bezel insert sitting in a metal bezel.

My first expensive watch was a Rolex GMT Master II model reference 16710 with red and black bezel purchased new in the 1990’s. At that time, although I wanted a new Submariner like Bond would have, I reasoned that nothing would really do except the exact model reference Submariner that Connery wore as Bond.  So, I elected to purchase the Rolex tool watch that was more suited to my needs, the GMT Master II reference 16710.  The fact that it could be considered the spiritual heir to the watch used by the men with the “Right Stuff” and was also the modern model reference worn by Chuck Yeager in the late 80’s and early 90’s” only added to its appeal.

I used the 16710 extensively while an Officer in the United States Merchant Marine.  The watch accompanied me on my voyages around the world including carrying Army unit equipment cargo to Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield/Desert Storm as well as to Mogadishu, Somalia during Operation Restore Hope/Continue Hope both before and after the “Black Hawk Down” incident.  Although now relegated to my watch box for the most part, the 16710 occasionally sees wrist time as a nod to those daring men who push the outside of the envelope, as a remembrance of my time traveling the world in pursuit of action and adventure, and of Bond’s conquest of Pussy Galore under that cool red and white parachute.  Nevertheless, as nice as the 16710 is, it is merely a place holder for the one that started it all, the 6542.

Casino Royale and the Rolex GMT 1675

 In the 1967 spoof, Casino Royale, Evlyn Tremble (Peter Sellers),  the baccarat master who goes undercover as James Bond, is presented a “1965 Rolex Submariner with date indicator”.  However, the actual watch shown is a Rolex GMT Master model reference 1675.  This is evident because of the red and blue so called “Pepsi” bezel and crown guard.  The real watch face is not seen because it is shown to function as two way wrist T.V. transceiver.  I’ve placed this watch here out of movie order because it was the next evolution of the preceding GMT 6542.

Interestingly enough, this same watch was also worn by the well known television spies Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott (Robert Culp and Bill Cosby) in the I Spy series.  The 1675 was initially powered by the 1565 movement and later by the 1575 movement.  The 1675 was replaced by the 16750 in the early 1980’s and had a totally new caliber, the 3075.  Incidentally, Thomas Magnum of Magnum P.I. fame also wore a 1675 that he inherited from his father, a Naval Aviator.

Thunderball’s Breitling 806 Navitimer

Breitling 806 Navitimer Watch

In Thunderball Commandant Derval is fitted out with an identification disc and a cool looking watch, a Breitling Navitimer.  That Breitling Navitimer had the model reference number 806 and has always held a special fascination for me because I suppose it just looked so damn cool.  The 806 Navitimer along with the I.D. disc was used as an identifier by S.P.C.T.R.E. for their agent Mr. Angelo who with the aid of plastic surgery and voice lessons assumed the identity of Derval after the real Derval is given a lethal dose of gamma gas.  With Mr. Angelo in place as Derval, S.P.E.C.T.R.E. could advance its evil plan to steal a nuclear bomb and extort 280 million pounds worth of blue/white diamonds from
the world via NATO.

Interestingly enough, Derval’s character in the novel is named Giuseppe Petacchi and is “bent” or turned rather than assassinated and doubled by SPECTRE because of his weakness or” passion for owning things-flashy, exciting, expensive things”.  One of those things that he owns is a gold Rolex that he consults regularly during his flight to deliver the nuclear bombs to SPECTRE.  Chapter 9, Multiple Requiem of Thunderball says the following with respect to Petacchi’s desires and specifically mentions his gold Rolex:

“He had most of what he desired-a couple of gold cigarette cases, a solid gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual Chronometer on a flexible gold bracelet, a white convertible Lancia Gran Turismo, plenty of sharp clothes, and all the girls he wanted (he had once been briefly married but it had not been a success).  Now he desired, and what he desired he often got, a particular Ghia-bodied 3,500 GT Maserati he had seen at the Milan motor show.”

While the solid gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual Chronometer fits very well the literary Giuseppe Petacchi because it’s very suggestive of his greedy nature, I think the producers were very wise in choosing the Breitling 806 Navitimer for his screen persona as Derval.  The Navitimer has far more on-screen visual appeal than a solid gold Rolex, and is exponentially more suggestive of a pilot with that white outer ring and those rather neat looking sub-dials in a 3-6-9 configuration.  In fact, it is quite fitting that an aviator should wear a Breitling 806 Navitimer.  It was designed specifically for pilots and aside from having a three register chronograph function, it also had a slide rule (navigation computer) for speed, time and distance calculations.

It also appears that Derval’s Navitimer was a personal purchase within the context of the real world rather than an issued watch.  As a member of the French Air Force (Armée de l’Air), Commandant Derval would most likely have been issued a Dodane Type 21 flyback chronograph.  The Dodane Type 21 was issued to pilots of the French Air Force from about 1960 to 1980 and it’s a very handsome watch indeed.  Nevertheless, I think the 806 Navitimer has, perhaps, a slight edge in the looks department.   The looks coupled with cutting edge technology (slide rule) and the Navitimer’s status as a pilot’s instrument may have led Derval to deep six the Dodane in favor of the Breitling.

A version of the Navitimer called the Cosmonaute Navitimer was used by Astronaut Scott Carpenter (one of the original Mercury 7 Astronauts) aboard the Aurora 7.  Although the Cosmonaute has the reference number 809, it differs from the regular Navitimer only in having a 24 hour dial and an extra cog enabling the hands to traverse the dial once in 24 hours instead of twice.

The 60’s era 806 Navitimer was powered by the hand wound Venus 178 movement, had a black face with white sub-dials and was available with one of two logos at the 12 o’clock position.  It either had two stylized airplanes or the rarer and much sought after A.O.P.A. logo. A.O.P.A. stood for Airplane Owners and Pilots Association and the 806 Breitling Navitimer was endorsed by that organization.  The earliest incarnation of the 806 Navitimer, the so called rice grain version because of the beaded bezel, had the A.O.P.A. logo exclusively on the dial.

When I went looking to purchase my 806 Navitimer, I wanted the double airplane dial, however Horological Services in Pennsylvania had the rarer AOPA dial for sale, with sub dials that aged to an even gold patina.  After several telephone conversations and e-mails, I became the proud owner of a vintage  AOPA dialed 1967 806 Navitimer.  From close-ups of the Thunderball Navitimer, it’s near impossible to tell whether it’s the AOPA or double airplane dial, so it’s up to personal preference how you decide to go.  In my case the relative rarity of the AOPA dial coupled with those golden sub-dials made it an easy choice.

A Hard Break – To Be Continued

It is now necessary to take what’s called in broadcasting, “a hard break”.  In this case not for a commercial, but so you the reader can rest your eyes and your mind and digest what I’ve written.  This article is 14 pages long and you are now at page 7.  Thanks for sticking with me this long.  Part II of Bonding With Time will be continued with THUNDERBALL’s BREITLING TOP TIME, and the section on books and sources (my references for what I’ve written) will be included.

It’s alsos a perfect time to discuss the article with Donald Grant on the Absolutely James Bond Forums or read the first article which covers the Rolex Submariner.

Part 2.2 – Bonding With Time

Part 2.2 of Bonding With Time continues…

Article Copyright © 2009 Richard Dos Santos

After the death of Ian Fleming in 1964, two James Bond books were published posthumously. These were the novel, The Man With The Golden Gun and the short story collection, Octopussy and The Living Daylights. By the time that the latter was published, in 1966, Bond and indeed the entire spy genre had become a global phenomenon. It was unthinkable that there would be no more Bond novels written. The first of these turned out to be Colonel Sun, by Robert Markham.

A Man In Sunglasses

Robert Markham was a pseudonym, and the identity of the author of Colonel Sun was none other than Kingsley Amis, an acquaintance of Ian Fleming and a Bond fan “ever since he discovered the first paperback, Casino Royale, on a railway bookstall” (The Times Educational Supplement). Amis has already written The James Bond Dossier, and The Book of Bond (under the name of Lt Col William ‘Bill’ Tanner) and was an obvious choice as Ian Fleming’s successor. It has been suggested that the use of the Robert Markham pseudonym was so that other authors could write Bond novels under the same pseudonym.

The first edition of Colonel Sun was published by Jonathan Cape on March 28, 1968. The cover artwork was a radical departure from that created by Richard Chopping for the Ian Fleming novels. The striking cover featured Salvador Dali-esque artwork by Tom Adams. The first US edition was published two months later by Harper & Row.

From the book The Letters of Kingsley Amis, edited by Zachary Leader, there are a couple of insights into the production of this first non Fleming James Bond novel.

In one letter dated May 21 1967 written to the English poet, novelist and Jazz critic Philip Larkin after a more in-depth look at his own personal health than one really needs to know he states “Otherwise I am in fine fettle. My Bond novel (Colonel Sun) is finished, and I have just put together a book of beautiful poetry (A Look Round the Estate) to show I am full of integrity after all.” This statement about integrity is most likely being his own belief that he could walk in both worlds of literature -that of the more high brow as well as the more commercial -obviously his 007 project being the latter.

Kingsley Amis

In another letter dated September 28th 1967 he writes to a Tom Maschler: “There is a snag in the proof of Colonel Sun at page 187. I wrote a revised version of this passage and included it in the final copy I dropped at Cape’s or was it Janson-S’s? (Ian Fleming’s Literary Agent) just before leaving. What appears in the proof is the earlier version. I imagine that the written corrections on that draft were all duly noted and incorporated, but that this, being a properly typed page, slipped through the mesh. I could re-do the thing: the snag would be that I did the revision from notes supplied by Mike K (Edmund ‘Mike’ Keeley) that I haven’t got here, or probably anywhere.”

Luckily being in possession of an uncorrected proof of Colonel Sun, we have been able to find the passage that Amis is referring too. Although the passage isn’t a totally revelationary one, it is interesting to see how such an esteemed author has revised one of his works. So here follows in italic the original passage and then in bold the revised version. Sadly the passage doesn’t involve 007.

Uncorrected proof passage pp. 187

By way of immediate return for these efforts, George would be entitled to talk to Maria, to hold her hand and above all look at her. He would not, of course, expect to spend any time with her alone. He had never done so. That was the way life was arranged. George was tall and well-built and dark-eyed, and working in the tourist trade brought him plenty of sexual opportunities. He took them. Nobody minded that, but a great many people would have minded a great deal if he had started trying to treat his affianced bride like a German or English office girl on holiday. Not that he had ever seriously contemplated this. The system was the system and it worked reasonably well. (It had never occurred to George to wonder what Maria thought of the system.)

Corrected version (from first Pan edition pp.163)

By way of immediate return for these efforts, George would be entitled to talk to Maria, to hold her hand and above all to look at her. He would not, of course, expect to spend much time with her alone. That had always been part of the system, the way life was arranged. George was tall and well-built and dark-eyed, and working in the tourist trade brought him plenty of sexual opportunities. He took them. Nobody minded that, but a great many people would have minded a great deal if he had started trying to treat his affianced bride in public like a German or English office-girl on holiday. He knew that some of the younger people made a mock of the system, but it suited him well enough. (It had never occurred to George to wonder what Maria thought of the system.)

Amis James Bond Dossier

Seeing these two passages only really reveal to today’s readers that Amis’ novel is written during what is really just beginning of that period where old fashioned values and “free love” are beginning to form very distinct opposing camps it is a novel of its time and was published directly after the summer of love and the advent of hippies. Of course it was during the spring of 1967 that Amis was writing this novel.

In a letter to The Editor of SPECTATOR Amis writes a response to comments made about him and his writing of Colonel Sun some years after its publication:

March 6, 1971

“Anyway, according to Mr Summers, I cannot hope to surprise anybody now that I have sunk to my ‘proper level masquerading as the concocter of crypto-fascist fake James Bond tec yarns’. I suppose he refers to the single yarn, Colonel Sun, which I published under a pseudonym while letting everybody I know I had written it. I did not masquerade as its concocter, or concoctor: I concocted it. Mr Summers comes near libelling me by implying I got someone else to write the thing and then passed it off as my own work. And anybody who had read a Bond adventure and a few tec yarns, and imagines the one to be an example of the other, cannot of understood what he has read.” This gives us the readers of this extract a real insight to how personal Amis took criticism with regards to his standing in the literary world, and yet wholeheartedly and unashamedly stood up for his sojourn into the terrtory of 007 literature.

Dragon Island

The novel begins with the kidnapping of M from his house, ‘Quarterdeck’ and the murder of his servants, ex-Chief Petty Officer Hammond and his wife. Bond travels to the Aegean, and to the island – Vrakonisi – meaning Dragon Island, working with a Greek Communist agent, Ariadne Alexandrou. The intention of the villainous Colonel Sun is to sobatage a Middle-East détente conference being held on the island, and blame Britain for it. Bond attempts not only to thwart the Colonel’s plans, but also to rescue M.

The Theory and Practice of Torture

The novel features many familiar characters and elements which readers of Fleming had come to know and enjoy. One of these is the torture sequence, first used in the first Bond novel, Casino Royale. Colonel Sun’s torture is one of the most memorable as Bond has a metal skewer inserted into his skull through the ear.

As a whole, Colonel Sun is perhaps the single continuation novel which most closely resembles the novels of Ian Fleming. Perhaps the key reason for this is that is occurs in the same timescale as the original Fleming books, whereas those written by later continuation authors had to be updated for a new time period, such as the 1980s in the case of John Gardner. Excluding The Authorised Biography of James Bond by John Pearson and two film novelisations by Christopher Wood, Colonel Sun was to be the last James Bond continuation novel until 1981 and Licence Renewed by John Gardner.

Tom Adams Daliesque cover art

Bantam paperback edition

French edition

Paperback edition

Uncorrected proof

Pan paperback edition

Coronet paperback edition

Panther paperback edition

Titan comic book

“Quantum of Solace” on DVD
© MGM / Eon

James Bond is back…again!  And this time, he’s got some unfinished business lingering from Casino Royale, the debut for the current Wearer of the Tux, Daniel Craig.  Quantum of Solace follows 007 from Italy to London, then to Haiti, Austria, back to Italy, then Bolivia….and finally to Russia, where he confronts the treacherous ex-boyfriend of Vesper Lynd.

Along the way, he enlists the aid of CIA operative Felix Leiter, former suspected traitor Rene Mathis, Agent Fields (”Just Fields”) from Station B, and Camille, an enigmatic and beautiful member of Bolivia’s secret service…as he investigates Quantum, a worldwide criminal organization with tentacles into the highest levels of business and government, and foils a plot to overthrow a South American country and control one of the world’s most precious natural resources…

All in 106 minutes!

The Film

From the opening, ominous low flyover of Lake Garda, intercut with close-up shots of an Aston Martin DBS at speed, it’s clear we’re in new territory for James Bond.  And then…there we are, riding along with him through a twisting mountainside tunnel, amid automatic gunfire, screaming tires and pinwheeling point of view.  It’s a maelstrom of visual confusion, and it’s clear that this is no accident.  The close-in, handheld-style camera work—and a buzz saw-like, all-over-the-place editing approach to the action sequences—is probably the most controversial aspect of the film.  There is a school of thought that says that such ’subjective perspective’ camera/editing work effectively immerses the viewer in the chaos of the moment—where detachment and ease of perspective is impossible—and thus achieves an element of ‘artistic truth.’  However, in QoS this clearly comes at the expense of some viewer convenience.  Clearly, the editing philosophy of the film is problematic, and hopefully it will not be repeated in future Bond films.  The good news is that the overall effect of this is muted somewhat on the smaller screen of the home theatre, which seems to contain and focus the point of view in a way that the big screen could not.

Similarly, the convenience of watching movies at home mitigates another issue many fans had with the film: that of narrative pacing.  Director Marc Forster declared that he wanted this film to be, as he put it, “Like a bullet fired from a gun.”  Thus, the bullet on a flat trajectory, as seen during the titles sequence, turns out to be not only a metaphor for Bond himself, but also for the film as a whole.  The kinetic forward momentum of the piece can be overwhelming, and the cliche of not having a chance to ‘catch one’s breath’ is a perfectly appropriate one to use.  Unfortunately, this pacing takes a toll on plot and character accessibility for some viewers, who might be looking for a more conventional narrative.  Scenes such as those between Bond and M, Bond and Mathis, Bond and Leiter, Bond and Fields, Bond and Camille, etc., give us what we need—and indeed contain many wonderful moments, with humour and fine dramatic performances—but are over before we can savour them…and we do yearn to savour such things, like Bond himself enjoys fine food and drink.  Because of Forster’s ’bullet fired from a gun’ ethos, he deliberately decides not to let certain dramatic beats play out to a more satisfactory conclusion.  Instead, he essentially demands that we keep up, which can be an alienating prospect.  Many go to a Bond film to simply be entertained, not challenged.  Frequently I have hit the ‘review’ button to enjoy some of the film’s finer fleeting moments…but granted, such a thing shouldn’t be necessary.

The locations are lush and beautifully photographed, and the captions that introduce them are visually interesting.  The Perla de las Dunas hotel in the desert is very evocative of legendary Bond production designer Ken Adam’s distinctive style—and the interiors, particularly the space where Bond and Greene have their climactic fight as the flames erupt around them, looks like something Mr. Adam would have conceived—even the texture on the walls looks like ‘classic Bond.’

It’s interesting that one of the many criticisms leveled at the film, when it debuted in the cinema, was an apparent lack of emotion, but like anything in QoS that doesn’t explode or move at high speed over land, sea and air, it can be lost in the jetstream of the film’s dizzying pace.  Craig’s performance is pretty much perfect; internalization is the most difficult acting assignment, and sadly it’s not always recognized or rewarded.  His denial (with M) of caring about Vesper…his no response to Mathis’ saying “She died for you”…his reaction when Mathis, with his last breath, tells Bond to forgive her—and himself…his face when presented with Fields’ oil-coated corpse, his playing of the scene where Camille tells him that his prison is ‘in there’ (Bond’s mind)…are all quite rich.  The disposal of Mathis’ body was poignant:  Bond’s remark that his friend “wouldn’t care,” the jarringly field-expedient utility of removing the cash from the wallet, the way the camera lingers on the dumpster from above—it all elicits revulsion, which it is intended to do, and belies the grief so brilliantly underplayed by Daniel Craig, but it also speaks to the compartmentalization required by someone in Bond’s line of work in order to avoid going insane.

Supporting performances were all very solid.  Giancarlo Giannini was pitch-perfect in every scene, as was the great Jeffrey Wright—his scene with Bond in the bodega, where they spar briefly over the notion of failed British empire and American corruption, is well done.  I look forward to more of Wright’s Felix Leiter in films to come.  Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton are both very effective (especially Camille).  Mathieu Amalric’s Dominic Greene isn’t the best Bond villain, but that’s not his fault.  He’s very good in every scene, possessing the most punchable face and demeanor of any baddie since Kronsteen, and is clearly another relatively minor stepping stone up from Le Chiffre, as we ascend the organizational chart of the nefarious ‘Quantum’ in future outings.  His fight with Bond is fantastic, and his ultimate fate is something that would have made Ian Fleming smile.

The scene between Bond and Vesper’s ‘ex’ is positively electric; a rather nice ‘book-end’ to the opening (pre-title) scene of Casino Royale, with a decidedly different outcome.  Though the ultimate resolution might seem disappointing at first blush, it banks significant character capital for the future, and the love knot left in the snow signals a necessary closure for James Bond, who is now free to do what he does best…and nobody does it better.

Quantum of Solace is, essentially, the violent and lightning-quick third act of Casino Royale—that film’s angry and misunderstood little brother—and, like ‘Tosca,’ it isn’t for everyone.  Like a bullet fired from a gun, it howls along on a short and flat trajectory, and takes its target down.  

The DVD

Picture transfer and sound quality seem fine on the DVD version, considering what this quickly diminishing format is able to deliver when compared to the broader features and capabilities of the ascending Blu-ray format. 

Ironically, given the feature film’s short running time, it’s very possible that they could have squeezed all of the provided Special Features into a single disc release…but that would have robbed Sony of an obvious marketing opportunity—namely, having a “Two Disc Special Edition” alternative to the Ultra-Vanilla single disc option, given that they clearly have a long-range strategic plan to release a more improved (three-disc) version down the road, probably to coincide with the theatrical release of Bond #23.   

Besides the feature film itself, Disc One contains the “Another Way To Die” music video, featuring Alicia Keys and Jack White, and Theatrical and Teaser trailers.  Music videos have been a staple of Bond DVD releases for some time, and the trailers are also pretty standard stuff.

Disc Two’s Special Features include Bond on Location, a very good 24-minute featurette on the production’s globe-trotting schedule.  The other featurettes—Start of Shooting, On Location, Olga Kurylenko and the Boat Chase, Director Marc Forster and The Music, average out to just over three minutes apiece, which is a bit disappointing in terms of substance.  Many snippets and sound bites from the Bond on Location featurette are repeated during subsequent featurettes, unfortunately creating a sense of wasted opportunity.  Interestingly, the final special feature, Crew Files (which first appeared, in individual installments, on the official Sony/Eon Quantum of Solace website), contains 32 fascinating and often quite funny (if lamentably brief) glimpses into the jobs and personalities of many people involved in getting the film made, and provides some of the disc’s best added value. 

All in all, the Special Features on Disc Two run about 90 minutes—45 minutes of which are used up by the Crew Files Behind-The-Scenes clips.  Commentary tracks, especially one with Craig himself, would have been most welcome.  No doubt we’ll get some when the next version of Quantum of Solace is released on disc…but meanwhile, it’s hard not to be cynical.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Quantum of Solace—perhaps the most unapologetic, uncompromising film in the Bond canon—benefits by the transition to the small screen, thanks to a more focused media venue.  However, in these economic times, a little more “Bang for the ‘Special Edition’ Buck” would have been a good thing.

Buy Quantum of Soalce on Blu-Ray and DVD

Quantum of Solace is available online and in all good DVD and Blu-Ray retailers.

• Quantum of Solace on DVD from Amazon.co.uk
• Quantum of Solace on Blue-Ray from Amazon.co.uk
• Quantum of Solace on DVD from Amazon.com
• Quantum of Solace on Blu-Ray from Amazon.com

The latest fan fiction work from the members of ajb007.co.uk has been released, a collection of short stories entitled Come Hell or High Water. Including stories written by the very talented Chris Stacey, Neal Kydd, Matt Raubenheimer, Paul Taylor & Jason Disley.

Stories Included

• The Steel Wolf by Chris Stacey
• The Scarlet Ingenue by Neal Kydd
• Another Day’s Work by Matt Raubenheimer
• Silhouettes and Shadows by Paul Taylor
• To Die With Honour by Jason Disley

Download

You can download the collection and find out more from the ajb007 Fan Fiction section.

Pussy…what? Pussy Deluxe? No…
© Horste Tappe/Hulton Archive – Getty Images

Playboy writes: “It is with pride and pleasure —tinged with a very real sadness—that we present in this issue the last interview granted by Ian Fleming…The late creator of the irrepressible Bond was engagingly candid with our interviewer who, deeply moved by the author’s death, writes from England that the always thoughtful Fleming graciously informed him, after reading a copy of the interview, that it was the best that had ever been done with him.”

On writing at Goldeneye, in Jamaica

“I get up with the birds, which is about half past seven, because they wake one up, and then I go and bathe in the ocean before breakfast.  We don’t have to wear a swimsuit there, because it’s so private; my wife and I bathe and swim a hundred yards or so and come back and have a marvelous proper breakfast with some splendid scrambled eggs made by my housekeeper, who’s particularly good at them, and then I sit out in the garden to get a sunburn until about ten.  Only then do I set to work.  I sit in my bedroom and type about fifteen hundred words straightaway, without looking back on what I wrote the day before.  I have more or less thought out what I’m going to write, and, in any case, even if I make a lot of mistakes, I think, well, hell, when the book’s finished I can change it all.  I think the main thing is to write fast and cursively in order to get narrative speed.

Author at work.
© Getty Images

“Then, about quarter past twelve, I chuck that and go down, with a snorkle and a spear, around the reefs looking for lobsters or whatever there may be, sometimes find them, sometimes don’t, and then I come back, I have a couple of pink gins, and we have a very good lunch, ordinary Jamaican food, and I have a siesta from about half past two until four.  The I sit again in the garden for an hour or so, have another swim, and then I spend from six to seven—the dusk comes very suddenly in Jamaica; at six o’clock it suddenly gets very dark—doing another five hundred words.  I then number the pages, of which by that time there are about seven, put them away in a folder, and have a couple of powerful drinks, then dinner, occasionally a game of Scrabble with my wife—at which she thinks she is very much better than I am, but I know I’m the best—and straight off to bed and into a deep sleep.”

On the “Fleming Two-Day Week”

“…I keep a small but comfortable flat on Pegwell Bay in Sandwich; that’s in Kent…I try to spend at least four days and five nights in the country and only two nights up in London, because I don’t like big towns.  Generally I come up on Monday night and I go down again to Sandwich on Thursday morning, with any luck…I get up late, about half past eight or nine, have breakfast, coffee and a boiled egg—three and a half minutes, not three and two thirds, like James Bond.  I read newspapers and deal with a certain amount of mail and then I go off to the golf course; the one I play on is in Sandwich—the Royal St. George—a course known to a great many Americans, and one that Bobby Jones and all the great men have played; Jack Nicklaus won the Gold Vase on that course three or four years ago.  And I meet some friends there and we have a drink or two and lunch and then I go out and play a tough game of golf for fairly high stakes, foursomes generally, not American fourball, but each pair hitting the ball in turn.  And we laugh a lot and it’s great fun.  Then I go back home in the evening and sit down and have a couple of very powerful bourbons and waters with ice and read awhile, and then I have whatever my wife has decided to cook for me and I go straight off to bed.

“In London we have…a very nice little house—but it hasn’t got any trees around it, which I would like, and I would prefer to live higher up, somewhere like Hampstead, on the heights above London, with birds and trees and a bit of garden.  But my wife, who likes to entertain, feels that this would be too far from the House of Commons for our friends to come, and altogether too suburban.  In any case, I get up in the morning about the same time as in the country, have the same breakfast, and at about half past ten I drive to my office, where my secretary has the mail ready for me, which I cope with and then dictate a few letters.  Then I correct some proofs or go over whatever I happen to be working on at the moment and have lunch with a friend—always a male friend; I don’t like having lunch with women—and perhaps I go to my club, Boodles, or the Turf, where I sit by myself and read in that highly civilized privacy which is the great thing about some English clubs.  In the afternoon I have more or less the same routine correcting proofs.  I go home and have three large drinks and then we either stay in for dinner or have people in, or go out: but more often we have dinner together and go to bed.”

On Gambling

“I do like to gamble.  I play bridge for what might be called serious stakes.  I like chemin de fer.  I play at clubs here in London, private clubs.  And I may go to Le Touquet, places like that on the Continent.  I like to think that I am reasonably competent at the gaming tables—we all think so, I suppose—but still, I win as much as I lose, or a bit more.  I like that, which I suppose demonstrates that I am not a true compulsive gamber, because the compulsive gambler doesn’t care much whether he wins or loses.  He is interested primarily in the “action.”  I remember one occasion on which I very much wanted to win.  I was on my way to America with the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Godfrey.  We were in Estoril in Portugal, and while we were waiting for transport, we killed some time in the casino.  While there, I recognized some German agents, and I thought it would be a brilliant coup to play with them, break them, and take their money.  Instead, they took mine.  Most embarrassing.  This incident appears in Casino Royale, my first book—but, of course, Bond does not lose.  In fact, he totally and coldly vanquishes his opponent.”

On Guns

“Quite honestly, the whole question of expertise in these matters bores me.  Obviously, I want to know the facts.  If a Gaylord holster is better than a Berns-Martin, I want to know about it, but there is where my interest rather ends.  However, I’m not a bad shot; in fact, I shot for Sandhurst against West Point at one time.  And just to see that my hand isn’t trembling too much, I like to have a shot at a tin can or something now and again…I’m not keen on killing things, except to eat them.  We have big bush rats in Jamaica, and one time when I’d lent the place for a bit to Anthony Eden, he couldn’t sleep, they made such a racket scurrying about, and a number of them had to be shot by his private detective, which I didn’t like.  But to go back to the matter of expertise, I’ve been pestiferated ever since Sports Illustrated ran that article about Bond’s weapons; you saw it, I’m sure—the one which told how I’d been persuaded to take Bond’s .25 Beretta away from him and make him use a 7.65mm Walther instead.  That idea had originated with Geoffrey Boothroyd, a genuine expert, and since the article appeared I’ve had hundreds of letters from weapon maniacs—and they are maniacs; it’s terrifying—and Boothroyd gets all those letters sent on to him.  I never look at them; he deals with them himself or he doesn’t.  I wouldn’t dream of attempting it.  I’m just not sufficiently expert.”

On Cars

“I probably chose the supercharged Bentley because Amherst Villiers was and is a great friend of mine, and I knew something about it from my friendship with him.  I put Bond into a Bentley simply because I like him to use dashing, interesting things…I’d like to have a supercharged Bentley myself, but nowadays—I’m fifty-six, after all—I like a car I can leave out in the street all night and which will start at once in the morning and still go a hundred miles an hour when you want it to and yet give a fairly comfortable ride.  I can’t be bothered with a car that needs tuning, or one that will give me a lot of trouble and expenditure.  So I’ve had a Thunderbird for six years, and it’s done me very well.  In fact, I have two of them, the good two-seater and the less-good four-seater.  I leave them both in the street, and when I get in and press the starter, off they go, which doesn’t happen to a lot of motorcars.  Now, the Studebaker supercharged Avanti is the same thing.  It will start as soon as you get out in the morning; it has a very nice, sexy exhaust note and will do well over a hundred and has got really tremendous acceleration and much better, tighter road holding and steering than the Thunderbird.  Excellent disc brakes, too.  I’ve cut a good deal of time off the run between London and Sandwich in the Avanti, on braking and power alone.  So I’m very pleased with it for the time being.”

Early publicity shot
© Express Newspapers/Hulton Archive – Getty Images

On Violence…and the ‘Perfect Murder’

“The simple fact is that, like all fictional heroes who find a tremendous popular acceptance, Bond must reflect his own time.  We live in a violent era, perhaps the most violent man has known.  In our last War, thirty million people were killed.  Of these, some six million were simply slaughtered, and most brutally.  I hear it said that I invent fiendish cruelties and tortures to which Bond is subjected.  But no one who knows, as I know, the things that were done to captured secret agents in the last War says this.  No one says it who knows what went on in Algeria…

“Yes, it does disturb Bond to kill people, but he continues to get away with it—just as he continues to get away with driving conspicuous motorcars. 

“…No technique, I should think, is more deadly and efficient than that employed by the gunmen of what its proprietors so amusingly call the Cosa Nostra in America, where a man may be sent all the way from Detroit to kill another man sitting at a bar in New York and walk away with no demonstrable connection with hin.  That is a near-perfect type of killing—the sort of killing that the secret services do, particularly the Russians, who’ve been pretty keen on it in West Germany.  Their latest gimmick, the cyanide gas pistol, which is more or less a water pistol filled with liquid cyanide, is a particularly good stunt, because a man can be killed while, say, climbing stairs, and when he’s found, the cyanide has dissipated and leaves no trace.  It’s natural to assume that he has had a heart failure climbing the stairs.  But you’ve got to have a lot of nerve for that sort of thing, and whatever it is that enables a good killer to function also seems to defeat him in the end.  The killer’s spirit begins to fail, he gets the seed of death within himself.  As I wrote in one of my books, From Russia with Love, the trouble with a lot of hired assassins such as the Russians use is that they feel rather badly when they’ve killed five or six people, and ultimately get soft or give themselves up, or they take to drugs or drink.  It would be interesting to conduct an inquiry to determine who was the greatest assassin in history—who was, or who is.  I have no particular candidate.  But they all do grow a sort of bug inside them after a bit.”

“Birds of the West Indies?”
© Getty Images

On President Kennedy as a Bond Fan

“…I don’t think Bond was President Kennedy’s favourite fictional character; I think he was his favourite adventure character.  But I think perhaps that Bond’s sort of patriotic derring-do was in keeping with the President’s own concept of endurance and courage and grace under pressure, and so on.  Strangely enough, many politicians seem to like my books.  I think perhaps because politicians like solutions, with everything properly tied up at the end.  Politicians always hope for neat solutions, you now, but so rarely can they find them.”

On the Russians, SMERSH and SPECTRE

“…I don’t believe Mr. Khruschev is one of my readers, and we haven’t met.  I do have among my memorabilia a short typewritten note from Joseph Stalin, signed in his hand and, I think, typed by him as well, saying that he is sorry, but he must decline to be interviewed.

“I closed down SMERSH, although I was devoted to the old apparat, because, first of all, Khruschev did in fact disband SMERSH himself, although its operations are still carried out by a subsection of the K.G.B., the Russian secret service.  But in that book—I think it was Thunderball that I was writing at the time of the proposed summit meeting—I thought well, it’s no good going on if we’re going to make friends with the Russians.  I know them, I like them personally, as anyone would like the Chinese if he knew them.  I thought, I don’t want to go on ragging them like this.  So I invented SPECTRE as an international crime organization which contained elements of SMERSH and the Gestapo and the Mafia—the cozy old Cosa Nostra—which, of course, is a much more elastic fictional device that SMERSH, which was no fictional device, but the real thing.  But that was really the reason I did it, so as not to rag the Russians too much.  But if they go on squeezing off cyanide pistols in people’s faces, I have have to make them cosa mia again.”

January, 1964
© Express/Hulton Archive – Getty Images

On the Double-0 Prefix

“Well, though this was purely a fictional device to make Bond’s particular job more interesting, the double-0 prefix is not so entirely invented as all that.  I pinched the idea from the fact that, in the Admiralty, at the beginning of the War, all top-secret signals had the double-0 prefix.  This was changed subsequently for the usual security reasons, but it stuck in my mind and I borrowed it for Bond and he got stuck with it.”

On Bond as Fleming’s ‘Alter-Ego’…and Brand Names

“…Bond is a highly romanticized version of anybody, but certainly not I, and I couldn’t keep up with him; I couldn’t have even at his age, which is, and always has been, in the middle thirties.  He’s a sort of amalgam of romantic tough guys, dressed up in 20th Century clothes, using 20th Century language.  I think he’s slightly more true to the type of modern hero, to the commandos of the last War, and so on, and to some of the secret-service men I’ve met, than to any of the rather card-boardy heroes of the ancient thrillers.

“…Seduction has, to a marked extent, replaced courtship.  The direct, flat approach is not the exception, it is the standard.  James Bond is a healthy, violent, noncerebral man in his middle thirties, and a creature of his era.  I wouldn’t say he’s particularly typical of our times, but he’s certainly of the times.  Bond’s detached; he’s disengaged.  But he’s a believable man—around whom I try to weave a great web of excitement and fantasy.  In that, at least, we have very little in common.  Of course, there are similarities, since one writes only of what one knows, and some of the quirks and characteristics that I give Bond are ones that I know about.  When I make him smoke certain cigarettes, for example, it’s because I do so myself, and I know what these things taste like, and I have no shame in giving them free advertising.

“No self respecting agent would use such things [the gold-ringed cigarettes of Balkan and Turkish tobacco mixed for Bond by Morland's of Grosvenor Street].  He’d smoke Players or Chesterfields.  But the readers enjoy such idiosyncrasies, and they accept them—because they don’t stop to think about it.   The secrecy of my secret agent is pretty transparent, if you think about it even briefly.  But the pace, the pace of the narrative gets one by these nasty little corners.  It’s a sleight-of-hand operation.  It’s overpowering the reader.  You take him along at such a rate, you interest him so deeply in the narrative that he isn’t jolted by these incongruities.  I suppose I do it to demonstrate that I can do it.”

On His Fondness for Minutiae

“The main reason is that these things excite and interest me.  I’m observant, I think, and when I walk down the street or when I go into a room, I observe things and remember them very accurately.  It amuses me to use my powers of observation in my books and at the same time to tell people what my favourite objects are, and my favourite foods and liquors and scents, and so on.  Exact details of individual private lives and private tastes are extremely interesting to me.  I think that even the way in which a man shaves in the morning is well worth recording.  The more we have of this kind of detailed stuff laid down around a character, the more interested we are in him.

“I make notes of such details constantly; I write down my thoughts and and comments and I note menus, and so forth.  I’ve just written down something I picked up in Istanbul the other day:  ‘Now there is no more shade.’  This is a Turkish expression, used when a great sultan, like Mustafa Kemal, dies.  The general cry of the people was ‘Now there is no more shade,’ which is rather an expressive way of saying now there is nothing to protect us, now that the great man has gone.  I write things like that down and often use them later on in my books.”

A man and his cigarette
© Horste Tappe/Hulton Archive – Getty Images

On James Bond, the character

“…I wanted my hero to be entirely an anonymous instrument and to let the action of the book carry him along.  I didn’t believe in the heroic Bulldog Drummond types.  I mean, rather, I didn’t believe that they could any longer exist in literature.  I wanted this man more or less to follow the pattern of Raymond Chandler’s or Dashiell Hammett’s heroes—believable people, believable heroes.

“I don’t think that [James Bond] is necessarily a good guy or a bad guy.  Who is?  He’s got his vices and very few perceptible virtues except patriotism and courage, which are probably not virtues anyway.  He’s certainly got little in the way of politics, but I should think what politics he has are just a little bit left of centre.  And he’s got little culture.  He’s a man of action, and he reads books on golf, and so on—when he reads anything.  I quite agree that he’s not a person of much social attractiveness.  But then, I didn’t intend for him to be a particularly likable person.  He’s a cipher, a blunt instrument in the hands of government.

“…I’ve lived with him for about twelve years now, and we’ve been getting into deeper and deeper trouble together.  So I’ve come to have a certain sympathy with what is going to happen to him, whatever that may be.”