The James Bond Film Guide: The Official Guide to All 25 007 Films

by Will Lawrence (Editor)

Overview

Celebrating 60 years of James Bond films! The essential guide to all 25 Bond adventures, including No Time to Die, starring Daniel Craig!

The James Bond Film Guide has it all: facts on the stories, characters, vehicles, gadgets, and locations of each 007 movie. This authorized guide takes fans through six decades of one of the entertainment industry’s greatest, most-enduring film franchises ever, and it boasts nearly 1,000 photographs, posters, and movie images from the filmmakers’ extensive archives.

007 expert Will Lawrence, author of Blood, Sweat and Bond: Behind the Scenes of Spectre, delivers an indispensable guide to what happened in which film – and when – providing everything new and longtime fans alike could ever want to know about the world of James Bond. That phenomenal world has been at the center of EON Productions’ iconic film franchise, the long-running big screen series in history, since the release of Dr. No in 1962, and continuing later this year with No Time to Die.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781858756080
Publisher:	Eaglemoss
Publication date:	12/14/2021
Edition description:	Media Tie-in
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	459,521
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 11.50(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Will Lawrence is a freelance writer and a contributing editor on the film magazine Empire. He has written for many international newspapers, websites and magazines. He writes extensively on the Bond series, has worked closely with Eon Productions on all the Daniel Craig films, and authored the book Blood, Sweat and Bond: Behind the Scenes of Spectre.

Read an Excerpt

IAN FLEMING

Setting out to write the spy story to end all spy stories, Ian Fleming created one of literature’s best-loved agents, then saw his dreams realized with James Bond’s magnificent leap to the big screen.

In creating the character of James Bond, Ian Fleming redefined the spy thriller fiction genre. His 12 novels and nine short stories featuring the British agent became the standard against which all other spy fiction would be measured. Fleming is, without doubt, one of the most influential authors of popular literature, and has garnered a readership of more than 100 million to date.

Born in Mayfair, London, on 28 May 1908, to Valentine and Evelyn, Ian Lancaster Fleming was the second of four sons. His older brother Peter would go on to become a world-renowned adventurer and writer. Their father, a barrister and officer in the Oxfordshire Yeomanry, was elected Member of Parliament for Henley in 1910. Life for the family changed tragically when Valentine, whose regiment had mobilized on the outbreak of World War I, was killed in action on the Western Front in May 1917 – just days before his second son’s ninth birthday. A framed copy of The Times’ obituary of his father, a warm tribute written by his friend and comrade-in-arms Winston Churchill, hung in Fleming’s bedroom all his life.

Fleming attended Durnford preparatory school in Dorset and then continued on to Eton where he excelled at athletics, twice winning the victor ludorum (champion of the games). His energetic lifestyle, however, incurred the disapproval of his housemaster, and Fleming left Eton before the final term to prepare for entry into the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.

A year later, feeling that he was unsuited to a career in the military, Fleming left Sandhurst and looked to a future in the Foreign Office. He went abroad in 1927 to attend the Villa Tennerhof, a school in Kitzbühel, Austria, run by Ernan Forbes-Dennis, a former British spy, and his novelist wife Phyllis Bottome. He called this a “golden time” – his talent for writing was fostered and he felt free to pursue his interests. He also honed his French and German language skills, although he did not win the Foreign Office placement he had aspired to.

Instead, in 1931 Fleming took a job as a sub-editor and journalist at Reuters news agency, where he learnt to write fast and, above all, accurately. If you did not, he recalled, you were fired. Two years later, he was sent to Russia to cover the trial of six engineers working for the British company Metropolitan-Vickers who had been accused of espionage. While there he was invited to send back informal views on the Soviet situation to the Foreign office. Despite a gift for journalism, however, in 1933 Fleming switched to a career in finance, trying his hand as a banker, then as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, a respected City firm.

It was clear, however, that this was not to be Fleming’s destiny, and in the lead-up to World War II, he went to Moscow for The Times to report on a trade mission. The real purpose, though, was to report on the Soviet Union’s state of readiness for war. This led – crucially for his future writing – to an appointment in July 1939 as personal assistant to Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence. Fleming joined the Special Branch of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, where he was soon promoted to Lieutenant Commander. This was, of course, the backstory he would give his hero Bond.

On one occasion in 1941, Fleming visited a casino in neutral Portugal with Godfrey, afterwards picturing the other players as German agents whom they had cleaned out of money. Thus was the seed for Casino Royale planted. During his time in Naval Intelligence, Fleming made significant contributions to Britain’s espionage and misinformation efforts. In 1942, inspired by a German intelligence-gathering group, he formed 30AU (Assault Unit), which was tasked with seizing key enemy documents near the front lines. He was also one of the brains behind the audacious operation codenamed Mincemeat, which duped the German High Command into believing that the Allies would invade Europe via Greece and Sardinia, not Sicily – as they did, in July 1943.

In late 1944, Fleming visited Jamaica for the first time, to attend the Anglo-American naval conference. Despite atrocious weather, he fell in love with the island, declaring to his friend and host, Ivar Bryce, “When we have won this blasted war, I am going to live in Jamaica... and swim in the sea and write books.” He would indeed do so. By 1947, he had bought a plot of land – a former donkey racetrack – on the beautiful, unspoilt north coast, and built a house that he named Goldeneye.

Editorial Reviews

From the back cover
The authorized guide to all 25 official James Bond films, from Dr. No to No Time to Die.

Illustrated throughout with iconic imagery, poster art, and film stills from the filmmaker’s archive. Includes vehicles and equipment form each movie. Featuring profiles of the Bond actors and producers who brought 007 to the big screen.

From the Publisher