Say the words “James” and “Bond” in that order, and the world thinks of an elegant upper middle class Englishman sipping a vodka martini in the casino of an exclusive hotel. He’s very image of suave sophistication concealing deadly menace, so much so that the words “shaken, not stirred” have become associated with the Brand, a bit like the chimpanzees in the old PG Tips adverts.
That’s because most of us are familiar with the films, which are a long way from the books, many of which date back to the 1950s. The real James Bond was an eclectic drinker, as David Leigh explains in this excellently written article for the James Bond Dossier website [1] called, naturally enough, What does James Bond Drink? And the truth is :anything he can get. Because as David explains, the original , on paper only, Bond was jetting round a world where globalisation was barely nascent. So if you went to Japan you drunk Sake,in Turkey, Raki, in the Balkans Slivovitz. And so it goes:David details the entire social activities of this famous character in delightful detail.
But we’d like to add our own take by discussing why Bond was like that. We think we discerned it at the beginning of Goldfinger where Bond is sitting in an airport lounge downing whiskies and smoking like an old diesel as he tries to de-stress after having killed someone on active service. Musing on life and death as he waits for his flight. We actually knew quite a few men like this. Because the Bond books appeared in the 1950s when most of the male readers would have strong memories of killing and being killed in World War 2 There are even hints in one volume that the literary Bond may just have been old enough to catch active service at the very end of the war.(Ian Fleming was on active service in Intelligence for the duration) Many who had escaped physical wound nevertheless carried what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.(PTSD) There was no term for it then; and anyway to visit a doctor would have been widely regarded as Cissy, and lacking in moral fibre. You just got on with it. Or self-medicated, brooding deeply night after night on whisky and full strength cigarettes , while god knows what phantoms flitted before their eyes. One of the reasons the Bond franchise has been so successful is that the books are actually jolly good writing. We think they have captured 1950s Man very well. Sad actually, isn’t it?
#film #cocktail #james bond #ian fleming #writing #books whisky #cigarrettes #stress #war
