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Lol this is great.
A Dr. Evil reference is still a Bond reference. ;P
Those were the daze.
The new fragrance I Am King from Sean Jean.
0:23 to 1:32
How I found James Bond’s precise address
I am in London. In Chelsea to be precise, at the entrance to Wellington Square off the King’s Road, where I am being interviewed for the French radio station RTL – à distance sociale – about James Bond. The reason why we’re at Wellington Square is because this is where James Bond lived. Obviously, James Bond is a fictional character and didn’t actually live anywhere. However, it is strange how in the case of some fictional characters a kind of reality begins to take over their lives, as if they really did live and breathe, had an actual address and a mortgage...
When I came to write my James Bond continuation novel, Solo (2013), I set myself the task of re-reading all of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels in chronological order, pen in hand, making notes, with the idea that all the texture and detail in the new novel would be classic Bondiana...
...Fleming was not precise about the exact location, referring to Bond’s address in Moonraker (1955) as “a comfortable flat in a plane-tree’d square off the King’s Road”. There are several small squares off the King’s Road that could be candidates, but in Thunderball (1961) Fleming lets slip a crucial coordinate when he writes: “Bond … swerved out of the little Chelsea Square and into the King’s Road … He pushed the car fast up Sloane Street and into the Park”. There are only two squares off the King’s Road where it is possible to access Sloane Street so quickly: one is Wellington Square and the other is Markham Square...Markham Square, however, has no plane trees so that rules it out and unequivocally establishes Wellington Square, which has many plane trees, as the location where Bond had his flat...
There is another significant reason why Wellington Square might have proposed itself as a suitable address for Bond. In the late 1940s and early 50s Fleming was the Foreign Manager for the Sunday Times, a person of power and influence at the newspaper. During this period, the chief book reviewer for the Sunday Times was Desmond MacCarthy, a central member of the Bloomsbury Group. As it happened, MacCarthy and his wife Molly lived in Wellington Square. They were legendary entertainers and their home became a kind of salon. Cyril Connolly was one of MacCarthy’s young protégés and a regular at the soirées – and, what’s more, Connolly and Fleming were close friends. All three were Old Etonians, incidentally. The circumstantial evidence is compelling. It is highly probable that Fleming went to one or more of the MacCarthys’ parties in Wellington Square, either through his own connections with MacCarthy via the Sunday Times or as a friend of Connolly. MacCarthy died in 1952, the year before Casino Royale was published, though it wasn’t until Moonraker, three years later, that Bond’s Chelsea flat received its first mention.
John Pearson, who was Ian Fleming’s first biographer (also a colleague on the Sunday Times), wrote a spoof biography of James Bond in 1973. He identifies the “plane tree’d Chelsea Square” as Wellington Square also, and, intriguingly, gives the house where Bond’s flat was located as No 30. But this was in fact a private joke: Pearson had a university friend who lived at No 30. There was no remote connection to Fleming or Bond.
The MacCarthy house is to be found in the eastern corner of Wellington Square. Bond’s flat, according to Fleming, was on the ground floor and was described in From Russia, with Love (1957) as having “a long big-windowed sitting room”. The ground-floor window of the MacCarthy house fits that description perfectly. One other sliver of circumstantial evidence I would offer is that, in the same novel, Bond’s sitting room is described as “book-lined”. Most readers wouldn’t think of James Bond as an intellectual but books would certainly be the most prominent aspect of the MacCarthy house’s decor. In fact, Fleming took pains to stress Bond’s wide reading, despite the fact that Bond (Eton and Fettes) had no tertiary education. Bond makes reference to many books and writers in the novels: Eric Ambler, Lafcadio Hearn, John Milton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Sheridan le Fanu and Rupert Brooke among others. Bond is a very well-read spy. I would argue that this was another spin-off from Fleming’s location of Bond’s flat in Desmond MacCarthy’s house.
...I finish the interview...We re-cross the King’s Road to Wellington Square to meet the rest of the RTL team...“So, James Bond definitely lived in this square?” the interviewer asks. Oh, yes, I say. Do you know what number? I do, as it happens, I admit. I point it out: Desmond and Molly MacCarthy’s house. Number 25, Wellington Square. That’s where James Bond’s flat was. Stand by for the Blue Plaque.
As for Bond's flat, though I've visited London twice I don't know the town well enough to visualize Number 25 Wellington Square, but Google Street View does:
If you squint you'll see "25" next to the blue door near the scaffolding. And note the plane tree to the left!
However, when I was last in London I did manage to locate Fleming's home at 16 Victoria Square, where he lived from 1953 to 1964. The property left the Fleming family in 1973 and the interior is private and unviewable, but here is the exterior--Fleming's bedroom was on the top floor:
During the press conference one reporter asked him what is his favorite James Bond car.
@PropertyOfALady's favourite song. Fact.
I can follow it below with a related Spectre item from 2015.
A Swedish item, as excellently presented on the blog JAMES BOND THE SECRET AGENT by Stephan Bäckman.
http://www.jamesbondthesecretagent.com
GQ: What’s your second favourite James Bond theme?
McCartney: I think “Goldfinger”. The thing about the Bond themes is they’ve got to capture the spirit of the film and be sort of super memorable, so I think [sings] “Gold-fingeeeer”. I thought the Billie Eilish song was good actually. I was wondering whether she and her brother were going to be able to pull it off, in their bedroom, but I thought she did really well. I’m looking forward to seeing it in the film, but I thought she was good. I love the way, at the end of it, Finneas flings in a Bond chord. “Ding!” – there it is.
Thanks for the link, Rev. You'd better believe I was absorbing that interview toot sweet!
You're very welcome--I'm not surprised to hear that! I enjoyed the interview too. Last week I listened to McCartney, Wild Life, Ram, and Red Rose Speedway for the first time. All uneven albums, but each had at least one work of genius on it.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6270534/
Also, couldn't find a mention of the old comic strip James Hund by Swedish comic book writers Jonas Darnell and Patrik Norrman ("Hund" being Swedish/German for dog).
Now that is cute!
It's not uncommon to see the odd spoof story in the Donald Duck universe of comics, @RichardTheBruce. I haven't read this particular one, but I have a Donald Duck pocket (as they call them) here somewhere, featuring stories with a spy theme (some of them might have been from the DoubleDuck series). Looking at the artwork from the story above, "Donald as Agent 007", I'm fairly certain the artist is Marco Rota.
I'm sure I've read James Hund at some point. Jonas Darnell and Patrik Norrman are probably bst known for their other creations though; such as Herman Hedning (Darnell) and Bacon & Egg (Norrman).
Buffy: "Thank you, guys, so much. You're like my fairy godmother and Santa Claus and Q, all wrapped up into one. Q from Bond, not Star Trek."
There's other Bond references in Buffy too, one with Xander dressing up as Bond in a tux for Halloween in season 4 episode 4 'Fear, Itself'.
I'm getting ready for the function at the junction
Baby you better come on right now
Because everybody's gonna be there
We've got people comin' from everywhere
We've got Ling Ting Tong from China
Long Tall Sally from Carolina
We've got 007, the private eye,
Bringin' all the guys from I Spy
Come one, come all, gonna have a ball
Down at the function at the junction
Baby you better come on right now
Turns out Little Richard was covering a song Shortly Long, released by Motown in 1966. It was written by Long and Eddie Holland.
Also they keep saying “back to Joz”, which keeps sounding like “back to Jaws” to me, lol
I always assumed this phrase was invented by Fleming for Goldfinger; was it?