The Man with the Golden Touch: How the Bond Films Conquered the World

Providing an acceptable walk down memory lane, this book offers very little new information about the Bond franchise. Instead what you get are detailed and rather appealingly written reviews of each of the Bond movies. Apart from his somewhat bizarre appreciation of some of the weakest entries in the series Sinclair McKay provides a read that is as engaging as his book on Hammer A Thing of Unspeakable Horror: The History of Hammer Films . So not essential but good fun.

I had been looking for a copy of this book in hardcover and was pleased to treat myself for Christmas, as the suggestions were that it would explore the impact of the flims on culture, people, places etc.In fact, reading it turned into a worrying habit of finding loopholes and omissions; I am no bond "geek" but I have watched the films and read all of Flemings novels, and it became worrying that the author seemed to forget certain aspects of the books or films in order to validate his opinion, which in turn of course leads you into questioning the validity of others things.An example; he makes the point that Fleming's Hugo Drax in the Book "Moonraker" had a bunker in Kent with a nuclear missile in it, and suggests it was a bit too much to expect the reader not to have expected the government to know of this. However it is quite clear in the book that he was building it FOR the government and was being hailed as a national hero for doing so, what the government didn't know was Drax's real intentions for the missile!Another example is suggesting that the two assasins Mr Wint and Mr Kidd were made to be homosexual characters in the 'diamonds are forever' film because it became acceptable to have 'camp' characters in movies, completely ignoring the fact that Fleming's book had these two people in that very context.The book seems to merely recount each film (we know what happens don't we?) and rather than analysing the impact of the films, concentrates on how the films were being influenced by aspects of the world at that time. Call me old fashioned but shouldn't an author be avoiding stating the obvious?The biggest issue I had, and one reason I put it down half way through, is the author clearly has a left-wing political view in life and resists no opportunity to get this point across. In fact I would say it could of been at least 45 pages shorter if he avoided this unnescesary political commentary throughout the book, indeed in one chapter I would say I learned more about the political situation in 1970's britain than I did the film he was referring to. Also cringingly he uses the word "sauce" to describe any aspect of sexual encounters of Bond and other such ,well, bizarre phrases which left me slightly uncomfortable when reading the book.Lastly the author does make opinions on aspects of the films and books which is of course his perogative, but really REALLY tries to labour his point when he knows he will be against common opinion. Or he simply ignores massively infulential parts of the films with a metaphorical wave of the hand; again an example being his suggestion that the boat chases in Live and Let die were boring and not good but again any film-maker refers to those scenes as the ones that set the standard for such action!!! What really got me to the point of laughing was his suggestion about the underwater scenes being slow....its underwater, what do we expect? And again, the filming and invention of these scenes are forever to be in movie folklore for psuhing the boundaries of filing such scences yet he dismisses such a thing......which is one of the key legacies of the Bond phenomenon.All in all a self-indulgent and disappointing book.

Great read. with some interesting photographs

Came across this Bond non-fiction title while I was researching my own series of Bond books. Of the many Bond-themed reference books I read during my research this was undoubtedly one of the better ones. I especially liked the easy to read writing style with a neat turn of phrase so beloved of Fleming / Bond fans. In fact, this book provides one of my top ten Bond quotes of all time ... "Everyone in Fleming is named after somebody he knew. Pussy Galore was probably his cleaning lady." Purrfect Pussy Galorification. James Bond: License to Quote

V similar to the Licence to Thrill book published a few years earlier but a lot more enjoyable to read due to its writing style. This book gives in depth critical coverage to every Bond movie out there and in a very humourous way doesnt hesitate to pick out the moments that dont work as well as the ones that do. Its written in such an entertaining way you can almost imagine the words coming to life as if spoken by Barry Norman. The author is very full in his praise of the film producers Saltzman and Broccoli and reveals how Ian Fleming's original novels - often archaic and unsuitable in their appeal to a general audience - were expanded and remoulded so they would appeal to a larger proportion of cinema-goers. As well as also revealing how each film affected and was affected by the culture of the world at that time the author very cleverly reveals why Bond should be a firm fixture for a very long time to come.