James Bond 007: Trailer for The World Is Not Enough
Ian Fleming’s iconic James Bond creation 60 will be completed next month with an auction to celebrate the British secret agent’s debut in Dr No on the silver screen. It is hoped that the auction, which will include cool memorabilia from films such as No Time to Die, will raise millions for charity. The opening auction, set to conclude on James Bond Day, October 5, also saw producer Michael J. Wilson question when Bond might return to the screen and, more importantly, who might play the title role. He said, “Well, right now we’re not thinking about the next chapter yet, we’re just celebrating ‘No Time To Die’ and our 60th anniversary. And I think when that’s over by the end of this year, next year we’ll start thinking about where to go from here.”
Over the decades, seven different men have taken on the official Bond persona, with Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig all dressed in the iconic 007 tuxedo and enjoying a vodka martini—shaky rather than moving.
And while every actor has looked alike Craig was the only real departure from Fleming’s intended character because he had blonde hair, much of Bond’s original fictional life has been discussed with fans and critics.
Among them, how old is Bond actually, and when is his birthday. By digging through the archives, Express.co.uk has discovered some theories that may answer both questions.
The stories Fleming wrote do not explicitly detail his exact age, but it is noted that Bond was likely in his mid to late thirties. This appears to be confirmed in the 1955 movie Moonraker, when Bond claimed to be “eight years shy” of the mandatory age for 00 agents to retire at 45.
James Bond’s age: 007’s actual birthday identified as nude (Image: Getty)
Daniel Craig as James Bond (Image: Getty)
And although Fleming does not give an exact birth date for the agent, John Pearson, who wrote the fictional biography, James Bond: The Licensed Biography of 007, gives the date November 11, 1920.
John Griswold, the Bond scholar, considered the date itself also true, setting his birth year in 1921. This would allow Bond, Griswold believed, to reach retirement age by 1964 and 42, with Fleming’s novels appearing between May . 1951 and February 1964.
In the 1964 book You Only Live Twice, Bond’s obituary, though 007 did not actually die, he adds: “If the quality of these books, or their degree of authenticity, were any higher, the author would surely have been prosecuted under the official Secrets Act.
“It is a measure of the contempt with which these narratives are kept in the Ministry, and no action has yet been taken—and I stress qualifications—against the author and publisher of these high-level, romantic caricatures of episodes in the career of a prominent public servant.”
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Ian Fleming wrote the original series (Image: Getty)
Although Bond appears immortal throughout, his character in the movie series often changes from one reincarnation to the next. Many cite Connery’s portrayal of the secret agent as perhaps the most accurate of Fleming’s character, while Craig’s brutal strength is also a hallmark of the original Bond.
Academic Jeremy Black has argued that Bond in literature is a “complex figure,” and that many of Fleming’s beliefs were delivered through mouthpiece 007.
These included alleged racist, sexist and homophobic attitudes, including anti-Soviet attitudes at the time. This was recalled in 1965 by journalist Yuri Zhukov, who wrote an article about him in his country’s daily newspaper, Pravda.
He said: “James Bond lives in a nightmare world where laws are written under the gun, where coercion, rape is bravery, and murder is a funny trick.
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James Bond auction: The car from No Time to Die (Image: Getty)
“Bond’s job is to protect the interests of the property class, and he’s no better than the youth that Hitler boasted would grow up like wild beasts to be able to kill without thinking.”
The Secret Agent, who has seen his fantasy adventures in 25 official films, has often been visually compared to Fleming in the books. Ben McIntyre, who wrote the 2008 book For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond, also made his own comparisons.
The Times journalist wrote: “Like the character he had created, Ian Fleming was much more complex than he initially appeared. Beneath his checkered exterior, he was an animated, deeply committed man, with an inner sense of romance and drama that belied his general inaction and sometimes pessimism.”
Bond is, in part, Fleming, and 007’s exploits grew directly from Fleming’s knowledge of war intelligence and espionage: he was referring annoyedly to Bond’s books as an autobiography.
“Like every good journalist, Fleming was a magpie, eagerly and constantly collecting material: names, places, plots, instruments, faces, restaurant menus, phrases; details from reality that could then be translated into fiction. He once said, ‘Everything I write has a precedent in fact.’”
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