Seventy years ago, in April, 1953, Ian Fleming published his first book, a novel called Casino Royale. In it he introduced James Bond, a character that has become as enduring a figure in popular culture as Sherlock Holmes. Despite Fleming’s fourteen Bond books, probably most people know Bond from the twenty-seven theatrical movies about him that have appeared since 1962.

Still, the Bond books are far better than the films. As a writer, Fleming justly ranks alongside his friend, Raymond Chandler. In 1958, the BBC recorded a conversation between them discussing their books. Although Chandler never depicted his fictional private detective, Philip Marlowe, reading a Bond novel, in Goldfinger (1959), Fleming had Bond reading “the latest Raymond Chandler,” a reference to what would be Chandler’s last book, Playback.

In Casino Royale, Fleming not only introduced Bond, a British spy, but he also established certain elements driving practically every Bond story. There is the Bond villain, an evil mastermind with vast wealth and often deformed or obese; there is the Bond girl, young and beautiful and seductive. Then there is nearly always a suspenseful card game; likewise, there is nearly always a torture scene.

Along with a strong desire for attractive young women, Bond has sharply defined desires for cigarettes, alcohol, and food. His epicurean palate rivals that of another fictional sleuth, Nero Wolfe. Not surprisingly, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963), Bond says that he likes the Nero Wolfe stories. Unlike Wolfe, Bond is athletic, seventy custom-made cigarettes a day notwithstanding, and his sleek physical mobility becomes symbolized by his cars. Cars appear to have held an almost sensual importance for Fleming. Sometimes the cars seem to be more lovingly described than the women; after all, Fleming also wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

How far Bond resembles Fleming has kept critics busy for decades. In 1964 O. F. Snelling published, with Fleming’s approval, 007: James Bond, A Report, and in it declared, “Of course, we know without any doubt that in many respects Fleming and Bond are one and the same person,” so that “when Fleming tells us of Bond’s preferences and prejudices, he is more often than not probably describing his own.” Meanwhile, novelists often bestow upon their heroes ideal qualities they wish for themselves.

When reading the Bond stories, something to keep in mind is Fleming’s sense of literary fun. In Casino Royale especially, irony abounds. A fine example occurs early on, in Chapter 2, when Bond’s boss, an enigmatic curmudgeon simply known as M, is reading a dossier on Le Chiffre, a communist agent operating out of a casino in a French seaside resort called Royale-les-Eaux. In the dossier are numerous French words, and at one point, M calls the agent who prepared the report and demands to know the meaning of a particular word.

Irritably, M tells the agent, “This is not the Berlitz School of Languages,” and grumbles, “If you want to show off your knowledge of foreign jawbreakers, be good enough to provide a crib. Better still, write in English.” From the first page, of course, a reader ought to be ready for a story studded with French vocabulary and no translation provided.

Along with sophistication with foreign languages, Fleming had an eye for local detail. In all his stories, when Fleming described a particular road or airport, for instance, it is clear he had been there. In addition, he had an ear for all the variations of the English language. Like Chandler, Fleming was fascinated by American slang and idioms, and Fleming explored them in Casino Royale by teaming Bond with Felix Leiter, a former Marine and an agent from the CIA.

While Leiter and Bond work together as symbolic of the alliance between their two countries, Bond can brood philosophically on the decline and fall of the British Empire. Like Fleming, he had served king and country in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. Eight years after the war, the sun was setting on what Rudyard Kipling had called Britain’s “dominion over palm and pine.”

In Chapter 20, Bond is in a French hospital, where he is recovering from sadistic sexual torture by Le Chiffre. Bond confides to a French colleague that he is thinking of resigning from the intelligence service. “You see,” Bond explains, “when one’s young, it seems very easy to distinguish between right and wrong, but as one gets older it becomes more difficult.” Bond sees that heroes and villains can appear to be relative roles: from Le Chiffre’s perspective, he was the hero and Bond was the villain.

“Of course,” Bond continues, “patriotism comes along and makes it seem fairly all right, but this country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out of date.” While the current enemy is communism, Bond says, “If I’d been alive fifty years ago, the brand of conservatism we have today would have been damn near called communism, and we should have been told to go and fight that.” He sums up, “History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep changing parts.”

In 2008, the Imperial War Museum in London mounted a major exhibition to mark the one hundredth anniversary of Ian Fleming’s birth. To go along with the exhibit, Ben MacIntyre wrote For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming + James Bond. In the book’s first chapter, MacIntyre observed, “Every age gets the Bond it needs,” noting how the films have adapted Bond to changing times. Still, not all fans appreciate these adjustments. Andrew Roberts, writing in the 9 November, 2012, Wall Street Journal, lamented a recent film’s “kinder, gentler” 007; Roberts called his article, “What Have They Done to James Bond?”

In late February, 2023, Fleming’s literary executors announced that they had authorized the Bond books to be revised using words and phrases suitable for the delicate sensitivities of modern readers. This revision, coming a few weeks after a similar announcement about the novels of Roald Dahl, calls to mind earlier ages fashioning fig leaves to cover the genitalia of ancient Greek and Roman statues. Also coming to mind are the colorizing of classic black and white films.

It all seems so silly. Anyone mature enough to read the Bond stories can cope with some salacious scenes and some offensive words. If not, it would be best just to let them go out of print.