Reeling Back

On this day (February 17) in 1952, vacationing London newspaper executive Ian Fleming began writing his first novel, a spy thriller that he would call Casino Royale. The moment is recalled in the opening scene of the 2014 TV miniseries Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond, where we are told that the former Royal Navy intelligence officer is on his honeymoon. Not quite. In truth, the 43-year-old bachelor was some five weeks away from his March 24 marriage to his long-time mistress Ann Charteris. In common with most of the show’s biographical details, the scene had a Flemingesque “precedent in truth.” His creation, MI6 operative James Bond, was more a secret policeman than a spy, but the self-centred character proved to be a perfect fit with the post-Second World War “Me” generation. Making his literary debut the same year as Playboy magazine, he offered the sort of brand-conscious “entertainment for men” that passes for sophistication in a consumer culture. In 1961, Canadian producer Harry Saltzman optioned the film rights to Fleming’s Bond novels and, a year later, the movie franchise was born with the release of director Terence Young’s Dr. No. To date, there have been 25 features, with a 26th (the much-delayed No Time to Die) scheduled to arrive in October. Today, we’ll add five Bond titles to the Reeling Back archive (with links to each following the Afterword to this posting), a package that includes director John Glen’s fifth (and final) contribution to the series, 1989’s Licence to Kill.