Convenience Big Store: The broken romance behind James Bond’s womanising

1 October, 2023

Love etc

Fleming with Ursula Andress while filming Dr No (1962)

The broken romance behind James Bond's womanising

Ian Fleming was, in the words of Noël Coward, "almost suspiciously overemphatic about sex… he loved f***ing women. It was as simple as that and he was quite unscrupulous about it." The James Bond author's famously "cut-and-run" attitude to sex – which he passed on to 007 – may have come from his mother, says Nicholas Shakespeare in a new biography. Eve Fleming "stamped on any blossoming romance" as her son grew up – until, aged 22, Ian fell head over heels for Monique Panchaud de Bottens, a 19-year-old Swiss girl with dark hair, blue eyes and a "strong sense of humour". They were engaged for three years and often went skiing together.

But when Fleming failed his exams for the Foreign Office in September 1931, his mother blamed Monique, and put "unrelenting" pressure on him to break off the engagement. She even issued an ultimatum: he would have to choose between the girl and his allowance. Finally, in October 1933, he cut short the relationship, and spent his late twenties going after women "in the alternately determined and careless manner with which he collected first editions: the hunt, the acquisition, the shelving". A journalist friend of his, Mary Pakenham, saw this as an "ugly response" to his mother forcing him apart from Monique. "He was always looking for his mother in women," said another friend, Morris Cargill, "and then hating them when they gave in."

🍍🥂 Fleming's sexual excess carried over into the Bond novels, says Philip Hensher in The Spectator. And in response to the post-World War Two atmosphere of rationing and "moral disapproval", the books were full of culinary excess too. The young heroine of The Spy Who Loved Me buys a £10 tin of caviar to entertain her pals one evening (it would cost "north of £10,000" now). Bond and M's club dinner in Moonraker "surely passes all precedent for extravagance": smoked salmon, caviar, lamb cutlets, asparagus with béarnaise, a slice of pineapple, strawberries, and finally a marrow bone, along with some Benzedrine in a glass of champagne. "The novels are full of such moments of fantasy countering the grey dullness of real existence."

Ian Fleming: the Complete Man by Nicholas Shakespeare is available to buy here.

Fashion

Audrey Tautou in Coco Before Chanel (2009)

How Coco Chanel became a class act

Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel has become known as a "right-wing collaborator", says Lisa Chaney in UnHerd. During World War Two she lived at the Ritz in Paris, which had been requisitioned by Nazi officers, and took a German spy as a lover. But this obscures a far more important part of her politics: "her class, or lack of it". Chanel was the daughter of street vendors; after her mother died when she was 11, her "semi-pauper ratbag of a father" dumped her in a convent orphanage. Despite the heights to which she rose, she wasn't allowed to forget her origins. In 1923, the "vastly wealthy" heiress Winaretta Singer threw a lavish party. When asked why Chanel wasn't invited, she said: "Oh, I don't entertain my tradespeople."

Chanel hit back with her clothes. The new V&A exhibition on the fashion designer shows off an "exquisite" red evening dress cut in the "humble cotton velvet" of working women. Her jerseys are decorated with fur, that traditional status marker, "but it is the fur of the downmarket rabbit". Nevertheless, her rich clients "scooped them up", as they did with her clothes featuring pockets, which were once considered "unladylike". Before Chanel, black dresses were only for servants or mourning. And when, by the end of the 1920s, she had finally conquered Parisian society, she would host supper parties without servants: guests had to serve themselves at plate warmers lined up on a table.

Property

THE LANDMARK This two-bedroom flat is on the 8th and 9th floors of Ernő Goldfinger's iconic Trellick Tower. The Grade II* listed brutalist high-rise dominates the west London skyline above Golborne Road, which can be seen from a south-facing balcony than spans the full width of the flat. Both bedrooms have north-facing views over treetops and the canal below, and retain original features including built-in wardrobes. Westbourne Park Tube station is an eight-minute walk. £725,000.

Comment

Blair and Cameron in 2010 Indigo/Getty

The Tories: in office but not in power

Despite 13 years of Tory rule, says Allister Heath in The Daily Telegraph, Britain remains "trapped in a dysfunctional paradigm shaped by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown". Those men transformed Britain far more than anyone realised at the time, empowered a "nomenklatura of lawyers, bureaucrats and cultural propagandists" to entrench their ideas, and bamboozled "Tory wets" into believing that their brand of "technocratic social-democracy" was the only morally acceptable way to govern. Labour is the source of all the "pathologies plaguing Britain", from our obsession with the "moribund NHS" to our "anti-housebuilding planning system". But the Conservatives are just as much to blame: for more than a decade, they have been in government "but Labour ideas have been in power".

In a "shocking case of political Stockholm Syndrome", many leading Tories turned out to be Blairites in disguise, in awe of New Labour's political achievements, "terrified of being seen as conservative" and ashamed of the real views of the electorate. In the rare cases when David Cameron and George Osborne broke with Labour, "they picked the wrong battles" – austerity was a "reversible damp squib" that "salami-sliced" the state and cut the wrong projects. Theresa May was "to the Left of Blair"; Boris Johnson a "tax-and-spend social democrat and net zero radical". Sunak started badly but does now seem to have noticed that when he attacks the legacy of Blairism – on climate, on immigration, and on the "ultimate neo-Blairite folly" of HS2 – his poll numbers go up. It's a crucial lesson: "He must ignore the Tory wets, and finally banish the Labour era."

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Zeitgeist

Romans of Decadence by Couture Thomas. Christophel Fine Art/Universal Images/Getty

TikTokers are laughing over how much men think about the Roman Empire, says Thomas Mitchell in The Sydney Morning Herald. But frankly, there are many aspects of "life 2,000 years ago" we should bring back. Drinking red wine all day, every day – something all Romans did, from slaves to aristocrats. Open-toed sandals in the workplace, especially in "unseasonably warm spring weather". More public holidays and festivals, of which the Romans had 135 by AD165. Philosophers as politicians: "deep thinkers" like Seneca and Cicero are far better than our modern lot. And finally, orgies. "Enough said."

Quirk of history

Robert Alexander/Getty

History's most prolific killer

Who do you think is responsible for the most deaths in human history, asks Brian Klaas on Substack. Mao? Stalin? Hitler? In fact, "it's someone you've probably never heard of": an American chap called Thomas Midgley Jr. In 1921, Midgley discovered that adding a chemical compound called tetraethyl lead to petrol prevented a common fault in combustion engines. Everyone knew that lead itself was toxic, and that in high concentrations could send people mad – a tetraethyl lead plant in New Jersey was openly known as the "loony gas building". But General Motors desperately needed the compound to make its cars function, so "the poison spread".

In the 1990s, when the government finally began banning leaded petrol, an American researcher called Rick Nevin noticed a troubling trend: violent crime rates in the US followed almost exactly the same trajectory as atmospheric levels of lead. The only difference was time period: the rise and fall in violence came 20 years after the corresponding changes in lead levels. There was other evidence of a link: a sharp rise in murders in St Louis, Missouri two decades after a huge lead smelter opened there; a nationwide spike in violence after leaded paint became more common. The consequences of all this are staggering: it is now thought that lead poisoning "caused more than 100 million deaths worldwide". All, arguably, thanks to Mr Midgley.

🛌💀 Leaded petrol wasn't the only horror for which Midgley was responsible. He later invented some of the first CFCs, the chemicals that "punched an enormous hole in the Ozone layer". And after contracting polio in 1940, he created an "elaborate system of pulleys and ropes to lift himself out of bed" – only to get entangled in the contraption and die from strangulation.

Staying young

Times have changed: Moss at a party in 1998. Dave Benett/Getty

Crystals, moonbathing and the odd crafty fag

After years of "late nights, parties and cigarettes", Kate Moss is living a very different life now, say Phoebe McDowell and Megan Agnew in The Sunday Times. The 49-year-old model is generally "tucked up in bed" by 11pm at her home in the Cotswolds, with a 1990s sitcom on the telly. "Frasier is my bedtime watch," she says. "It just puts me to sleep." Every morning, she practises transcendental meditation for 10 minutes and recites her favourite affirmations: "embrace the unknown", say, or "trust the universe and it will lead the way".

Moss is also a big believer in "moonbathing" – lying outside at night to absorb lunar energy – and the power of crystals. When the moon is full, she "charges" her crystals by putting them on a tray and leaving them out in the garden. Her favourites are rose quartz, which represent love and compassion, and melonite ("really powerful"), which supposedly boosts stamina, longevity and physical wellbeing. Moss hasn't given up all her vices, though. "I still smoke occasionally," she says. "I've heard that when you stop, you can really tell [by your skin]. But I haven't stopped... yet."

Quoted

"A saint is a person whose life has been under-researched."

Theologian Henry Chadwick

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