Abstract
This chapter is concerned with the representation of food and drink in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. In particular, it examines how the author uses Bond’s culinary knowledge and habits of consumption as an important constituent of his hero’s character. Similarly, the food choices of other characters, notably villains, are shown to be linked, by Fleming, to core aspects of their identity—principally their ethnicity. Bond’s impulse to observe and classify, very much in evidence in the novels’ food sequences, is examined in terms of the texts’ construction of Bond as a skilled identifier of signs.
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- 1.
This date of purchase is difficult to reconcile with Bond’s ‘Obituary’ in The Times by M that appears in You Only Live Twice. This has Bond aged seventeen in 1941, suggesting he was born in 1924 and bought the Bentley aged nine.
- 2.
By Ian Fleming Productions, formerly Glidrose Productions, publishers of the James Bond novels.
- 3.
Stout’s Too Many Cooks which centres on a murder committed at a gathering of professional cooks and gastronomes is a rare exception.
- 4.
Wolfe’s ‘confidential secretary’, sidekick, and narrator of the Nero Wolfe mysteries.
- 5.
Blades is modelled, to a certain extent, on the real London clubs Boodles and the Portland Club. Fleming played bridge at both.
- 6.
In a curious mise-en-abyme London’s East India Club has in its hallway a large 1924 oil painting by Albert Chevallier Tayler of just such a club cold buffet table.
- 7.
Though he is later compensated by Pussy Galore.
- 8.
Notably, the grand vintage is the same year as the publication of Bond’s first outing in Casino Royale.
- 9.
Now the Liguanea Club and—since the Island’s independence in 1962—with membership open to all Jamaican citizens.
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Strong, J. (2018). James Bond: International Man of Gastronomy?. In: Strong, J. (eds) James Bond Uncovered. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76123-7_4
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