Jeffery Archer slams ‘woke’ editing of James Bond novels
It was 70 years ago today when Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel Casino Royale first landed on bookshelves. The novel where 007 all began even ended up as a comic strip in the Daily Express. It sparked a film franchise that in many ways has surpassed the original impact and success of the author’s eleven spy books and two short stories. Yet the Bond of 1953 is a total anachronism to the agent we all watched be blown to smithereens in No Time To Die.
As Dame Judi Dench’s M so aptly put it to 007 in 1995’s GoldenEye: “I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War.” Bond is an alcoholic, chaining-smoking, womanising Old Etonian who saves the world. And while that may sound like the characteristics of half of our former Prime Ministers, he’s not real. Nor is he or should he be a role model. And yet are EON Productions trying to make him something of one?
Over the last six decades of Bond movies, he’s slowly been tamed from the unwanted sexual advances of the Sean Connery era to an emotional, father figure who settles with one woman by the end of Daniel Craig’s tenure. Yes, the world changes, but should Bond with it? Arguably he’s becoming less and less of the 007 that Fleming intended in the first place.
Craig’s non-smoking dad Bond, who sacrifices himself for his partner and toddler is touching and massively reminiscent of Iron Man’s death in Avengers Endgame. But that’s the thing, he’s not a superhero. He’s Bond.
What makes 007 compelling beyond the adolescent consumerist fantasy that many men grow out of is that he’s flawed and broken, like the rest of us. And yet despite this, he saves the world. That’s much more interesting. Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow, who also likes a drink or five, would be a better comparison to the type of character Bond is than the Superman 007 he seems to be becoming today. Yet now is a unique time for the character and his future.
Seven decades on since Fleming first published Casino Royale and a new set of his Bond novels have arrived on bookshelves. Yet as was the fate of Roald Dahl, they have been edited by sensitivity readers. We now live in a world where chronological snobs seek to censor the fiction of the past, literature that has its often jarring flaws but should be viewed as a product of its time.
Meanwhile, 60 years on since the 007 movies started and it’s EON Productions are facing another reboot. This is the perfect opportunity to recapture the Bond of the 1950s that Fleming intended with his warts and all.
Whoever replaces Craig has a tough job on their hands. How do you follow his post-9/11 Bourne Bond who’s actually kicked the bucket? With the ultimate reboot.
Every official incarnation of Fleming’s spy has lived through each decade from the 1960s to today. And yet the novels begin in the early 1950s. Throwing him back into that period as a man of that time what breath fresh air (and cigarette smoke) back into a franchise that’s at risk of totally losing its foundation.
Sure, we love 007 because of the globe-trotting adventure, the gadgets, the fashion, the cars and the glamorous Bond girls. But we also love him because he’s imperfect and at times says and does distasteful or even wicked things – just like us – and yet goes on to save the world despite those flaws.
EON Productions had better get moving on a period Bond or even a straight adaptation of the books as one day that copyright will run out. But whether or someone else does it, Fleming’s Bond will return.
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