Article Benjamin Welton In Jules Dassin’s classic crime film Rififi, Louise (played by Janine Darcey) chides her husband, the gangster Jo le Suedois (played by Austrian actor Carl Möhner), for moral cowardice. Specifically, Louise, in a fit of frustration, tells her husband that it’s not the criminals or those who have chosen to flee the responsibilities…
Article by Benjamin Welton; Featured Image by George Almond Ian Fleming was fortunate in that he had a lot to draw from once he sat down to create James Bond. Not only did he have literary forbearers such as W. Somerset Maugham, Sapper, and Raymond Chandler to emulate, but his actual life was swimming in…
Article by Benjamin Welton Although the Bond novels officially began with Casino Royale, 1954’s Live and Let Die is the true beginning of the Bond canon. The novel has all the right elements — Jamaica, a whiff of Caribbean culture and superstitions, a larger-than-life villain, and an enchanting female who is Bond’s equal in more…
On this day today, Ian Fleming’s sixth novel, Dr. No, is published. The novel was originally a screenplay written in 1956 for what would have been a television show entitled Commander Jamaica. It also marks the first appearance of both Major Boothroyd and Bond’s signature weapon, the Walther PPK. We examine this in comparions with…
Words by Benjamin Welton Born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn, Mickey Spillane cultivated a type of working-class snarl that was always directed at those numerous critics who frequently labeled him popular culture’s chief cheerleader for Fascism. In turn, Spillane took potshots at his supposed betters, and once quipped that: “Those big-shot writers … could never…
With the exciting news recently that literary James Bond will be re-appearing in the comics medium, we took the opportunity to go back in time to the original run of Bond comics in the Daily Express beginning in 1958. Words by Benjamin Welton Some stories are just too cutesy, or too damn perfect to be…
Words by Benjamin Welton Ever since Casino Royale first saw publication in 1953, commentators have noted that James Bond began his rise just as the sun was setting on the British Empire. Indeed, worldwide interest in British culture, especially the more garish, almost pulpy elements, found greater appreciation at the same time as Great Britain…
Words by Benjamin Welton On Halloween of last year, Gérard de Villiers died at the age of 83. A lifelong Parisian, de Villiers was at the time eulogized for being one of the Francophone world’s most beloved spy fiction writers and the one popular novelist that French intellectuals actually read (although few would ever fess…
Words by Benjamin Welton Who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory? From the pseudo-science of ancient astronauts to Alex Jones’s favorite hobby horse the Illuminati, conspiracy theories surround us, especially within the cold confines of the internet. Just last year, Jesse Walker, an editor at the libertarian Reason magazine, released The United States of Paranoia:…
Review by Benjamin Welton Biographers, like translators, often don’t get credit for their work. In the hierarchy of paperbacks and hardcovers, chronicling the life of another is usually placed somewhere below that of a standard history, whether popular or academic. Partially this is a problem of subject, for more often than naught, people buy biographies…
Article by Benjamin Welton As a general rule, I try to refrain from reading the comments on my articles. But, since I am a glutton for punishment, I read ever single comment that was posted to my last piece in The Atlantic (“James Bond’s World War I Origins,” March 12, 2014). One negative comment stood…
Article by Benjamin Welton. Straddling the ancient Bosphorus, Istanbul (alias Constantinople and alias Byzantium) has always been more of an idea and an ideal than a city. Istanbul is where the Orient and the Occident meet. It has been home to Greek traders, Roman emperors, Byzantine bureaucrats, and Turkish sultans. Istanbul, in the words of…
Article by Benjamin Welton The espionage novel is one part “imperial adventure story” and one part detective tale. The former, which is extensively examined by Dr. Caroline Reitz in her slim study entitled Detecting the Nation: Fictions of Detection and the Imperial Venture, often details the exploits of Englishmen abroad, specifically those educated Englishmen who…
by Benjamin Welton I’ve sat in enough literature classrooms to know the refrain well. A young woman full of earnest conviction but enough neo-Marxist and Lacanian theory to sink a dreadnought will speak up and say “I cannot relate to this.” During one such case, a peer of mine took it step further by claiming…
Artistic Licence Renewed 