The Rest Is History - 101. James Bond

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

The fictional British agent James Bond returns to our cinema screens this week, but what do the history and evolution of Ian Fleming’s iconic character tell us about our changing society? Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland explore 007 in both book and cinematic form.  A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Vasco Andrade Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Now, it may only be a myth, and it is certainly not medical science, but there is a popular theory that a man who cannot whistle has homosexual tendencies. M hadn't whistled since he was a boy, unconsciously his mouth pursed, and a clear note was emitted. That was Ian Fleming in Man with the Golden Gun. Bond novel, of course, written in 1965.

And with me is massive James Bond fan Dominic Sandbrook. Dominic, we are doing this episode on James Bond because the new Daniel Craig film No Time to Die is out this week do you imagine that that's the kind of dialogue we'll be getting I thought you're going to ask me to whistle yeah well go on I'm not going to whistle I mean I feel like it's a lose-lose whatever whatever I do I think it's very bad for the reputation of this podcast if we start whistling in an attempt to prove our sexuality one way or the other um yes so it's it's a funny thing isn't it that um the bond phenomenon has endured so long and i'm sure we'll go on to talk lots about its historic significance and what it means about britishness and so on but actually if you go back to the books there's so much cancelable

material i'm gonna i'm gonna put my hand up and say i've never read one you've never read a bond book i've never read one but i have i don't need to because i've read you on it right your fine book the great british dream factory the strange history of our national imagination you have a fabulous chapter on it and also i've read simon winder's book um well he's my editor um it's it'sestuous. Bond, the man who saved Britain or whatever. Yeah, hilarious, hilarious. It's very funny and it's full of fantastic quotations, so I don't think I actually need to have read the novels.

But I will say that the quotations in the novels, well, goodness. Yeah, it's quite strong stuff, isn't it? So we did a podcast, Tom, on Sherlock Holmes. So we've done one on a fictional character already and this is our second one on a purely fictional character and I think um they make a nice pair actually because in in their different ways Holmes and Bond are both representatives of Britain and Britishness but they're also fascinating historical phenomena so Holmes is obviously sort of late Victorian Edwardian Britain and Bond is a creation of well the, the post-World War II, 1950s, 1960s.

But compared to Holmes, I mean, there's so much in Bond that just kind of, well, reeks of his age, I guess. I mean, the attitudes to race, to sexuality, to all kinds of things are by our standards. It's only a few decades on, but it seems like a completely different age, whereas Holmes, oddly, seems a much more contemporary character. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think that's partly because

Ian Fleming was reactionary even by the standards of the 1950s. I mean, he was intensely reactionary. And even at the time, some people sort of remarked on that, and there's a very famous review. So for people who don't like James Bond, they'll enjoy this. This was Paul Johnson in The New Statesman in 1958.

So he's just been reading Dr. No, and he says, I've just finished what is without any doubt the nastiest book I've ever read. I had to suppress a strong impulse to throw the thing away. There are three basic ingredients in Dr. No, all unhealthy, all thoroughly English. The sadism of a schoolboy bully, the mechanical two-dimensional sex longings of a frustrated adolescent, and the crude snob cravings of a suburban adult. Mr. Fleming has no literary skill, and this seems to me far more dangerous than straight pornography. The novel is badly written to the point of incoherence and that sort of stuff about snobbery sexism and sadism

i mean they're what we bond fans love about James Bond is it though but well i think they're very important elements of it actually there's a huge chasm, isn't there, between the novels and the films? Because I was the Roger Moore generation. Yeah. And to me, it seemed pretty much on a level with Carry On. I mean, it seemed about as sadistic as a Carry On film, i.e. not very. It was kind of smutty. And that was about the limit of it.

That's all you see in it, the smut. Yeah. So I think because of that, I've never really... I mean, I never felt... I've never really taken James Bond seriously. I mean, he seems about as serious as Kenneth Williams. Well, I think the Roger Moore films, which people of our age probably take as the template, are to some extent aberrations within the sequence.

So there are more non-roger moore's than there are roger moore's before and after um and the roger moore's are not representative in any way of fleming's vision um now obviously they work as kind of parodies to some extent they're parodies of themselves yeah um so they're kind of austin powers before austin powers they are austin powers but that's one they're kind of austin powers before austin powers they are austin powers but that's one of the things why i don't think austin powers is quite as funny as lots of other people think because it's parodying something that was already parodying yeah itself um but i think well i mean maybe if you're a skeptic i need to persuade you that

james no i'm not a skeptic i'm not a skeptic but but because i grew up with um the roger moore one and then because basically the only other ones i've seen are the um the more the daniel craig ones yeah he's kind of earnest and tortured yeah and basically i guess trying to square the original material with the very different cultural mores of the 21st century i hadn't properly realized kind of kind of what the novels were like and so they're quite strong stuff aren't they they are quite strong stuff and i mean the funny thing is i don't think it's brought out even more clearly in in the simon winder book than in in your book um so could we just look at Ian Fleming? Of course, yeah.

So tell me about Ian Fleming and where this stuff is coming from. So Ian Fleming, he's a very strange man. I think it's fair to say. I can't say that. So he's born in 1908. His father's a Tory MP, Valentine Fleming. They're from a family that made a lot of money in Dut and they've moved south from Dundee originally in the Victorian period and become very rich. So

his father is a Tory MP and a barrister and a merchant banker. And his father, Valentine, is killed in the First World War in Picardy in 1917. Churchill wrote an obituary of him that appeared in The Times. And Fleming, Ian, you know, what is he, nine or so when his father dies? And that obviously has a colossal impact on him. And he has a picture of his father and he's always trying to live up to his father's tremendous heroism. The other thing that Ian Fleming suffers from is he's a younger brother, his older brother, Peter.

So Peter Fleming is a far more impressive man in every way. He's kind of forgotten now. There's a great sort of tragedy in that everybody remembers Ian Fleming, but not Peter Fleming. Peter Fleming is a genuine hero and an adventurer. So he's married to Celia Johnson, the actress who's in Brief Encounter. So he's got a film star wife. He's famous because he goes on an expedition to find the explorer Percy Fawcett, who had gone on this expedition of his own to find the lost city of Zed in Brazil. Kind of El Dorado question. El Dorado.

So Peter Fleming, when he's a young man, goes to try and find him. Doesn't find him, but writes a best-selling book called Brazilian Adventure, which is a kind of true story of this incredible journey. Then he writes another book about an incredible journey called um news from tartary so he's done an overland journey in the 1930s from peking to kashmir um through kind of china um over the himalayas all this sort of amazing and he's an amazing i learned um he he was um the first person to be richly cursed at a revived witch ceremony.

Which, according to Dr Robin Douglas, who told me this on Twitter, was carried out by a group of Oxford students while he was at Oxford and he was a member of the Bullingdon Club. He was a member of the Bullingdon Club, but the curse clearly didn't work because he had this tremendous life.

But he didn't become a famous novelist. No, he didn't. Well, it's only because of Peter Fle fleming by the way that ian fleming becomes a novelist at all because his brother pulls strings for him so ian fleming has this father and this brother who are in their different ways kind of symbols of british pluck and daring do and stuff they are absolutely the and masculinity they're the men you would want to be and ian fleming himself is an utter failure and a dud so he goes to eton and he's not academic they put him in the army class at eton so that he can go to sandhurst but he goes to sandhurst and he's a failure he gets gonorrhea from a prostitute and has to pull out of um of sandhurst he applies for the foreign office and he fails the entrance exams he goes into

banking and he fails at that he tries to set up as a stockbroker like his i think his father or some of his family connections had and he fails at that um so he's just an utter and he's also quite foppish and he's not a man the weird thing about ian fleming so much of bond is a wish fulfillment because he's not a man's man. He's not a... He'd be worried about an inability to whistle. Yeah, he's a man. Yeah, he's your man who can't whistle. And if you see, Simon Windu in his book

has a very funny section about photographs of Ian Fleming. So Fleming often, in some of the sort of classic photos that are used, he's wreathed in smoke to make him look like a man of mystery. But if you look at the photos of him where he's not wreathed in smoke, he's just this sort of simpering Noel Coward fellow with a bow tie

and a kind of massive cigarette holder. I mean, the cigarette holder is not hard. The cigarette holder just makes him look so camp. So he has this one moment in the Second World War where, through family connections again, he gets a job as the personal assistant to the Royal Navy Intelligence Chief, Rear Admiral John Godfrey. And he's basically M. He's like the real life M, the head of intelligence. And this is Fleming's kind of, you know, he's living the dream. So he's a bit of a pen pusher, really, although he does

plan commando raids and things. But obviously the war doesn't last very long. So then he has to get a proper job. He gets a job as sort of running the foreign correspondents of the Kemsley newspaper groups. That's the group that includes the Sunday Times. And as usual with Ian Fleming, because he's posh and because he's got all these connections, it's a very cushy job. So he can take off for two to three months every year in the winter and go off to his house that he's built in Jamaica called Goldeneye and basically it's when he's there that he decides

one day I'm going to um I'm going to try and write a novel and he writes um Casino Royale he starts writing it in February 1952 and this. And this is classic Ian Fleming. He sends it to Jonathan Cape, and they don't think it's very good. And they're not tempted, you know, they're not really interested in publishing it. And basically, Peter Fleming, who's a much more successful man in every way, says to Jonathan Cape, no, no, you really must publish my brother's book. And they do. And Casino Royale is set in northern France. Yeah.

So it's not very exotic at all. So it's not exotic at all, yeah. No, it's a place you go on an exchange or a sort of rubbish school trip now. But at the time, I suppose it's exotic. The Casino Royale Les Eaux, sort of Le Touquet type place. Because it's a product of austerity Britain.

And that's the Simon Winder thesis, isn't it? That James Bond is wish fulfilment, not just for Ian Fleming, but for a Britain that is staring into the abyss of its own decline. Yeah, I don't really, this is a terrible thing to say about my own editor that I don't really, I don't completely share his thesis um but i don't completely share his thesis because

actually at first during the heyday of austerity the bond books aren't terribly successful it's actually much a bit later on in the sort of late 1950s early 1960s that the sales really take off and that's after austerity is gone but i I think, to me, the Bond books are clear, they're wish fulfilment on the part of Ian Fleming, because he's hankering after the Second World War. And he has this sort of, he's living out this weird fantasy life through the books of what he thinks a man should be. But you don't think that this is a fantasy that's shared by lots of people

who had enjoyed the war and who find that you know the post-war reality rather gray and drag possibly i think it's yes i think there's an element of nostalgia for the war certainly rob but i buy that more than i buy the argument that it's uh it's all about the loss of empire i don't really think that is it people in the forefront of people's minds not least because a lot of the the people reading the books are american um and they don't give a damn about the loss of the british empire i mean they're probably delighted by it um i think it's i think a lot of it is about you know in the post-war years there's a lot of sort of anxiety about you, what it is to be a man.

Obviously, women are flooding into the workplace. Gender roles are changing. And Bond, you know, anybody who grew up in these years knows that James Bond represents a kind of a sort of mad fantasy of sort of masculine omnipotence. Okay, so the inspiration lies in Ian Fleming's own sense of inadequacy. But can we broaden it out a bit? There's a question from Atlee18 who asks, what was Fleming's inspiration for Bond? Some say it was partly based on his friend David Niven. Yeah.

Is that true? Well, it's a very weird thing that Ian Fleming, when he was asked, consistently suggested David Niven to play James Bond because David Niven had been, I think, a commando in the Second World War. So he's a very impressive man. But his screen persona is nothing like that at all. I mean, his screen persona is the cigarette holder, moustache, foppishness. I mean, basically a dressing gown in human form I think actually the real the inspirations for James Bond I mean to me

they're not real people and they're blindingly obvious they're two fictional characters one of them is Richard Hannay so that's John Buchan I mean you must have

read the 39 Steps I have and Green Mantle and Green Mantle exactly and all those brilliant books far better written

than the Ian Fleming books in my view and they also provide the inspiration for the Bond villain so Green Mantle has a kind of sinister figure in the background who's plotting a revolution and also has a female character what's her name Hilda von Einem I think her name is

in Green Mantle yes and there's also a super villain in a book called The Three Hostages called Dominic Medina. Yes. So he's a very Bond villain sort of character. So there's Richard Hannay. Richard Hannay is a South African...

What is he? Has he been a mining engineer or something? He's a prospector, isn't he? Yeah, but he's an adventurer. Yeah. He's not a spy. he's a secret agent, which is true of Bond as well, because Bond does very little spying.

Also, that brilliant prescription in John McNabb, where there's, I think it's people in Clubland, like Ian Fleming was, who feel a bit kind of seedy, a bit drab, a bit like they may be a bit ill. And they go to the doctor and the doctor's prescription is that they should go and steal a horse from someone in a country

where horse thieves get hanged. That's brilliant. And it's that kind of idea idea that adventure for adventure's sake that's exactly hannay has that all the time hannay is always saying in the john buckham books he hates london he doesn't like peacetime he he dreams of life on the veldt you know when he could go big game hunting and stuff and the other and that's also a parallel with the other big inspiration i think for james bond which is bulldog drummond have you ever read bulldog drummond no i've never read by by a guy called hc mcneil sapper sapper was his nom de plume writing in the i imagine it's the kind of thing your brother

and al murray would probably love um uh so he's writing the aftermath of the first world war and um bulldog drummond is a World War I veteran who's ugly. He's in a very sort of masculine, sexy way, not unlike Daniel Craig's Bond, I would say. And he drifts around Clubland as well. And basically he finds employment with his mates, fighting conspirators who are trying to undermine the British Empire and so on. So the villains in Bulldog Drummond,

the main villain is a guy called Carl Peterson. And they're fantastic. They're a fantastic insight into the kind of paranoid imagination of the 1920s. So they're Germanic, they're Jewish, they're connected with Wall Street and high finance, but they're also funding Bolshevik left-wing... So they're rootless cosmopolitans.

They're absolute rootless cosmopolitans. And actually, that's true of fleming's villains as well so someone like blofeld blofeld is half polish half greek very kind of weird combination um and and he's drifted around europe before setting up specter which is itself pure rootless cosmopolitanism because specter um blowfeld's conspiratorial organization which is very 1920s actually has gestapo people in it and russians and yugoslavs and all kinds of dominic what about fu manchu the yes that must also be a part of the incredibly racist portrayal of a chinese supervillain yes because fu manchu is dr no um basically so Fu Manchu is created by Sax Roma

starts in the 1910s so initially it's contempt Fu Manchu is the missing link I guess between Sherlock Holmes and James Bond so Fu Manchu starts between Professor Moriarty and Dr. No exact yes exactly so Fu Manchu starts in the 1910s uh it's pure kind of yellow peril kind of anti Chinese paranoia and then uh Sax Roma starts writing it again in the 1930s, and there are lots of Fu Manchu films. And this idea of the supervillain, whose agents are everywhere, who is un-British, who is physically repulsive, but is possessed of enormous mental powers,

that's there in almost all the Fleming books. So almost all the Fleming books so almost all the Fleming James Bond villains are physically disgusting or deformed in some strange way that's right there's a very funny list in Simon Winder's book but they've got no lung or they're covered in hair or they have no hair or Blofeld has had his earlobes. He's got no earlobes. That's right. I mean, by that point, you know, they're getting a bit desperate.

Yeah, Scaramanga has a third nipple. I mean, just ludicrous. Very peculiar. Well, again, I mean, you get an insight into... So Ian Fleming has this cocktail of stuff clearly floating around his head. Hané, Bulldog Drummond, Fu Manchu, all this stuff.

But he also has his own weird paranoias and neuroses. So he's in this weird relationship with his wife, Anne, the woman who becomes his wife, who was initially Lady Rothermere. And they have this strange, what appears to be a kind of sadomasochistic relationship. And there's tons of sadomasochism in the books. So who's the sadist and who's the masochist? It's very unclear.

I mean, in the books, either Bond says again and again to the sort of Bond girls, I will beat you, I will spank you, you know, I will hit you. And then there's an awful book called The Spy Who Loved Me, which is the only one narrated by a woman, by a woman, Vivienne Michel. How successful is that? Not very successful. And it's a really weird one,

because I think I'm trying to, it's yonk since I read it and I tried to blank it out. I think she's staying at a motel and two men attack her and Bond is the stranger who intervenes to rescue her. So there's no sort of conspiracy or espionage or anything really in it um but she says it at various points in that book you know all women love to be taken they love to be treated roughly and and this fleming attempting to kind of ventriloquize what a woman thinks and it's obviously utterly disastrous

because it's just his fantasy of what a woman wants because um is it is it in dr no the novel that the villain ties the girl up and threatens her with being devoured by crabs um i think there is i think there is some stuff about crabs she's tied up naked to a rock and he kind of shivers with delight at the thought of all the crabs coming up and pinching. And clearly something's going on with the plumbing there. Something very strange is going on there. Is he whistling while he's doing it? That's the question.

Yes. Well, I think that's a good question on which to perhaps go for a break, have a martini. We could do some brand product placement um all the kind of bond stuff uh and when we come back let's look at the way that um the novels develop and then migrate into the films okay and the the chasm of difference that has really opened up between between uh the mores of ian fleming and the. So we'll see you back in a minute. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History. We are talking James Bond. And Dominic, we've looked at Ian Fleming, we've looked at possible inspirations. Let's look at the novels now.

And there's a great question here from Sam Zarifi. How would we view a Bond-like character from the other side? A Soviet or Chinese or Iranian agent granted a licence to kill and blow up institutions of Western power. Should Bond finally face justice for his actions? Must Bond fall? Yes. Well, obviously, Bond has killed a lot of people, so I suppose there are probably a lot of people out there

who would like to see Bond fall. How would it work? Well, I mean, were there? Were there kind of Soviet equivalents? Yes there were and they did yes I mean there were tons especially in the 1960s there were tons of Soviet equivalents and Eastern Bloc equivalents

and indeed you know Italian French and so on lots of people tried to do James Bond I think the Britishness is absolutely central to Bond's image and Bond's success so I don't think they would so so there have been such agents but they haven't worked as international commercial phenomena. Why do you think that is? Well this is a very big question I think it's because the Britishness for a lot of people and not all listeners to this podcast I think will agree

with this but I think for a lot of people britishness represents a kind of class a kind of quality um which is why so it's a kind there's a kind of consumerist element to it so it's in the same way that for example if you're a recently you know if you're a chinese or an indian billionaire you you go and get your suit made on savile row and you buy a rolls royce and you employ a brit Savile Row and you buy a Rolls Royce. And you employ a British butler. And you employ a British butler, precisely. You don't, you know, you don't get an Italian butler. But you do. You go and buy a vineyard in France.

You do, but there are specific British things that are seen to represent. So there's a sort of sense of a gentleman, you know, and you buy your house in Mayfair and you send your children to a British public school, indeed the same public school, Eton, that James Bond went to. But he also went to Fetty's, didn't he? He did, because he was kicked out of Eton for some mischief with a maid.

Which is Tony Blair's old school. Yeah, a very different man. Yeah, and Tilda Swinton. Tilda Swinton, interesting. She went there as well, apparently. Maybe she could play James Bond in some gender neutral or whatever

remake anyway yeah so I think that Britishness is really important and I think Bond could only work in a world

in which the British Empire had ceased to matter very like the Beatles very like the Beatles Tom they only succeed because Britishness is cool and not scary matter which is okay so that's very like the beatles very like the beatles tom okay only succeed because britishness is cool and not scary okay so there's a question from from stephanie empson yeah friend of the show yes how important has james bond been relative to the beatles in shaping global perceptions of post-imperial britain i think very important so that's the

films basically isn't it yeah purely the film films start to be released in the 60s. Yes, 1962. So the films start to be released at perfect timing, at precisely the point where Britain no longer is a sort of top, top-ranked player in world affairs. And it's when the Union Jack is becoming a kind of ironic symbol. Exactly. And Bond plays a big part in driving that.

It's very like the Beatles. So it's both a symptom and a cause. And I think Bond and the Beatles together are the two most important things in creating an image of Britain as modern, Britain as cool, as funny, as knowing, self-aware. All those things which were not part of our brand when our brand was dreadnoughts and making ball bearings.

But after those things no longer matter, then we kind of reinvented our brand. And I think Bond was... I mean, Bond is... The Britishness of Bond is always ambiguous, isn't it? Because Bond takes pleasure in it. You know, what's Bond doing? Keeping the British end up, sir.

And sort of, he's got a Union Jack parachute and all these kind of things. And yet at the time he's also it's sort of self-aware and he's poking fun at it and i think um that that only works in a country that has been powerful and now has lost a lot of that power um but has lost it in this sort of not in a terribly traumatic way that so it's it's it's perfectly happy to joke about it and to kind of ironise it. And I don't think there are many other countries that were in the same position to do that kind of thing. For example, France's loss of power, I think,

was probably much more traumatic because of Algeria and the occupation and so on. Britain has none of that. So Britain can kind of, British culture can kind of make a joke about Britishness and about Victorianism and the empire in a way that other countries don't. But the resource, I'm going to quote here a leading specialist on the subject.

Yeah. The difference with the Beatles, and the leading specialist writes this, Bond, we are led to understand, is the kind of man who plays a lot of baccarat, not the kind of man who spends his evenings at working men's clubs in Barnsley. Yeah, that's me.

From the opening sentences of Fleming's first book, The Last Scene of Skyfall, there has never been a more seductive advertisement for the upper-class establishment. Yeah, that's true. That was you. Yeah, of course you do, because you write it. Well, I stand by my own words.

No, I think Bond is offering a vision, a remarkably unchanging vision of upper-class Britishness. You see, that's what I missed, because I had Roger Moore in a safari suit. Yeah, and that's probably the point at which that was least pronounced. But even now, Daniel Craig. I mean, Daniel Craig is from the Wirral. He's the son of a pub landlord.

Or Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan, an Irish immigrant who went to a comprehensive school. So there's always a slight tension between the person playing the part and the character. And that was definitely true of Sean Connery. And that's true of Sean Connery, milkman and bodybuilder. There's a great question from Capital Loft. Bond in the books is a Scot who's been played by a Scot, an Australian, two Englishmen, a Welshman and an Irishman, but is seen as the epitome of englishness by many what does he tell us about the changing

beliefs and anxieties about britain post world war ii well i think i saw that question i thought what a great question it was because it's very hard to answer unambiguously because there is a kind of ambiguity about bond the bond character is half scott, half Swiss. So his father was a Scottish, supposedly, worked for a Scotsman who worked for an arms manufacturer, Vickers, and his wife, Monique, came from Switzerland and they die in a climbing accident. Bond is initially educated abroad, and then he goes to Eton. And in fact, I'll just read you out something from Moonraker, one of the early Bond books. Bond is reflecting on his own appearance, and he says of himself, something a bit cold and dangerous in that face.

Looks pretty fit. May have been attached to Templar in Malaya or Nairobi. Mau Mau work. Tough-looking customer. Bond knew there was something alien and un-English about himself. He knew he was a difficult man to cover up, particularly in England. He shrugged his shoulders. Abroad was what mattered. He would never to cover up, particularly in England. He shrugged his shoulders. Abroad was what mattered.

He would never have a job to do in England. Of course, the irony is in Moonraker, it's set entirely in England, in the book. But he's un-English. And his un-Englishness, I think, is... He's like Hannay to that extent. So he's kind of... It's as though contemporary England has become dissipated and unmanned, and Bond is a sort of flashback to an

old a vanished age and the reason that he can be that is because of his un-Englishness so in a weird way having un-English people play him kind of makes sense but you're right that abroad this is the really weird and strange thing that abroad people see him as the consummate englishman and a lot of that i think is to do with the suit the style the swagger and the sense of of of complete knowledge and confidence so bond can walk into any hotel anywhere in the world ah mr bond your usual suite which is not good stuff for spy is it no but he's not a spy he's not a spy that's the point about james bob everyone thinks he's not well he doesn't do any spying he's basically he just walks around drinking expensive drinks and buying consumer durables well exactly he's a consumerist fantasy

agrees but he's always he's basically an assassin that's i think what james bond is if you're an assassin i mean if that an assassin. That's, I think, what James Bond is. Yeah, but even so, if you're an assassin, I mean, if that's your job and everyone knows who you are... I mean, I'm aware it's not a realist novel. Yeah, but it's terrifying, though. You're scared because you know James Bond is coming. He's just checked into the presidential suite in the city's leading five-star hotel.

He's eating oysters and ordering martinis. He's smoking very high, specially prepared high nicotine cigarettes, of which apparently he smokes 70 a day. I mean, the thing about Bond, my son said this to me the other day, we were talking about James Bond, and he said, does every major luxury hotel in the world have a suite prepared for James Bond on the off chance? You know, whenever he walks in, I never check into a hotel like that.

People say, oh, the room's not ready. Actually, we don't have a suite hanging around. This guy walks in with emphysema, puffing and wheezing. Oh, Mr. Bond. They're never fully booked. No. Well, goodness.

But having said that, and you mentioned Moonraker, which I was intrigued, because Moonraker of course i know as as the attempt to rip off star wars i'm kind of yeah one of my favorite fakedly corpulent roger moore doing an improbable impression of leet skywalker yeah which was i mean you could perhaps say summed up late 70s Britain. There's a fantastic, one of my favourite Bond moments, actually,

is when he walks into sort of Nassau or whatever, and he's looking for, he's been told to look for Dr. Goodhead. Dr. Goodhead. He says, I'm looking for Dr. Goodhead. And there's a woman there standing with a clipboard. She says, you just found her. And he says, a woman? Kind of such disbelief. And Mortief for his eyebrows halfway up his head with amazement that a woman could have a doctorate and be called good head oh yes dr holly good head

yeah dear oh dear but the original moon wrecker i was intrigued to read is is you mentioned this is set entirely in england it is and revolves around around Sir Hugo Drax, who is a model clubman, who then turns out to have been a Nazi. But he cheats, doesn't he? That's the giveaway. He's been cheating at cards. And also he sucked his thumb at public school. M says he cheated at cards.

So that shows there's something a bit off about him. You know, check him out. Bond checks him out and discovers that Sir Hugo is actually... Is he Graf Hugo von der Drache? Is he a German war criminal or something? And he's going to fire these missiles back at Britain and destroy Britain. Nuclear missiles. In revenge for having been bullied at public school.

For sucking his son. Yeah. There's a lot going on there. There's an awful... Yeah, there's an awful... And also, Sir Hugo Drax was named after Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranferley Plunkett Earnley Early Drax.

Well, everybody's named after somebody. Yes, so Blofeld is named after the father of Henry Blofeld, the plummy-voiced cricket commentator. Exactly. Exactly. I thought you'd enjoy that. Well, I was going to.

I was going to open with that, actually. But then I got your... This thing about whistling. Whistling. Well, Goldfinger. Goldfinger is an architect. And he was a modernist architect. And Erno Goldfinger.

And Fleming had a violent... Because Fleming was so reactionary, he disliked everything about the modern world and modern Britain, and he hated Goldfinger's modern architecture. And so he initially... He named the character Goldfinger. Erno Goldfinger was outraged and threatened to sue him. And Fleming said if he was forced to change it,

he would change it to gold prick instead. And Erno Goldfinger decided that, you know, to withdraw from the fray at that point, that he would just have to lump it. But it must be incredibly frustrating for Erno Goldfinger. He was a very acclaimed modernist architect. Yes. Basically, you know, his name is now famous for Oddjob

throwing his bowler hat that kills people. Yes. You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? No, I do. Because, again, I've read your book. OK. Oddjob has no feeling in his hands, and so he can do karate jobs. Yes.

He's a very impressive person, Oddjob. I mean, if I was going to employ a personal gentleman... A manservant to kill people. That's what you'd do. He's go for absolutely okay well so so all this i mean it's all very odd um and as i said i think it's much older than say sherlock holmes which kind of focuses attention on the scale of change that's happened over the past decade so there's a question from james beamish is james bond one of the best windows into the change of the concept of masculinity over time from the faint misogyny of connery to the suave and funny more and now with craig whose character

is somewhat conflicted and flawed well i think that's a brilliant question it is a brilliant question i'm quite right but i would say that the the character being somewhat conflicted and flawed you know craig daniel craigs is because you're having to reconcile james bond created by this awful man in fleming with the radically different assumptions of society now aren't you absolutely yes and i think the only way they the only way they can do that without dropping much of what makes James Bond James Bond is to make his masculinity kind of toxic, to use the current jargon. So, you know, whereas in the 1960s, Sean Connery drank a lot, you know, slapped women on the backside. He was ostentatiously kind of misogynistic and audiences thought it was hilarious and liberated or at least male audiences did you couldn't do that now and so all when daniel craig he's seen as drinking too much his womanizing is seen as a sign of his failure to

form attachments um he's and he's portrayed as damaged in a way that James Bond in the 1960s never was. So there's something wrong with Daniel Craig's Bond. I wasn't so hinted in one of them that he had had gay experiences. Yes, right. So Javier Bardem's character, Raoul Silva, does a strange thing of stroking Daniel Craig's knees or something, and says, you know, I bet this is the first time for everything or something. And Daniel Craig

says, what makes you think this is my first time? So have we ever heard Daniel Craig's Bond whistle? Well, Timothy Dalton's Bond whistles in a very interesting way, very, very, very timely, given the headlines at the moment. So he's imprisoned in Afghanistan in a Soviet airbase with a leader of Mujahideen. And the way he gets out is by whistling at his key fob, which is his gadget. He wolf whistles at this thing and it explodes, and he's able to escape from the cells with the Mujahideen leader,

who it turns out went to Oxford Oh that's alright. So it's fine yeah so he would never have joined the Taliban. Is that Imran Khan? It's a character who's clearly, he's called Cameron Shah and he's played by Art Malik He's very very sophisticated he's very civilised

I guess and very well with Bond So he's not a villain? The Mujahideen are tremendous fellows in the living daylights Okay, well here's another question perhaps for a James Bond episode the appropriately named Titmouse Right In brackets, maybe don't use his name

Yeah, too late Yeah, too late Does Bond have to be white British male in order to remain true to the roots of the character? As with many people, I'd like to see Idris Elba do it. Well, Idris Elba is now much too old. But Dan Gray's quite old, isn't he? Yes, but they're not going to replace him

with somebody the same age or thereabouts. I suppose that's true. So does he have to be male? I think almost certainly yes. I mean, you could have a female secret agent. Of course you could. And you could do a whole series of films about a female secret agent. But it wouldn't be Bond.

It wouldn't be Bond. The masculinity, the sort of what we would now call the toxic masculinity, is so central to Bond. I mean, that's one reason I think he's appealed. And he appeals in America. It's because he represents a vision of what it is to be a man. And obviously that's not going to work if Tilda Swinton plays him. Does he have to be British?

I think he has to be playing a character who works for the British Secret Service. I mean, at various points, the filmmakers have flirted with the idea of kind of Burt Reynolds or various American actors, but they've never done it. I think he has to be British or can pass for British. So he could be Southern. And Jason Bourne is a kind of an American attempt to have a...

But nobody dreams of being Jason Bourne, do they? No. And you don't say to somebody, oh, that's the kind of thing Jason Bourne would do. You know, you don't order a drink that Jason Bourne... Bond is not just a character. He's a sort of collection of... Well, he's a collection of consumerist aspirants.

He's a collection of brand names, isn't he? But as you say, British. Rooted in British style and class and snobbery, perhaps. Absolutely. Rooted in British snobbery. Now, the whiteness is the other interesting question. At what point could you have... I mean, clearly, a black bond in in 1980 there would have been probably a lot of consumer resistance uh audience resistance should we say

would there be audience resistance now i think it's unlikely actually i think you could quite comfortably have a um a black james bond what do you think i yeah i wouldn, I don't care. I mean, the interesting thing, well, great. I mean, whatever. The interesting thing is, I think you, I think the British, I think I would say a British audience would definitely wear a black James Bond.

It'd be interesting whether, let's say, I mean, from the filmmaker's point of view, the two biggest audiences are probably the United States and China. Would they take a black British Bond I mean, what I'd say about Idris Elba and why people always seem to mention him is that he's very cool.

Yes, and Bond is meant to be cool. And Sean Connery was clearly cool. And he was a Scottish noteworthy, wasn't he? And Ian Fleming was always complaining about it. Yeah. But because he was cool, he became basically the kind of the face of Bond. And he was much cooler than David Niven. Much cooler.

And Daniel Cage is quite cool, but Idris Elba is kind of off the scale cool. So in that sense, it would be returning to the model of Sean Connery, I guess. Yes. I think that's, I just think he's too old.

I accept that. But if he'd been cast, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago. After The Wire or something. Yeah. Then I think he could yeah then i think he could have i think it absolutely could have done it yes i agree right um dominic do you think is

there anything else you've got to say about bond as a cultural phenomenon shedding light on recent history or can we get on to the question from sam mb who is the best Bond and Diego Morgado which Bond film is the best you got anything I've got loads to say but clearly you're desperate, you're dying to get onto these questions so let's get onto these questions so who's the best Bond who's the best Bond, well

see my favourite Bond is not the best Bond, my favourite Bond is obviously Roger Moore because he's the Bond I grew up with and I like his ironic take on the character. And I find that tragically, I actually still find it very funny. There's also a very, very

good story about Roger Moore that paints him in an absolutely splendid light. Have you seen this circulating on Twitter? I have, but tell it because a lot of people may not have heard it. There's a bloke who um ended up working in tv and film and he tells a story about how when he was a little boy he went on he was traveling i think at nice airport with his grandfather in the days when airport passengers were not really

segregated by class or whatever and he sees roger moore this is when roger moore is playing james bond and he goes up and he asks Roger Moore for his autograph. And Roger Moore, or his grandfather, gets the autograph for him. And it comes back and the autograph is there, Roger Moore. And this little boy who's seven is devastated because he hasn't signed it as James Bond. He's signed it as this man that he's never heard of. So the grandfather goes back or something and says,

why haven't you signed it as James Bond? He says, well, I've done it under an assumed name because I'm worried that Blofeld is here. Blofeld, we're listening. It's a lovely thing to have done. And many, many years later, this boy has grown up and he's working as a lighting man or a cameraman or something for a film they're doing for UNICEF.

And Roger Moore, who did a lot for unicef is doing it and um at some point this bloke says to roger moore you you know you won't remember this but when i was seven you did a lovely thing where you signed an autograph for me and then you said you had to sign it as roger moore not as bond because uh blowfaults was listening and um roger moore said oh you're right i don't remember it but that sounds lovely thank you for telling me and all this kind of thing they do the days filming and at the end roger moore's on his way out roger moore stops by this bloke and he whispers to him he says of course i remembered it but of course i remembered it but i couldn't admit it because any of these any of

these other crewmen could be working for blow felt and And he kind of goes off. It's such a lovely thing for him to have done. I know, I know, I know. So for that reason... He's the favourite Bond, but not the best, perhaps. No, I think the best in terms of the... Well, obviously the canonical Bond is Connery. Connery created the character. Without Connery...

I mean, Connery only did it because he was cheap. So the first Bond film, Doctor No, the budget was a million dollars, which is nothing in early 1960s Hollywood. They got Connery because it's cheap, because it's tied to a franchise that probably isn't going to do very well. And Connery completely makes it. And had they employed almost anybody else,

I don't think it would have been successful. So Connery is the sort of founding father, really, arguably just as much as Ian Fleming. In terms of the best actor, I mean, there's no question, Daniel Craig is by far the best actor and he's given by far the most kind of multi... I mean, insofar as James Bond is multi-layered.

But is that what people want, necessarily? Well, he's been tremendously successful, Daniel Craig's Bond. I mean, coming at a point where... So the previous Bond film, Die Another Day, before Craig took over, had been an absolute joke with the kind of invisible car and Madonna was in it and it was just rubbish it was awful Pierce Brosnan's last film and Craig really turned it around so he'll be very hard to replace I think but he's taken it as far as you can in kind of a very hard sort of hard-edged Conflicted bond. I mean they'll have to go back to a slightly more Roger Powers

Yeah, I would have said so because otherwise it they'll just be doing a poor man's Day, you've seen Kingsman with Colin Firth. No, I haven't I'm not a great man for for bond. It's wonderful It's really good because whenever I go to a bond Bond parody I just really want to be watching a Bond film I don't want to watch some imitation it's not really parody I'd just rather watch Moonraker again I'd say it's more an homage I mean it loves it

it loves Bond okay it's not taking the piss it's do check it it's really great I loved it I've seen it about ten times

and what's your other question which Bond film is the best well again the best or my favourite? So the best is Skyfall. The favourite first. I have two favourites. One is Octopussy.

I love Octopussy. That's the one where he dresses up as a clown, isn't it? He defuses a bomb. There's an eucalyptus bomb in a circus. Yeah, exactly. So you do know your Bond films. Well, I saw all the Roger Moore ones. And you, Dopur.

Yes. Vijay Vijay Armitraj the tennis player is his local fixer and Bond does this terrible thing when he's made

a lot of money in a casino and he gives all this money to his Indian collaborators and says that should keep

you in curry for a few weeks there's a lot of banter that doesn't really stand the test of time but I always like that because

that's set in the lake palace in udai pur oh i know where we're going with this and i then subsequently bowled the crown prince of udai pur yeah you've never been approached to be in a bond film tom no but strange um so i like octopussy but my absolute favorite bond film is live and let die that's voodoo that'soodoo, early 1970s. Oh, that's the Paul Cutley one, Wings. Blaxploitation. Yeah, now that's a film,

to confess to a great fondness for Live and Let Die is slightly, is risky, because it's a film that really hasn't stood the test of time. So I found it absolutely transfixing as a child and terrifying and completely persuasive um but now when i watch it i can't help noticing that all the black characters are part of the conspiracy and that nobody in the conspiracy is white and the voodoo scenes probably would not pass muster with a with a young audience is that the one where he runs across the

line of crocodiles he does he so jane seymour plays a fortune teller called solitaire whose powers depend on her being a virgin and bond um bond sleeps with her and she loses her powers very unfortunate um is he sleeping with her for britain yeah he's always for england you know as he often as he often says so i saw livernet die last summer um in a cinema during the lockdown when people were screening old films. A cinema near us had Live and Let Die, and I took my son to see it. And I looked along the row.

So it was a Saturday afternoon screening. I was thinking, what other sad middle-aged men are there with their sons watching Live and Let Die? And the nearest man to us was uh sam mendez the director of skyfall with his son and so basically i spent the rest of the film trying to think of ways in which i could manufacture becoming friends with sam mendez at the end of getting a role and my strategy was to sort of say very loudly as soon as the lights went up well it's good but it's not as good as skyfall which you're naming it as the best yeah i think it probably is the best um because it's the the

script is the cleverest uh it's the it's the most thoughtful about about about the bond phenomenon itself it's got a tremendous villain in um javier bardem and it does a very interesting thing so it doesn't have really a traditional bond girl m judy dench is the main sort of female character is that the one where they end up in scotland they do at bond's old family family home yeah um so it's a sort of journey back into bond's own past um which i like as well when will bond stop how long will it go on for i think it'll continue for quite a long time actually i think um as long as it makes money so every time the bond film comes out the guardian unfailingly runs an op-ed saying it's time for to kill off james bond he's misogynist and it's

cold war relic and all this stuff um but then you look at the box office returns and you think you know you can howl into the void as much as you like but as long as it's making money eon productions which is the company that makes it are going to continue churning them out and it's basically the only british kind of superhero franchise yes yes i suppose it is um but actually a different way of putting that, Tom, is it's virtually the only non-American superhero franchise. And I think American audiences will take, will accept a British superhero,

but they wouldn't accept him if he was German, let's say, would they? I mean, imagine if he was Belgian. Belgian Secret Service, you know. Jean-Luc, you know. Well, they had Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek. But I mean, I know he was English. I mean, Patrick Stutes lives in Stratford-upon-Avon. I mean, it's not very...

I know, I know. I guess the challenge is, can, which we've hinted at throughout the whole thing, is can a figure who is rooted in the snobbery and the racism and the sexism of someone who is reactionary by the standards of the 50s yeah last into a very different age and i guess that's what daniel craig has been about yeah and daniel craig has shown that you can do that actually yeah um you don't bond doesn't need to be woke as it were i

mean bond merely needs to be um not not a racist not offensive yeah not offensive and and bond but since the character has always been slightly reactionary i don't think it's a problem for him still to be slightly reactionary so in goldfinger, Sean Connery, 1964, Sean Connery is disobliging about the Beatles. Yes, he says, yeah, you should listen to them with earphones. Yeah, with earmuffs, exactly. Drinking Dom Perignon, not chilled. Exactly.

So Bond has always been a bit of an old man in that respect. So he doesn't need to be cool. Because that's Ian Fleming, right? Yeah, because it's Ian Fleming, but also because a lot because a lot of because you know who goes to see Bond films I mean sort of teenage boys and middle-aged men like me um so in a way I don't really think it needs to it has a brand that works and though that audience is not going away I mean that audience will change and evolve but it's not going to disappear okay Okay, well, I think that's James Bond done. Great.

People who want to read more, I would recommend Dominic's book, The Great British Dream Factory, which has a fantastic chapter on Bond. So go and see the new film and then read Dominic's book. We will be back, obviously, probably on Thursday with more historically themed podcastery. We will see you then.

Bye-bye. Goodbye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.