By Les Phipps – Business Development Manager

One of the quintessentially British Icons of the modern era, talk to most people from abroad and they will associate Bond with Britain, which makes it hugely Ironic that in 1969, in looking for a successor to Sean Connery, they turned to an Australian! George Lazenby only made one movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service before they turned back to Connery before finally settling on Roger Moore for a period of almost 10 years before Connery returned for one more stint in 1983 in Never Say Never Again, and if that was not confusing enough, Moore returned in 1985 for one last Bond movie, A View To A Kill.

I think most people are sensible enough to dismiss David Niven playing Bond in Casino Royale in 1967 as a spoof movie and not count it as a “proper” Bond movie.

The baton then passed to Timothy Dalton who played Bond in two movies and then to Pierce Brosnan who played Bond in 4 movies and more recently Daniel Craig who has also played Bond in 4 movies.

Everyone has a favourite Bond and at a push I would vote for Daniel Craig who gave the role a certain degree of cynicism laced with grit and gave us an earthier Bond, but played with a good amount of style. In terms of the role being played closest to the Ian Fleming novels, then the critics say that Timothy Dalton did that, but in terms of being a charismatic and watchable Bond, I fear he ranks near the bottom of the pile. I would think most people would have an interchangeable top 3 featuring Craig, Connery and Moore, the franchise has been going for over 50 years which is quite remarkable and produced 25 movies, I’m not counting Niven’s movie.

The films have given us gadgets, glamour, and memorable theme tunes, each new movie would be preceded with a guessing game on who the leading lady would be, who was going to be singing the theme tune and what gadget would feature in each new release, all part of the build-up and excitement leading up to the movie, a publicist’s dream.

One of the most interesting things is that the author of the Bond novels, Ian Fleming only produced 14 books, the first was published in 1953, Casino Royale, the initial print run was in the region of 4,000 to 5,000 copies, of which half of the print run was for the libraries, which meant that only around 2,500 copies made it on the market, making a first edition a very valuable item indeed.

The last Bond book was published in 1966, Octopussy and The Living Daylights which was a collection of short stories. Given the short period in which they were published, their success rocketed from the initial modest sales, with a huge helping hand from the success of the movies giving rise to best- selling status. Collecting the novels is a serious matter and any first editions which come on to the market are snapped up very quickly, though it is possible to get a set of the original paperbacks and they make a great collection whether as a gift or a personal set for your shelf, Bond is still going strong and speculation mounts as to who will replace Daniel Craig as the new Bond.

You can shop our full Bond collection here at World of Rare Books.