Where has Bond travelled to?

I feel I have neglected this blog recently so I thought I would reboot it by mapping the countries that Fleming’s Bond travelled to.

Bond lives in London and spent part of his childhood in Scotland so the United Kingdom is first on the list.  Bond is a regular visitor to Jamaica, the United States, West Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France as these are all featured in multiple stories.

From Russia With Love is a great travel story with Bond following the Orient Express route through Turkey, Greece and Yugoslavia.  Thunderball is based in the Bahamas whilst nearly all the activity in You Only Live Twice takes place in Japan.  The short story For Your Eyes Only takes Bond on a trip to Canada and in the first part of The Man With The Golden Gun Bond recalls his stay in the Soviet Union.

James Bond replica passport from indyprops.com

Bond travels to Africa at the end of Diamonds Are Forever, visiting Sierra Leone & Liberia and we have visits to the Seychelles and to the Kenyan port of Mombasa in the Hildebrand Rarity.

There are other mentions of Bond’s previous travels in the books.  We know he has visited Sweden as he shot a Norwegian double agent in Stockholm and Thunderball hints at a visit to Lisbon in Portugal during the war as well as a trip to Hungary in 1953.  Bond learnt to ski in Austria and the country is referenced in Octopussy, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and From A View To A Kill.  

Bond recalls visits to Mexico & Venezuela in the first chapter of Goldfinger which also describes the service’s waterfront office in Hong Kong.  Other quick mentions include a trip to Trinidad in The Man With The Golden Gun, Monaco in Casino Royale and in Goldfinger Bond recalls watching a motor race in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.  The final mention goes to Denmark, not specifically named but Bond’s JAL flight to Tokyo in You Only Live Twice would have stopped at Copenhagen on the way there.

I am sure I have missed a few places that Bond visited in Fleming’s novels so please let me know!

Map produced using historicalmapchart.net

Tracing the timeline of Thunderball

Of all Fleming's Bond novels, Thunderball is perhaps one of the harder ones to follow as the first half of the book is not told in a strict chronological order.

Inspired by a similar (but far superior) work on the movie Pulp Fiction, I have produced this infographic showing the timeline of the novel, where the action takes place and the interactions of the key characters.

Let me know your thoughts (plus any errors and omissions).

If anyone would like this as a PDF to print at home, drop me a message and I will send it to you.

Where next for Horowitz’s Bond?

Following on from the success of his first Bond novel Trigger Mortis, Ian Fleming Publications has announced that Anthony Horowitz will write a second 007 book to be published in spring 2018.

Trigger Mortis is a period Bond novel and is set immediately following the events of Thunderball.  It was generally well received by both critics and Bond fans due to a combination of a strong story and the writing remaining faithful to the original Fleming.  The book features locations including London, the Nurburgring racetrack in Germany plus Florida and New York in the United States.  It included material from a story called Murder on Wheels, part of an intended Bond television series written by Fleming.

It seems that the new novel will again be a period piece and Horowitz has hinted that he is has been thinking about placing it around the time of Casino Royale.  This got me thinking where it would be good to see Bond visit next.

Winning the 00 number
In Casino Royale, Bond tells how he was awarded the 00 number after killing a Japanese cypher expert in New York and a Norwegian double agent in Stockholm.  Again linking one of these stories, perhaps as a prologue to the novel, would be a nice nod to Fleming’s original books.  Mentioned in Thunderball,  The Spy Who Loved Me and From Russia With Love (and also being a city that I visit regularly), Stockholm is surely ripe for inclusion.

Hong Kong
A colony (later dependent territory) from 1841 to 1997, Hong Kong was a major strategic location of the British Empire/Commonwealth.  The territory has been used in various Bond continuation novels set in more modern times but a 1950’s Hong Kong, possibly featuring Dickson from Goldfinger would be an interesting stamp in Bond’s passport from the mid 1950s.

An African Adventure
Despite the historical ties between many African countries and Britain, Fleming only sent Bond to Africa on two occasions.  At the end of Diamonds Are Forever he closes the diamond smuggling pipleline in Sierra Leone and the short story The Hildebrand Rarity is located in the Seychelles.

We can rule out Bond being involved in the Suez crisis (“one of the most pitiful bungles in the history of the world”) as this was at the same time as the Hungarian uprising where he was on an operation at the time.  However there are many exotic locations in Africa that Bond could visit such as Algiers or Dar es Salaam.

You can just imagine Bond being sent by M to some remote colonial outpost where unbeknown to the outside world, there is a megalomaniac villain up to his nefarious tricks…


Behind the Iron Curtain?
Despite all of Bond’s many trips, Fleming never sent him to one of the old Warsaw Pact counties.  In Moonraker he mentions previously being attached to the British Embassy in Moscow and in Thunderball Bond recalls a trip on the Arlberg Express which mainly ran from Budapest to Paris.  Weaving one of these two events into the new book would interesting and add something more to Bond's backstory.

Alternatively an undercover trip to Warsaw, Prague or East Berlin could be another adventure for 007 which would presumably include an exciting escape over the frontier (Fleming always seems to use this word rather than “border”).  Personally, I would love to see Bond operating undercover in Eastern Europe.

Of course all of this is pure speculation, I guess we will have to wait until 2018 before we find out what Anthony Horowitz has up his sleeve.

A trip to Shrublands

In the novel Thunderball and following an unsatisfactory medical, Bond is sent to a health clinic in Sussex.  He travels from London via train but takes a taxi from the station to the town of Washington. 

Fleming doesnt mention the railway station but we can deduce it is Burgess Hill Station which is "'bout half an hour" away.  From the text it is clear Bond is not collected from Brighton and the small station at Hassocks does not appear to have had any traffic islands (roundabouts) close by for the cab driver to negotiate at the time.

The route takes Bond to Shrublands through Sussex Downs towns of Poynings and Fulking.

During the taxi ride, Bond and the Cab driver discuss the Bucket of Blood, the nickname of the Astor Club which was the location of a notorious police corruption case in 1954.  Also in close proximity to each other are Brighton Racecourse where the cab driver sees as the source of his future fortunes and Brighton Central Hosptial (actually Brighton General Hospital) where Count Lippe recovers from his burns.

Bond's mode of transport was an Austin taxi which was 20 years old.  With Thunderball taking place in 1958 then the most likely model was the Austin Low Loading Taxi Cab which was introduced in 1934.