The James Bond franchise focuses on the titular character, a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, nine other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelisations: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, Anthony Horowitz and Charlie Higson. The latest novel is On His Majesty's Secret Service by Charlie Higson, published in May 2023. Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond, and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny.

The character—also known by the code number 007 (pronounced "double-oh-seven")—has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strips, video games and film. The James Bond franchise is one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. The films constitute one of the longest continually running film series and have grossed over US$7.04 billion in total at the box office, making James Bond the fifth-highest-grossing film series to date. It started in 1962 with Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as Bond. As of 2021, there have been twenty-five films in the Eon Productions series. The most recent Bond film, No Time to Die (2021), stars Daniel Craig in his fifth and final portrayal of Bond; he is the sixth actor to play Bond in the Eon series. There have also been two independent Bond film productions: Casino Royale (a 1967 spoof starring David Niven) and Never Say Never Again (a 1983 remake of an earlier Eon-produced film, 1965's Thunderball, both starring Connery). Casino Royale has also been adapted for television, as a one-hour show in 1954 as part of the CBS series Climax!.

The Bond films are renowned for a number of features, including their soundtracks; three of the movies' theme songs have received Academy Awards and others have received nominations. Other important elements which run through most of the films include Bond's cars, his guns, and the gadgets with which he is supplied by Q Branch. The films are also noted for Bond's relationships with various women, who are popularly referred to as "Bond girls".

Publication history

Creation and inspiration

James Bond creator Ian Fleming in 1958

Ian Fleming created the fictional character of James Bond as the central figure for his works. Bond is an intelligence officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond is known by his code number, 007, and was a Royal Naval Reserve Commander. Fleming based his fictional creation on a number of people he came across during his time in the Naval Intelligence Division and 30 Assault Unit during the Second World War, admitting that Bond "was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war".[1] Among those types were his brother, Peter, who had been involved in behind-the-lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war.[2] Aside from Fleming's brother, a number of others also provided some aspects of Bond's make up, including Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, Patrick Dalzel-Job, Bill "Biffy" Dunderdale and Duško Popov.[1][3]

The name James Bond came from that of the American ornithologist James Bond, a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies. Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy of Bond's guide and he later explained to the ornithologist'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".[4] He further explained that:

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."[6]

Hoagy Carmichael—Fleming's view of James Bond

Fleming decided that Bond should resemble both American singer Hoagy Carmichael and himself[7] and 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."[7]

Fleming endowed Bond with many of his own traits, including sharing the same golf handicap, the taste for scrambled eggs, and using the same brand of toiletries.[8] Bond's tastes are also often taken from Fleming's own as was his behaviour,[9] with Bond's love of golf and gambling mirroring Fleming's own. Fleming used his experiences of his career in espionage and all other aspects of his life as inspiration when writing, including using names of school friends, acquaintances, relatives and lovers throughout his books.[1]

It was not until the penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice, that Fleming gave Bond a sense of family background. The book was the first to be written after the release of Dr. No in cinemas, and Sean Connery's depiction of Bond affected Fleming's interpretation of the character, henceforth giving Bond both a dry sense of humour and Scottish antecedents that were not present in the previous stories.[10] In a fictional obituary, purportedly published in The Times, Bond's parents were given as Andrew Bond, from the village of Glencoe, Scotland, and Monique Delacroix, from the canton of Vaud, Switzerland.[11] Fleming did not provide Bond's date of birth, but John Pearson's fictional biography of Bond, James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, gives Bond a birth date on 11 November 1920,[12] while a study by John Griswold puts the date at 11 November 1921.[13]

Historical research following the 2020 declassifications by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) has identified Bronisław Urbański (known as the "White Ghost") as a physical and operational model for Bond. Urbański, a "liquidator" for the Polish elite Unit 99/3 Wapiennik, was introduced to Fleming in 1951 by Krystyna Skarbek.[14] While historians such as Norman Davies, Stewart Egerton, and Peter Zablocki focus on Urbański’s role in the 1943 Gibraltar air crash and General Sikorski's death, the personal connection to Fleming is further detailed in the 2024 biography Living with James Bond.[15] According to this account, Skarbek provided Fleming with details from Urbański's 1949 passport, including specific physical identifiers and scars sustained at Stalag VB, which align with Fleming's definitive sketch of Bond. The operational links have been further examined through BBC-funded investigative research that makes it almost impossible to be anyone else. These findings align Urbański's movements with Fleming's intelligence circles and the wartime "GoldenEye" operations in Gibraltar.[16]