James
Bond The Secret History
Sean
Egan's website describes him as 'A freelance
journalist, author and editor who writes about arts and entertainment
(music, film, TV, comics and literature) and sport (historical soccer
and historical tennis).' As well as
covering a wide range of pop culture, he's now turned his hand to the
world of James Bond. I'm reviewing the hardback, which weighs in at
353 pages, including 8 pages of photographs, some in colour. With a
foreword by Jeremy Duns (A Bond author himself) the book starts with
a dedication to Egan's Dad, who let his Mum call him Sean after
Connery – and mentions finding his Dad's copy of Live
and Let Die life-changing.
I've just finished re-reading Fleming's second work and, dated racial
attitudes aside, it is phenomenal. However – Egan's book...
We
start with an examination of the factors behind the creation of Bond
and with a look into the psyche of Ian Fleming. Using interviews with
Fleming familiars, Egan establishes the background to 007 before
moving on to the creation of Casino
Royale at
Fleming's Goldeneye retreat.
Despite the familiarity of all this to a seasoned Fleming-aficionado,
the author manages to pack in quite a few details that aren't
generally known; Bond may, in fact have been ripped straight from the
pages of a Dennis Wheatley novel. (You be the judge; the hero has a
facial scar, is a hedonistic secret agent into spanking and the first
chapter of the novel Contraband
–
written in 1936 – has him in a Casino in Northern France...) Going
through the books, Egan gives us plenty of details about the
publishing arrangements, deals etc behind them as well as the
inspiration for the stories and characters.
After
endless failed attempts to bring Bond to the screen (Let's not
mention the TV version of Casino
Royale...)
we come to Sean Connery's time as Bond, starting of course with Dr.
No. Sean
Egan is clearly 'into' Bond, but not starry-eyed; he provides plenty
of criticism of the absurdities of both film and book. Example?; In
Dr. No,
Sylvia Trench is able to sneak into an Intelligence Officer's home.
I've
seen this film a hundred times (I saw it when it premiered on UK tv
as a kid back in 1975.) yet that never struck me as odd until now.
Egan manages to pick apart the errors and, importantly the
inconsistencies in both Fleming's work and the films based on it. I
adore Fleming's work, particularly the earlier books, yet he paid
little attention to continuity – in Live
and Let Die
– possibly his best work, he claims Bond cries his first tears
since childhood. Egan points out he wept for Vesper in Casino
Royale.
We
move on through the films, the inevitable bitterness felt by Connery
(According to Egan his salary for Marnie
alone was many times what the early
Bonds had paid him combined) and the hunt for a replacement. George
Lazenby gives way to Roger Moore and so on. The
author manages to combine his own views on each film with plenty of
facts and background detail of the type I find fascinating. Behind
every movie there are deals, squabbles, lawsuits even – Egan turns
the spotlight onto each, uncovering quite a few nuggets I for one was
unaware of. Where he really delivers, however – where his book
earns its place on my Shelf O'Bond* is his encyclopaedic coverage of
Bond in other media. Want to know about Bond comics?; it's all here,
from the first newspaper strip to the 21stCentury attempts to produce
007 as a comic-strip hero. Likewise video games, with every
conceivable offering covered. I'm just young enough to have played
Goldeneye on
the N64 so this section was fascinating to me.
(*Yes,
that's what I call it, although its actually a shelf unit I made this
year... already hopelessly overstacked.)
Sean
Egan's secret weapon would seem to be research; he's won awards for
it and it shows; the citations at the end of James
Bond – The Secret Agent are
testament to that, including a healthy amount of on-line sources, the
Author making full use of the Worlds Biggest Library. There are
problems with the book; he appears not to recognise Michael
Billington from his appearance in The
Spy Who Loved Me, he missed the ramp
used by the Mustang in Diamonds are
Forever – claiming all Connery
made it drive on two wheels by “simply barking 'lean over'”
and he needs to re-watch the opener
from Goldeneye. Bond
jumps off a motorbike, freefalls and then enters the plane. (It's
total crap, of course, he'd have made strawberry jam of himself.) At
the risk of going on some sort of death-list there's more. The dojo
in Golden Gun wasn't in
'Hong Kong', nor was the Aston Martin in Skyfall
intended to be the same car from
Casino Royale. Personally,
I'd have wondered where Craig's Bond got that car; my Dad didn't
leave me a car filled with death-dealing gadgets. Was his old man a
Double-O?. A final whinge – Egan seems to think Bond had a bug in
Sciarra's room in Mexico City. Watch closely and you see it's a
laser-mic attached to Bond's (ridiculous) weapon which bounces sound
off the window to be decoded by the receiver and transmitted to his
earpiece. As these things need anchoring securely, the audio usually
stinks and can be defeated by such trickery as having double glazing,
we might forgive the author for this last gaffe. When he makes as
many as me, he's in trouble.
So,
should you hie yourself down to the nearest Waterstones and blow
£16.99? (Or even £9.99 at Asda). Yes; Sean Egan's book is a crisp,
concise read, despite some errors in the second half. It fills a lot
of gaps for the Bond-fan and as such, is essential reading. ISBN
978-1-78606-020-4 John
Blake Publishing Ltd. Visit their site on www.johnblakebooks.com
https://sites.google.com/site/seaneganjournalist/
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