Watch\u00a0Ian Fleming and the Curse of James Bond\u00a0(Sky Arts) \u2014 for anyone\u00a0who loves Bond\u00a0it\u2019s a must\u00a0\u2014 and it\u2019s clear that\u00a0when it comes to\u00a0cosmopolitan cool,\u00a0still\u00a0no one does it better.\u00a0See\u00a0Sean Connery\u2019s Bond\u00a0laconically\u00a0order\u00a0down his hotel room telephone, \u201cGreen figs. Yoghurt. Coffee,\u00a0very black,\u201d and you don\u2019t just\u00a0immediately\u00a0want to imitate\u00a0him saying it, you want to book a trip to Istanbul and order that very breakfast.<\/p>\n
While\u00a0others struggle with the impossible task of dreaming up a way for\u00a0Bond\u00a0to be relevant\u00a0in the 2020s, this alluring documentary\u00a0reminds you of several things:\u00a0why you loved the\u00a0character\u00a0in the first place; why, in a way, he was the spy who killed his creator; and why Jamaica was such a part of 007.<\/p>\n
As much as\u00a0Bond evokes\u00a0Mayfair gentlemen\u2019s clubs and C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur casinos, there\u2019s a heady Caribbean flavour running through\u00a0the stories: \u201cCrab Key\u201d in\u00a0Dr No, \u201cSan Monique\u201d in\u00a0Live and Let Die, the Bahamas in\u00a0Thunderball.\u00a0The exotic heat and a languid kind of danger are part of\u00a0Bond\u00a0at his\u00a0most captivating.\u00a0Fleming famously named the spy after the author of Birds of the West Indies on his bookshelf, then wrote all the novels from his Goldeneye retreat on Oracabessa Bay \u2014 12 books (and two short-story collections) in 13 years,\u00a0which fair\u00a0broke him.\u00a0His hero became his villain, the stress of feeding demand for more Bond devouring him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the\u00a0melancholic theory\u00a0of Adam Low\u2019s film (hence the title), a\u00a0biography\u00a0full of diverting insights, not just from such high-calibre contributors as Ralph Fiennes and William Boyd but also Fleming\u2019s own\u00a0family. Even his gardener, who reveals the author\u2019s love of the\u00a0local sea urchin dish\u00a0and how he used to feed the octopus on his reef with conches (this was not long before he wrote Octopussy).<\/p>\n
The readings\u00a0by Helena Bonham Carter that\u00a0punctuate the film show that Fleming was not wanting for descriptive imagination.\u00a0Take\u00a0this extract from\u00a0Live and Let Die,\u00a0where on Bond\u2019s\u00a0underwater journey\u00a0to the villain\u2019s lair the reef\u2019s hostility presages\u00a0the\u00a0destination: \u201cAnemones with crimson centres waved their velvet tentacles at him, a colony of black sea-eggs moved their toledo-steel spines in sudden alarm and a hairy sea-centipede halted in its hundred strides and questioned with its eyeless head.\u201d<\/p>\n
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If\u00a0Fleming\u2019s natural home\u00a0was\u00a0Boodle\u2019s in St James\u2019s and the Royal St George\u2019s Golf Club in Kent, Fifties Jamaica was this man of empire\u2019s love affair \u2014 a\u00a0paradisal contrast to Labour austerity back in Britain and a place that was \u201cin some ways, colonialism\u2019s last stand\u201d, as the author Marlon James puts\u00a0it\u00a0here. 007\u2019s world\u00a0was one\u00a0of old certainties \u2014 Bond\u2019s Britain for ever the senior partner to Felix Leiter\u2019s America \u2014 and as such\u00a0consoled its creator\u00a0as much as\u00a0the pressures of writing\u00a0about\u00a0it exhausted him.<\/p>\n
In his later years Fleming at last found fame yet the author\u00a0described it as nothing more\u00a0than \u201cashes, dear boy, ashes\u201d. Stress contributed\u00a0to his death at 56\u00a0from a heart attack\u00a0(although probably more so his 70-a-day smoking habit).\u00a0Yet the curse took another victim in his only son, Caspar, who, deeply affected by his father\u2019s death on his 12th birthday,\u00a0killed himself 11 years later.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a tragic note\u00a0for the film\u00a0to end\u00a0on, though it doesn\u2019t detract from this being an\u00a0intoxicating immersion in\u00a0Fleming\u00a0flavours. A\u00a0world\u00a0not just\u00a0of spies, sex and\u00a0danger,\u00a0but of tropical\u00a0humidity, bird-watching books and sundowners\u00a0as No\u00ebl\u00a0Coward\u2019s\u00a0Sail Away\u00a0plays on the gramophone.
\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606
Available on Sky\/Now<\/p>\n
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