Named after a birdwatcher
Ian Fleming wanted the dullest name he could find for his spy. At his house in Jamaica he kept a book called Birds of the West Indies by an American ornithologist named James Bond, and borrowed it. Fleming had worked in British naval intelligence during the Second World War, and some of his ideas for gadgets and schemes came from real plans he had seen or helped to make.
The first novel, Casino Royale, came out in 1953, and Fleming wrote a Bond book almost every year until he died in 1964. The real James Bond, the ornithologist, found out years later and took it in good humour.
The longest-running film series
The first film, DR NO, was released in 1962, and the same family company has produced the official series ever since, making it one of the longest-running film series in cinema history. Six actors have played Bond in those official films, from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig, and every change of actor becomes news around the world.
Each film opens with a stunt sequence before the titles, followed by a theme song, and several of those songs have won Oscars, including SKYFALL, sung by Adele. The Bond theme itself, with its twanging electric guitar, has been used in every film since the first.
Gadgets, cars and a drink
The quartermaster who hands Bond his gear is known as Q, and the gadgets became a large part of the fun: a GADGET watch, a briefcase with hidden compartments, and above all the ASTON Martin DB5 in GOLDFINGER, with an ejector seat, revolving numberplates and machine guns behind the headlights. The car became one of the most famous in the world.
Bond orders his MARTINI shaken, not stirred, a line that first appeared in the books. SHAKEN became part of his catchphrase along with the introduction Bond, James Bond. MONEYPENNY, the secretary, and M, his boss in LONDON, appear in almost every film. Desmond Llewelyn played Q in seventeen of them, more appearances than any other actor in the series.
Villains with a cat and a steel smile
Bond villains became a genre of their own. BLOFELD, head of the criminal organisation SPECTRE, was often shown stroking a white cat, an image so memorable it has been copied and spoofed ever since. JAWS, a huge henchman with steel teeth, was so popular with audiences that he returned in a second film and was allowed a happy ending.
Many of the early stories were shaped by the tensions between East and West at the time, with spies, secret weapons and nuclear threats — our Cold War page covers the real history behind them.
CASINO ROYALE was the first Bond novel and, in 2006, the film that rebooted the series with Daniel Craig, telling how Bond got his licence to kill and met VESPER Lynd, the woman who shapes the rest of his story. The Royale of the title is a fictional French casino.
The rest of the grid holds the secret AGENT's world: the SPY and the VILLAIN, a TUXEDO, a new MISSION, and the film OCTOPUSSY.