Recently, I
found a title in a second hand book stall that I first read when I was a
teenager: “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, by Ian Fleming, one of the incomparable
James Bond series.
As anyone of
a certain age will know, the James Bond books were a phenomenon when they first
appeared in about the 1960s. Since then, they’ve been made familiar to
countless movie goers through the films that were made of them starring,
initially, Sean Connory as Bond, and later such worthies as Roger Moore, George
Lazenby and Pierse Brosnan, to name but some. Even David Niven had a go at it
at one stage.
But it was
the written word in Fleming’s books that did it for me, and many others. Bond
was a connoisseur of only the very best, and Fleming dropped brand names like
mad. Everything from Hermes bags and other products, Aston Martin cars, Mouton
Rothschild ’53 with the most routine of meals and even, on at least one
occasion, Waterford Crystal glassware – James came across them all, and many,
many more, in the course of his travels.
And there
was more than a hint of sulphur about James Bond books. For my part, it was necessary
to hide them, often in the garden hedge, as to be found reading them by parents
in the early sixties was to invite trouble.
So it was
nice to be able to dip into “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. James is up to
all his old tricks, smoking his head off, drinking only the best and gambling
for huge stakes at a really stylish casino. By the end of chapter three he has,
as expected, partaken of some serious rogering, even before he gets into the
adventure proper.
But the quaintest
paragraph of all comes in chapter six:
“It was at
this moment that the Syncraphone in his trouser pocket began to bleep…The
Synchraphone had recently been introduced and was issued to all officers attached
to headquarters. It was a light plastic radio receiver about the size of a
pocket watch. When an officer was somewhere in London
Whatever
would Ian Fleming have done with the Internet?
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