The James Bond Dossier - Critical Endeavours

Critical Endeavours

In the 1968 essay ‘A New James Bond’, anthologised in What Became of Jane Austen? And Other Questions (1970), Kingsley Amis revisits the literary character, and explains why he accepted the commission of writing Colonel Sun (1968), discusses the challenge of impersonating the writer Ian Fleming, and explores the stylistic and world-view differences among the spy novels of Ian Fleming, John le Carré, and Len Deighton. Moreover, under the pseudonym ‘Lt.-Col. William “Bill” Tanner’ — M.’s CoS and 007’s best friend in SIS — Amis wrote his second Bond book, The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007 (1965), a tongue-in-cheek, how-to-manual to help the everyman find his own inner secret agent.

Other studies of the James Bond phenomenon include: Double O Seven, James Bond, A Report (1964), by O. F. Snelling (revised, re-titled, and re-published on-line, in 2007, as Double-O Seven: James Bond Under the Microscope ), an analysis of Bond’s literary predecessors, his image, women, adversaries, and future; Ian Fleming: The Spy Who Came In with the Gold (1965), by Henry A. Zeiger, a biography of Fleming as a commercial writer; The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming’s Novels to the Big Screen (2001), by historian Jeremy Black, an analysis of the cultural politics of the Bond books and films; James Bond and Philosophy: Questions Are Forever (2006), edited by James B. South and Jacob M. Held, a collection of essays which discuss ethical and moral issues arising out of the Bond stories; and Simon Winder's The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey into the Disturbing World of James Bond (2006), a discussion of how post–Second World War England is represented in the novels and films.