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| “ | The name's Bond. James Bond. | „ |
| ~ Bond most famous introduction. |
| “ | Dry martini. Shaken, not stirred. | „ |
| ~ Bond asking a bartender for a drink. |
James Bond (born 11th Nov, 1920/21) notably known as Agent 007, is the titular main protagonist of The James Bond franchise and the novel series of the same name by the late Ian Fleming.
Overview[]
Having a lengthy career as a superspy, he has taken on villains intent on world domination and terrorism, while becoming one of the most well-known heroes in the world. Also, he is a Senior Operational Officer of the 'Double-O' ('00') Branch, an ultra-covert Black Ops unit within MI6. As an agent of MI6, Bond holds the code number of "007". The 'double-O' prefix indicates his discretionary licence to kill in the performance of his duties. He is a master of gadgets and also a skilled spy who has a license to kill, meaning he is pretty much able to deal with any threat that may come his way. James Bond also usually meets a woman and develops a relationship with them.
Biography[]
James Bond was born in the early 1920s in Zürich, Switzerland, to a Swiss mother and Scottish father, though he was still considered British. He had acquired a first-class command of the French and German languages during his early education, which he received entirely abroad due to his father's work as a Vickers armaments company representative.
When his parents are killed in a mountain climbing accident in the Aiguilles Rouges near Chamonix, eleven-year-old James is orphaned. After the deaths of his parents, Bond goes to live with his aunt, Miss Charmian Bond, in the small village of Pett Bottom, Canterbury, where he completed his early education.
Later, he briefly attends Eton College at "12 or thereabouts", but is removed after two terms because he was molested by a maid. After leaving Eton, Bond was sent to Fettes College in Edinburgh, Scotland - his father's school. After leaving Fettes, Bond studies briefly attending the University of Geneva (as did Fleming), before being taught to ski in Kitzbühel by Hannes Oberhauser.
Following his graduation, Bond joined the Ministry of Defence shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Bond applied to M for a position within the "Secret Service", part of the Civil Service, and rose to the rank of Principal Officer. Then, after being recruited into MI6, in 1950, he earned his 00 status with a license to kill.
Personal Life[]
Activities[]
Bond lives in a flat off King's Road, Chelsea, London. In 1955, Bond earned around £2,000 a year net (equal to £56,000 in 2021); although, when on assignment, he worked on an unlimited expense account. His flat is looked after by an elderly Scottish housekeeper named May (named after May Maxwell, the housekeeper of Fleming's close friend, the American Ivar Bryce. Much of Fleming's own daily routine whilst working at The Sunday Times was woven into the Bond stories and he summarised it at the beginning of Moonraker.
"elastic office hours from around ten to six; lunch, generally in the canteen; evenings spent playing cards in the company of a few close friends, or at Crockford's; or making love, with rather cold passion, to one of three similarly disposed married women; weekends playing golf for high stakes at one of the clubs near London." - Chapter 1: Secret paper-work.
Only once in the series does Fleming install a partner for Bond in his flat, with the arrival of Tiffany Case, following Bond's mission to the United States in Diamonds Are Forever. By the start of the following book, From Russia, with Love, Case had left to marry an American. Bond was married only once, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, to Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo, but their marriage was short-lived as she was killed on their wedding day by Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
In the penultimate novel of the series, You Only Live Twice, Bond suffers from amnesia and has a relationship with an Ama diving girl, Kissy Suzuki. As a result of the relationship, Kissy becomes pregnant, although she does not reveal this to Bond before he leaves the island. In Never Send Flowers, it is said that, at some point in his life, Bond visited Walt Disney World with a girlfriend, intending to stay only two days, but liked the park so much that they had stayed for a whole week. Bond also showed that he recognized a great deal of Disney's characters.
Cuisine[]
When in England and not on a mission, Bond dines as simply as Fleming did on dishes such as grilled sole, œufs en cocotte, and cold roast beef with potato salad. When on a mission, however, Bond eats more extravagantly. This was partly because in 1953, when Casino Royale was published, many items of food were still rationed, and Bond was "the ideal antidote to Great Britain's post-war austerity, rationing and the looming premonition of lost power". This extravagance was more noteworthy with his contemporary readers for Bond eating exotic, local foods when abroad, at a time when most of his readership did not travel abroad.
On 1st April, 1958, Fleming wrote to The Manchester Guardian in defense of his work, referring to that paper's review of Dr. No. Whilst referring to Bond's food and wine consumption as "gimmickery", Fleming bemoaned that "it has become an unfortunate trade-mark. I myself abhor Wine-and-Foodmanship. My own favourite food is scrambled eggs." Fleming was so keen on scrambled eggs that he used his short story, "007 in New York" to provide his favourite recipe for the dish: in the story, this came from the housekeeper of his friend Ivar Bryce, May, who gave her name to Bond's own housekeeper.
Bond believes that a steak has a flavour of its own, and as such should not be eaten with anything on it, save for salt and pepper.
Beverages[]
Fleming biographer Andrew Lycett noted that, "within the first few pages [of Casino Royale], Ian had introduced most of Bond's idiosyncrasies and trademarks", which included his looks, his Bentley, and his smoking and drinking habits. The full details of Bond's martini were kept until chapter seven of the book, and Bond eventually named it "The Vesper", after Vesper Lynd. For his non-alcoholic drinks, Bond eschews tea, calling it "mud" and blaming it for the downfall of the British Empire. He instead prefers to drink coffee, preferably Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee.
Bond's drinking habits run throughout the series of books. During the course of On Her Majesty's Secret Service alone, Bond consumes forty-six drinks. For wines, he drinks Pouilly-Fuissé, Riquewihr and Marsala wines, most of a bottle of Algerian wine, some 1953 Château Mouton Rothschild claret, Babycham, as well as Taittinger and Krug champagnes. For whiskies, he consumes three bourbon-and-waters, half a pint of I. W. Harper, Jack Daniel's, two double bourbons on the rocks, two whisky-and-sodas, two neat Scotches, and one glass of neat whisky. Vodka consumption totalled four vodka tonics and three double vodka martinis; other sprits included two double brandies with ginger ale, a flask of Enzian Schnaps and a double gin: he also washed this down with four steins of German beer.
Bond occasionally supplements his alcohol consumption with the use of other drugs, for both functional and recreational reasons: Moonraker sees Bond consume a quantity of the amphetamine benzedrine accompanied by champagne, before his bridge game with Hugo Drax (also consuming a carafe of vintage Riga vodka and a vodka martini); he also uses the drug for stimulation on missions, such as swimming across Shark Bay in Live and Let Die, or remaining awake and alert when threatened in the Dreamy Pines Motor Court in The Spy Who Loved Me. Despite this, in Devil May Care, set after the events of The Man with the Golden Gun, Bond was offered raw opium to smoke by Darius Alizadeh, but he politely refused in order to keep his senses sharp for his mission.
Smoking[]
Bond is a heavy smoker, at one point smoking 70 cigarettes a day. Bond has his cigarettes custom-made by Morland of Grosvenor Street, mixing Balkan tobacco and Turkish tobacco and having a higher nicotine content than normal; the cigarettes have three gold bands on the filter. Bond carried his cigarettes in a wide gunmetal cigarette case which carried fifty; he also used a black oxidised Ronson lighter. The cigarettes were the same as Fleming's, who had been buying his at Morland since the 1930s; the three gold bands on the filter were added during the war to mirror his naval Commander's rank. On average, Bond smokes sixty cigarettes a day, although he cut back to around twenty five a day after his visit to a health farm in Thunderball. Fleming himself smoked up to 80 cigarettes a day. In Carte Blanche, he is a former smoker.
Personality[]
Bond is a unique individual. He appears to be of sound mind and strong spirit. Like most who lose parents in their youth, Bond has abandonment issues. He rarely makes long-lasting relationships with men or women. He professes to have never fallen in love. He maintains no friendships from before his parents’ death and only the most irregular contact with friends from his late teens.
Bond is not nostalgic, living firmly in the present. He has only vague notions or thoughts about old age and retirement, which he does not seem to think he will live to see. He enjoys pushing himself to the limit, both mentally and physically. Bond's stress levels actually drop when the stakes are higher. He is prone to boredom and mild depression when not challenged. Bond has strong interpersonal skills. He can act comfortably in many situations, but does not seek out companionship except, most notably, for sexual recreation. Bond's lone wolf personality-type tends to attract others.
Bond is goal-oriented, but he often seeks these goals in an indirect and secretive way. He has kept many areas of his life meticulously compartmentalized, never allowing the emotional issues from the loss of his family or from relationships to intrude on his professional life. Bond seems to have an emotional and mental need for multiple layers of reality. He thrives when not revealing all of himself, carefully organizing the aspects of his personality he reveals to others. Thus, Bond is excellent at burying information he does not wish to reveal, making him a very good security risk if questioned under almost any circumstance.
Bond seeks structure in his life. He is a man of pattern and habit. He has acquired strong tastes. Bond both thrives under structure yet finds subtle ways of rebelling against it. He is not self-destructive, but he can be a challenge to his superiors. Bond uses humor as a shield and a weapon. He is skilled at making cutting remarks that reveal insecurities of others and mocking death, danger and risk.
Most importantly, Bond is deeply loyal to institutions. After his parents' death, Bond embraced his English and Scottish roots. His concept of his nationality is a large part of his identity. This is reflected in some of his social attitudes, which seem to embrace a British identity of the not-so-distant past. When pressed, Bond seems to identify with the notion of helping to "protect the realm", or "serving the monarch" and the ideals embodied in the mythic notion of St. George.
Bond is solitary. He does not console himself by surrounding himself with others. His athletic pursuits tend to be solitary: running, skiing, hiking, swimming, diving, and most remarkably, climbing. While the world is far from black-and-white to James Bond, he doesn't tend to see it in stark terms of chaos and order, tradition and change. Bond has chosen to identify with order and tradition.
Inspiration[]
Fleming took the name for his character from that of American ornithology expert James Bond, the author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies. A keen birdwatcher himself, Fleming had a copy of Bond's guide, and he later explained to Bond's wife that "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born." He further explained, "When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument... When I was casting around for a name for my protagonist, I thought by God, (James Bond) is the dullest name I ever heard." On another occasion, Fleming said: "I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, 'James Bond' was much better than something more interesting, like 'Peregrine Carruthers'. Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure - an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department."
Fleming based his creation on a number of individuals he came across during his time in the NID during World War II, admitting that Bond "was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war". Amongst those types were his brother, Peter, whom Ian worshipped, and who had been involved in behind-the-lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war. Aside from Fleming's brother, a number of others also provided some aspects of Bond's make up, including Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, a skiing spy whom Fleming had met in Kitzbühel in the 1930s, as well as Patrick Dalzel-Job, who served with distinction in 30 AU during the war, and Wilfred Dunderdale, station head of MI6 in Paris, who wore cufflinks and handmade suits, and was chauffeured around Paris in a Rolls-Royce. Fitzroy Maclean was another figure mentioned as a possibility, based on his wartime work behind enemy lines in the Balkans, as was the MI6 double agent Duško Popov.
Facially, Bond resembles Hoagy Carmichael. In Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd remarks, "Bond reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless." Likewise, in Moonraker, Special Branch Officer Gala Brand thinks that Bond is "certainly good-looking... Rather like Hoagy Carmichael in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold." Others, such as journalist Ben Macintyre, identify aspects of Fleming's own looks in his description of Bond. General references in the novels describe Bond as having "dark, rather cruel good looks". In the novels (notably From Russia, with Love), Bond's physical description has generally been consistent: slim build; a three-inch long, thin vertical scar on his right cheek; blue-grey eyes; a "cruel" mouth; short, black hair, a comma of which falls on his forehead. Physically, he is described as 183 centimetres (6 feet) in height and 76 kilograms (167 lb) in weight. After Casino Royale, Bond also had the faint scar of the Russian cyrillic letter "Ш" (SH) (for Shpion: "Spy") on the back of one of his hands, carved by a SMERSH agent.
Abilities[]
From Casino Royale to From Russia, with Love, Bond's preferred weapon is a .25 ACP Beretta automatic pistol carried in a light-weight chamois leather holster. However, Fleming was contacted by a Bond enthusiast and gun expert, Geoffrey Boothroyd, who criticised Fleming's choice of firearm for Bond and suggested a Walther PPK 7.65 mm caliber instead. Fleming used the suggestion in Dr. No, also taking advice that it should be used with the Berns-Martin triple-draw shoulder holster. By way of thanks, the MI6 Armourer who gives Bond his gun was given the name Major Boothroyd, and is introduced by M as "the greatest small-arms expert in the world".
Kingsley Amis, in The James Bond Dossier, noted that although Bond is a very good shot and the best in the Secret Service, he is still beaten by the instructor, something that added realism to Bond's character. Amis identified a number of skills where Bond is very good, but is still beatable by others. These included skiing, hand-to-hand combat, underwater swimming, and golf. Driving was also an ability Amis identified where Bond was good, but others were better; one of those who is a better driver than Bond is Sir Hugo Drax, who causes Bond to write off his battleship-grey Bentley 4½ Litre with an Amherst Villiers supercharger. Bond subsequently drives a Continental Mark II, which he uses in the remaining books of the series, although he is issued an Aston Martin DB Mark III with a homing device during the course of Goldfinger. Bond has many skills:
- Strategist: Bond proved to be an excellent strategist, able to create several plans to achieve their goals.
- Detective: James also proved very effective in getting information throughout the Bond franchise.
- Multilingualism: Bond is skilled with languages, and speaks fluently without accent in Italian, French, and German, and speaks, reads, and writes a passable Greek, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese.
- Persuasion: James always uses inductive or psychological changes of tricks to people make other information you deem, or do you favors. For women, it easily seduce, usually leading to sex.
- Peak Physical Condition: Physically, Bond is at the peak of physical condition for a man his age who engages in an intense exercise regimen, he is tough and as accomplished as a commando. He is muscular and an impressive physical specimen. James engages in daily exercise, these including: swimming, diving, running, and shooting. Bond could run for long times without tiring, while doing free running movements), for example, engaging in a protracted chase through a construction site and then a heavily-guarded embassy in pursuit of a younger, more athletic opponent. He also had a large lung capacity, and since he could stay underwater for more than 1 minute.
- Master Martial Artist: Bond has a great ability to melee combat, being pro-effective in various types of martial arts and judo expert, and can kill a grown man with a single blow of his hand, when put enough pressure on the fingers. While he prefers eliminate your targets with guns and undetected, Bond is sometimes forced to fight melee in such cases he fights with tenacity, with their attacks based on accurate and fast strokes, or counterattacks. Generally it neutralizes the opponent, breaking limbs like arms and wrists. Bond also has a tendency to use objects in the environment to your advantage, such as heights, desks, scissors, stairs, doors, and windows and even the weapons of their enemies. Alone was able to knock out several MI6 agents, even handcuffed.
- Reflexes: James has great reflexes and reaction time, he was able to get an unloaded gun in the air.
- Endurance: Due to his physical topping, Bond has great physical strength, he was the strike fiercely several times, dropped from great heights, was shot, stabbed and tortured, however rarely stopped fighting, or sketched pain. Bond also has high tolerance to pain.
- Free Running: Bond showed remarkable ability to run free and can move quickly while evading various obstacles, and glide over narrow passages. He could make big jumps between rooftops and walls, and even jump on moving vehicles.
- Skilled Assassin: Bond is a killer specialist, trained to eliminate the target anyway, being possibly the best assassin around MI6. At first their preferred form of murder, is with pistols with silencer. However depending on the situation, it can eliminate the target with any object, such as scissors, knives, and axes. It can also eliminate them physically, usually with strangulation, he has proved capable of strangling a man of low water using legs. He can also use explosive objects, high places or to kill.
- Marksmanship: Due to its self military training, Bond became expert in handling all types of weapons. He also exceptional precision, speed, and reaction, which can eliminate many men simultaneously without wasting a shot. He proved perfectly capable of handling machine guns, sub-machine guns and sniper rifles, as has however preferably 9mm pistols. Bond could handle handguns with unique ability, using both in the physical attacks and shots, he often quickly disarms his enemies, and use your weapon while using the body as a human shield. His accuracy was unmatched with weapons, he always fatal shooting in locations such as organs and head, even when their targets are moving and attacking. Their responsiveness is formidable, he could draw his weapon with incredible speed and hitting targets simultaneously. Bond also the ability to switch between weapons with great speed, how to adapt to different places, varying its position, lying down, taking cover, and so on.
- Skill With Blades: He is a great expert in combat with knives and blades varied. With precise knowledge of the human body, Bond can kill an enemy quickly, hitting a vein or artery specifies, but also simply paralyze a muscle or limb. He also has preference for shaving knives. Bond showed great skill to knife throwing, with a precision unmatched.
- Stealth: Bond showed remarkable skill at description, and can move quickly and quietly through places full of enemies. He proved easily capable of killing a man in a busy place, without being noticed.
- Vehicular Driver: James remarkably, has a formidable ability to drive cars and motorbikes, doing tricks and amazing places through steep and narrow, even at high speed.
- Aviation: James also proved to be able to fly planes with relative ease, as shown who was able to escape from two planes, standing with a cargo aircraft.
- Sailing Boat: Bond also proved to be a good pilot of several boats, being able to evade his enemy while using one throughout the franchise.
Appearances[]
James Bond's appearances in literature.
- 1953 - Casino Royale
- 1954 - Live and Let Die
- 1955 - Moonraker
- 1956 - Diamonds Are Forever
- 1957 - From Russia, with Love
- 1958 - Dr. No
- 1959 - Goldfinger
- 1960 - For Your Eyes Only
- 1961 - Thunderball
- 1962 - The Spy Who Loved Me
- 1963 - On Her Majesty's Secret Service
- 1964 - You Only Live Twice
- 1965 - The Man with the Golden Gun
- 1966 - Octopussy and The Living Daylights
Trivia[]
- Commander Graham James Bond gained some fame (and many free drinks) due to sharing his name with the character.
- Aside from the films, he has been re-imagined several times; the Climax! episode "Casino Royale" (played by Barry Nelson), Casino Royale (played by David Niven), Omnibus: The British Hero (played by Christopher Cazenove), Rogue Agent (voiced by Jason Carter), Agent Under Fire (voiced by Andrew Bicknell), Dynamite Comics, and Carte Blanche.
External links[]
Licensing[]
This article contains content derived from the "James Bond (Literary)" article on the 007 Wiki, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
