70 Years of 007

mtmmtm United Kingdom
edited April 2023 in Literary 007 Posts: 14,861
Happy Birthday James Bond 007: today marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of Casino Royale.

The 70th birthday of our favourite spy seemed worth its own thread.




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Comments

  • MaxCasinoMaxCasino United States
    Posts: 4,050
    Happy birthday James Bond. Thank you for your helping me become a better artist.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    To think that 70 years and one day ago, James Bond was just an ornithologist and a bit part character in an Agatha Christie novel :)
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 23,449
    mtm wrote: »
    To think that 70 years and one day ago, James Bond was just an ornithologist and a bit part character in an Agatha Christie novel :)

    I hadn't thought about that, but yes! :-D If Casino Royale hadn't happened, the name 'James Bond' would have remained a fairly common name, probably given to a lot of blokes in the UK without any specific meaning.

    70 years! My my. Happy B-day, James.

    And a special thank you to this gentleman:

    12mcogyf46d4.jpg
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    edited April 2023 Posts: 17,728
    Happy 70th Anniversary to James Bond! O, what Ian Fleming hath wrought!
  • LeonardPineLeonardPine The Bar on the Beach
    Posts: 3,985
    70 years later and the character is still playing a huge part in our lives. What an incredible legacy Ian Fleming created. I always keep the novels close to hand because no matter how many times I read them, they still take me by surprise with their brilliance. Happy anniversary 007 🇬🇧
  • MajorDSmytheMajorDSmythe "I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it."Moderator
    Posts: 13,882
    Ian_Fleming450.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale

    Happy anniversary Cmdr Bond.
  • Posts: 12,242
    Happy 70th anniversary. What an incredible milestone. I just reread Casino Royale, which remains a thrilling tale that will never grow old.
  • ggl007ggl007 www.archivo007.com Spain, España
    edited April 2023 Posts: 2,535
    Happy Anniversary!

    In Archivo 007 we pay tribute through an impressive video with hundreds of CR covers. Yes, your edition is here too...

    We can't publish it on youtube because it is also a musical tribute, but I assure you, you are going to enjoy it... CHECK HERE
  • Posts: 11,189
    Moonraker is my favourite book. All the ingredients there and yet it never leaves England.

    The final few paragraphs are Fleming at his very best.
  • SecretAgentMan⁰⁰⁷SecretAgentMan⁰⁰⁷ Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria
    edited April 2023 Posts: 1,282
    It's just amazing! I started re-reading the books again, because of this 70th anniversary. From Russia With Love is still my favourite though. I don't know if Fleming knew he was creating an immortal character that would live on forever, when he was writing the books. Best literary character! Best cinematic character!
  • LeonardPineLeonardPine The Bar on the Beach
    edited April 2023 Posts: 3,985
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    Moonraker is my favourite book. All the ingredients there and yet it never leaves England.

    The final few paragraphs are Fleming at his very best.

    Mine too. It's a great but simple plot, with one of Fleming's best ever villains. It also has one of my favourite passages. The card game at Blades.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 17,728
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    Moonraker is my favourite book. All the ingredients there and yet it never leaves England.

    The final few paragraphs are Fleming at his very best.

    Mine too. It's a great but simple plot, with one of Fleming's best ever villains. It also has one of my favourite passages. The card game at Blades.

    It's my favourite Bond novel too. Great plot, great villain, different sort of Bond girl, good minor villains like Willy Krebs and Dr Walter. It has it all, plus it was the first Bond novel I ever read too.
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 23,449
    CR is my favourite book. It's fleet, well-written, incredibly original, concise and very tense. Fleming put together a text that, to my knowledge, was unlike anything people had read. Even today, in 2023, I can pick up CR for the tenth or so time, start reading, turning pages at a fast pace, and not putting the book down until I've read its last sentence.

    I love all the Flemings. MR is another awesome book in the collection. But to me, the simplicity and audacity of CR are what give it the advantage.
  • j_w_pepperj_w_pepper Born on the bayou. I can still hear my old hound dog barkin'.
    Posts: 8,656
    Christ! Just to think that the character was created 3 1/2 years before I was born... My earliest contact with Bond was when GF (the movie) came out. Not that I was able to see it (it was marked at least "12", or even "16", and I wasn't anywhere near 12), but a friend of mine in the neighbourhood who was four years older got the Corgi Toys DB5 with all the usual refineries, and later the older brother of another friend of mine had diverse Bond cinema posters he got from the local small-town cinema in their joint bedroom. I think it took me until about 1969 to first see a Bond movie (a matinee re-screening of GF). The rest is history. And magic.
  • edited April 2023 Posts: 2,887
    Raymond Chandler and Kingsley Amis also considered Casino Royale Fleming's best book. Amis wrote:

    "On the publication of Casino Royale it was apparent to many that a remarkable new writer had arrived on the scene, in the tradition of Buchan, Dornford Yates, and Sapper, although at that stage almost certainly more promising than any of these had been. Original in construction, the book contained many of the elements which were to become Fleming’s hallmark: evident familiarity with secret-service activities (not least those of his country’s enemies), portrayal of the kind of rich life to be found in exclusive clubs, smart restaurants, and fashionable resorts, obsessive interest in machines and gadgets and in gambling, an exotic setting, a formidable and physically repulsive villain, a strong sexual component, a glamorous and complaisant but affectionate heroine, and—of course—James Bond himself. Bond, at any rate on the surface, was a carefully constructed amalgam of what many men would like to be—and of what perhaps rather fewer women would like to meet: handsome, elegant, brave, tough, at ease in expensive surroundings, predatory and yet chivalrous in sexual dealings, with a touch of Byronic melancholy and remoteness thrown in.

    "Some would say that Fleming never surpassed, perhaps never quite equaled, his achievement in Casino Royale. Certainly there is a power and freshness about the book which, in an age less rigidly hierarchical in its attitudes to literature, would have caused it to be hailed as one of the most remarkable first novels to be published in England in the previous thirty years."

    That said, Fleming himself considered From Russia With Love his best book, and I'm inclined to agree with him.
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 23,449
    Thanks for that, @Revelator.

    I want to emphasise that I love all Flemings, even the somewhat controversial The Spy Who Loved Me and The Man With The Golden Gun. What makes them all so appealing to me is that they tell amazing stories, each one of them written in such a way that you take them seriously while still having all the fun of a sexy fantasy trip.

    Meanwhile, Fleming is very matter-of-fact about it all. He doesn't need highly perfumed prose or a collection of big words no one ever uses to confirm his literary authority. Rather, he writes what happens, clean and simple, but fast and without lulls. The books move at lightspeed. I turn a page and have my fingers on the next one already because the story never takes a pause.

    Fleming didn't write to show us, commoners, that his farts smell like roses. Fleming fired normal words out of his typewriter but built countless memorable sentences with them and showed his marksmanship that way. I'll take a Fleming over half the big "masterpieces" discussed in college any day.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,254
    I love The Man With The Golden Gun— warts and all. It’s so damn tense. Although Scaramanga seems like a petty thug and a bully, he is king in his imagination, and he’s dangerous enough to keep that illusion alive… I felt Bond was in genuine danger the entire time…

    I have always enjoyed TSWLM. I have never quite understood the controversy, other than accepting that the world wasn’t ready for an Ian Fleming James Bond novel to be a woman’s tale written in first person (and our hero doesn’t enter the picture until the last third). Otherwise, I thought Fleming really did capture the feminine voice of Vivienne. It was a damn fine creative experiment.
  • MaxCasinoMaxCasino United States
    Posts: 4,050
    I think the next time that something will be announced after On His Majesty’s Secret Service could be Ian Fleming’s birthday on May 28.
  • MaxCasinoMaxCasino United States
    edited April 2023 Posts: 4,050
  • Posts: 5,772
    And here's the 2 €uros commemorative coins for Bond's 70th birthdy :

    2-euro-james-bond-enduite.jpg

    You can order it here :

    https://www.tresordupatrimoine.fr/221415843-2-euro-james-bond-enduite.html
  • Agent_99Agent_99 enjoys a spirited ride as much as the next girl
    Posts: 3,099
    Saw this at London Bridge underground station last night.

    FuF9AhgWAAoi4fV.jpg
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited April 2023 Posts: 14,861
    I reckon they could have been bolder with it, but it's nice to see them advertise. And 'Bond is Back' never fails.
    Probably should mention bookshops or something to make it clear what the product is!
  • LucknFateLucknFate 007 In New York
    edited April 2023 Posts: 1,419
    mtm wrote: »
    I reckon they could have been bolder with it, but it's nice to see them advertise. And 'Bond is Back' never fails.
    Probably should mention bookshops or something to make it clear what the product is!

    Yeah. I would have thrown an "Ian Fleming's James Bond" on there somewhere, too have the full name etc.
  • MaxCasinoMaxCasino United States
    Posts: 4,050
    LucknFate wrote: »
    mtm wrote: »
    I reckon they could have been bolder with it, but it's nice to see them advertise. And 'Bond is Back' never fails.
    Probably should mention bookshops or something to make it clear what the product is!

    Yeah. I would have thrown an "Ian Fleming's James Bond" on there somewhere, too have the full name etc.

    I agree, I like that title for James Bond. Just don't put "Writing as Ian Fleming" on a book again.

    For the rest of the 70th anniversary year, what other announcements do you honestly expect? Books, movies, all James Bond guesses are welcome!
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    I don't expect Eon or the 007 Store to go much near it, as they just had their own anniversary last year*; but with any luck we'll get news of a new novel. The ol' Fleming birthday is often a good date for this- I think they've given news on that day before. Fingers crossed for more Higson.
    Other than that, and comic adaptations and the like, I'm not sure there's much IFP can do with it.

    *Mind you, I remember the Fleming centenary had that stage celebration where plenty of folks from the films, including two 007s, turned up. That was lots of fun.
  • MaxCasinoMaxCasino United States
    edited April 2023 Posts: 4,050
    mtm wrote: »
    I don't expect Eon or the 007 Store to go much near it, as they just had their own anniversary last year*; but with any luck we'll get news of a new novel. The ol' Fleming birthday is often a good date for this- I think they've given news on that day before. Fingers crossed for more Higson.
    Other than that, and comic adaptations and the like, I'm not sure there's much IFP can do with it.

    *Mind you, I remember the Fleming centenary had that stage celebration where plenty of folks from the films, including two 007s, turned up. That was lots of fun.

    I think more and more that IFP might do two book series at once: one with a Adult Bond and another with spinoff character(s). I think that Kim Sherwood’s 2nd book will be announced soon as she’s currently at least editing it and she started writing her 3rd. As for Charlie Higson and the future. I hope he writes more modern day novels, and possibly a spinoff novel for a character. He listed Blofeld and Irma Bunt as two of his favorite villains. I think he should write them in a modern day novel.

    https://www.mi6-hq.com/news/index.php?itemid=6231
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited April 2023 Posts: 14,861
    Oh yes, I definitely think that they'll have a Bond series running alongside Sherwood's.

    Do her books being set in the present day possibly affect the Bond series' chance of doing the same though? Can you have two series set at the same time running concurrently but in different continuities?
    But one assumes OHisMSS won't have Bond under orders of Moneypenny (she's in charge in Double or Nothing, isn't she?).
  • MaxCasinoMaxCasino United States
    Posts: 4,050
    mtm wrote: »
    Oh yes, I definitely think that they'll have a Bond series running alongside Sherwood's.

    Do her books being set in the present day possibly affect the Bond series' chance of doing the same though? Can you have two series set at the same time running concurrently but in different continuities?
    But one assumes OHisMSS won't have Bond under orders of Moneypenny (she's in charge in Double or Nothing, isn't she?).

    I imagine MP won’t be M. For a while, we thought that Kim’s trilogy would follow Carte Blanche honestly.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited April 2023 Posts: 14,861
    I kind of think it could be quite savvy from a marketing/sales point of view to have two series running alongside each other in the same continuity: one with Bond and one starring the other double-Os, perhaps occasionally crossing over. But I also can't quite see it working and I don't know if I'd want the Bond series to be forced to follow the template set out in the Double-O books; I'd want that author (Higson hopefully) to be free to do what he wants.

    But I guess Higson and Sherwood have been seen together at events and things; maybe they could make it work potentially.

    How good would it be if OHisMSS ended with a ‘JAMES BOND WILL RETURN IN…’ page though? :)
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