Dear reader,

He is one of the most famous British creations of all time, adored and recognised around the world.

But while almost everyone will know the James Bond tropes – the heavy drinking, the elaborate gadgets, the beautiful women and the megalomaniac villains – I would bet that far fewer people these days have read the original books by Ian Fleming.

As Dominic said on the podcast, people sometimes forget that Bond began as a literary construct, with Fleming having written nine Bond novels before the first film (Dr No) was released in 1962.

I myself had never read a Bond until now, but found Goldfinger tremendous fun, so characterful, and more funny than I expected too.

Well, except for the interminable golf game between Bond and Goldfinger - I worried we’d never make it off that green. 

Thanks to Nick who emailed in and sympathised, claiming that “almost all extended descriptions of sport in fiction tend to be pretty awful… as a rule I’d argue sport and literature make uneasy bedfellows.” Do you agree? As suggested by Nick, please write to us at [email protected] with your best and worst sporting moments in literature.

Alongside the golf, Goldfinger also has some very out-of-date attitudes – towards women, other ethnicities and sexualities, to name just a few. I’m intrigued to know how this shaped your reading. Tell us more through the poll below.

Of course, Dominic had plenty of wisdom to share on the world of 007. He loved the novels and films as a teenager, then wrote about Bond in his books Never Had It So Good and The Great British Dream Factory. 

Keep reading for an extract from The Great British Dream Factory chosen by Dominic below, detailing why Bond sits very much at the upper end of the British class system, despite Fleming's claiming otherwise.

Then, it’s onto the usual Book Notes from Rhiannon as well as polls, reading recommendations and your brilliant letters about American Psycho.

Until next time,

In this week’s podcast, Dominic laid out his argument for why Bond is anything but “classless”. In an extract from his book, The Great British Dream Factory, Dominic reveals that even Bond’s name can’t escape the British class system.

In 1958, giving an interview to the Manchester Guardian to publicize his sixth novel, Fleming claimed that he had picked “the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find”. “James Bond”, he said, was “much better than something more interesting, like ‘Peregrine Carruthers’. Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure – an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.” It is true that “James Bond” is much less obviously upper-class than “Peregrine Carruthers”, just as it is true that Bond does not, say, wear a monocle or travel with an army of servants. Even so, it is worth noting that the real James Bond – the eminent American ornithologist whose book Birds of the West Indies lay on Fleming’s desk and inspired his character’s name – could hardly have cut a more patrician figure. Born in 1900, the real Bond went to a prestigious boarding school in New Hampshire and then, after moving to England at the age of 14, to Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. There he reportedly kept a “hunting dog” and was the only American invited to join the exclusive Pitt Club, whose previous members included Edward VII, George V and John Maynard Keynes. He was no more classless, in other words, than his fictional namesake.

As you read the Bond books, in fact, the central character looks less and less like Fleming’s “anonymous, blunt instrument” and more like the Old Etonian of M’s obituary. With the glaring exception of his sexual morality, his values are those of a conservative, middle-aged member of the British upper class: the Royal Navy, the Empire, tradition, The Times. As the historian David Cannadine points out, Bond’s Britain is the “Establishment England” represented by politicians such as Sir Anthony Eden, the luckless Conservative Prime Minister who had been groomed to succeed Churchill but was forced to recuperate at Goldeneye after the disaster of Suez. When Bond goes for a walk on the Kentish coast with the heroine Gala Brand in Moonraker (1955), the only book set entirely in Britain, he contemplates this “carpet of green turf, bright with small wildflowers” sliding down to the “sparkling blue of the Straits . . . a panorama full of colour and excitement and romance”, sounding not unlike Stanley Baldwin. When he daydreams about England in Dr No (1958), he pictures “a world of tennis courts and lily ponds and kings and queens”, like something from a Noël Coward comedy. And when he thinks about politics, his instincts are clearly Conservative. (Fleming himself, for all his claims to be “non-political”, was an instinctive Tory, writing in the Spectator that “taxation, controls and certain features of the Welfare State” had “turned the majority of us into petty criminals, liars and work-dodgers”.) Indeed, by the time we get to Thunderball (1961), the gloves have come off. Contemplating a pimply young taxi driver in a “black leather windcheater”, Bond muses about the “cheap self-assertiveness of young labour since the war”. This youth, he thinks, “makes about twenty pounds a week, despises his parents, and would like to be Tommy Steele”. But “it’s not his fault. He was born into the buyer’s market of the Welfare State”. Had Bond tired of life in the Secret Service, he could have got a job writing editorials for the Daily Telegraph.

Extracted from The Great British Dream Factory by Dominic Sandbrook. Buy it here.

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

The famous line Auric Goldfinger delivers to Bond. But what quote stayed with you after you finished the book? Email us and let us know.

We’re taking recommendations here to share with the Book Notes community. Tell us what book fellow members should pick up next by sending two or three sentences about your novel of choice and we’ll feature as many as we can in future weeks… Email [email protected].

We can’t wait to see your responses to Goldfinger. Write in to [email protected] with ‘review’ in the subject line and tell us…

But first to your (mostly critical) thoughts on American Psycho.

Your polls

In a first for our newsletter, this week the winning score for American Psycho was 1/10, with 28% of you voting accordingly.

Many of you said you’d simply given up on the book. Silvia wrote: “I did something that as a principle I never do: I stopped reading and threw away the book.”
Cathy agreed. “I have never in my 55 years stopped reading a novel once I had started it… until now. After suffering through page after page of what these idiots were wearing, I decided I simply couldn’t face any more. I knew the movie and was aware that some kind of plot would eventually emerge but it was simply taking too long. I closed the book and took it straight back to the library so I wouldn’t be tempted to push on through. As I get older, my time feels more precious so I was proud of myself for finally just saying ‘no more’.”

Michael, who ranked it 8/10, disagreed. “As somebody who travels in a similar social milieu as Patrick Bateman, I love this book,” he said. “It is amongst the funniest things – my P. G. Wodehouse. To address the cadaver in the room, the most vicious violence in the book really is its evisceration of everything associated with the mini-class of people it whose world it focuses on. (The violence violence of the book, on the other hand, is so purposefully over the top that it becomes as absurd as the descriptions of menu items or sartorial ensembles—and yes, it’s mostly in his head).”

James agreed. “Books are meant to make you feel uncomfortable at times, and this is a really funny, satire laden tale through a world that at times feels all too familiar,” he wrote.

Who would you share American Psycho with?

Thanks to Hattie who made us laugh with this idea: “Someone really smug about how well they sleep.”

Your favourite quotes

James says: “Apart from the ‘Murders and executions’, I often find myself quoting Patrick Bateman’s brother Sean: ‘Rock n roll, deal with it.’ Technically from Rules of Attraction but also in the scene when Patrick has lunch with his brother. I often use it when my children complain about something ridiculous. Hehe.”

Lilli emailed from Germany to say the words that stuck with her after completing the novel were: “Coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this.”

She adds: “Perhaps Ellis holds up a mirror to the evil world we live in, but not with any purpose as he, I think, is deeply convinced that doing so will achieve nothing. Just like Bateman telling people straight up he is a psychopathic serial killer and being entirely ignored, those who would need to truly be confronted with this reality, see it and change their ways will simply just (pretend to) hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing, or even idolise Bateman.”

“Repulsed”

Just weeks after Dominic described keeping his copy of Lord of the Flies separate from his books and out of sight, Lisa wrote in with similar feelings about American Psycho. “It remains one of the worst books I’ve ever read and the only one I’ve actively thrown away. In fact, I was so repulsed by it at the time that I wanted to burn it. I enjoy horror fiction and have been reading authors such as Stephen King since I was young, so I’m not usually squeamish about disturbing content. However, I found the relentless and graphic descriptions of violence, particularly towards women, overwhelming. Certain scenes, especially those involving the rats, stayed with me long after I’d finished reading, giving me nightmares and even making me feel physically sick.

“I understand that Patrick Bateman is intended to be an unreliable narrator and that the novel explores the darker aspects of human nature. Nevertheless, I felt that the book relied too heavily on shock value. Rather than provoking meaningful reflection, much of the violence seemed gratuitous, which made the reading experience more exhausting than insightful.”

On serial killers

Mike wrote in with some insight after being repelled by “the carnival of atrocities presented to the reader for what appears to be entertainment's sake”.

He says: “I have spent something akin to 21 years in forensic psychiatry, 19 of which working in Broadmoor Special Hospital, and the Batemans and [Hannibal] Lecters of this world are not to be found. They are the preserve of fiction. I would not for one moment suggest that impulsive, mentally ill offenders don't exist, nor that serial killers cannot function for a period of time relatively effectively in society, just that they tend not to leave a butchers shambles in their wake and get away with it. Psychopaths don't often decompensate in society, but rather become complacent; the psychotic offender is usually so disordered their criminal career is brief. Bateman is not based in reality and thus fails as satire. Remove satirical intent from the text and what is left?”

Yuppy reality

Sarah thanked the podcast for “an excuse to read this book and even more grateful to the hosts for giving me an excuse not to finish it! I was a bit more than halfway through when I tuned in to this episode, and was very happy to learn that there was no need to continue to the end.”

She adds: “As a former yuppie – who began working on Wall Street in 1987 – I did also want to defend my beloved city by noting that this month is the 40th anniversary of Spy Magazine, a great treasure of that era. Its first issue featured a cover story "The Ten Most Embarrassing New Yorkers" and of course Trump made the list. The take on Trump in American Psycho surprised me because during the time it takes place, Trump was an entertaining curiosity but also an obvious buffoon… It rings true that people would get a bit of a thrill when he showed up at the Quilted Giraffe (a real place), but not that Harvard MBAs would be reading The Art of the Deal...”

Missed the moment?

Jim, another former New Yorker writes: “I was living in Manhattan at the time and the images of the city in the book are clearly seen through the eyes of a person who has no deep connection to the city, which comes across in the book as glitzy but dull (at a time when things were really exciting!)

“Also, the book missed the cultural moment by several years. The 1988 stock market crash had cast a shadow over the mythos of Wall Street and as Reagan faded into dementia and was succeeded by George H.W. Bush, Manhattan could see the coming recession. By 1991, Bill Clinton was campaigning and fated to win the presidency the next year!”

He adds that the book “was as if Ellis had lost a strange bet and now had to compose a long book blending a series of snuff films with a glossy airport magazine. At the 100 page page mark, I was done. Writing this now makes me think how angry the book made me!” Sorry Jim…

See you next week for The Bell Jar.

The Book Club Team