James Bond

James Bond first appeared in Ian Fleming’s 1953 novel *Casino Royale*. He is a British Secret Intelligence Service officer whose “007” designation places him among the service’s agents licensed to kill. In that first story, Bond travels to a French casino to bankrupt Le Chiffre, a financier working for Soviet interests. The mission succeeds, but Bond’s relationship with fellow agent Vesper Lynd ends in betrayal and her death. Fleming drew on his own wartime experience in British naval intelligence when writing the novels, though Bond’s missions and exploits are fictional.

Across Fleming’s books, Bond reports to M, works with secretary Miss Moneypenny and receives equipment from the service’s armourer. His American ally Felix Leiter appears in *Casino Royale* and later stories. Bond’s opponents include Auric Goldfinger, whose plan in the 1959 novel *Goldfinger* targets the gold reserves at Fort Knox, and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of the criminal organisation SPECTRE. In *On Her Majesty’s Secret Service*, Bond marries Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo. Blofeld and his accomplice Irma Bunt kill her shortly after the wedding, a loss that carries into Fleming’s next novel, *You Only Live Twice*.

The screen version began with *Dr. No* in 1962, starring Sean Connery as Bond. The film sends him to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of another British agent and introduces his encounter with Honey Ryder, played by Ursula Andress. Connery returned in *Goldfinger* in 1964, a film closely associated with Bond’s gadget-equipped Aston Martin DB5. George Lazenby played Bond in the 1969 film *On Her Majesty’s Secret Service*; Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan subsequently led their own runs of films. Those adaptations change details of Fleming’s plots while retaining Bond’s designation, profession and recurring associates.

Daniel Craig’s tenure began with *Casino Royale* in 2006, which restarted Bond’s screen history rather than continuing Brosnan’s. Craig’s Bond earns his 00 status, then faces Le Chiffre at a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro. In *Skyfall* (2012), former MI6 operative Raoul Silva attacks M, who dies after a confrontation at Bond’s childhood home in Scotland. Craig’s final film, *No Time to Die* (2021), reveals that Bond has a daughter, Mathilde, with Madeleine Swann. He remains on the villain Safin’s island as missiles strike it, having been infected with a weapon that would endanger Madeleine and Mathilde if he touched them.