James Bond's birth year
AlecBoy006
Posts: 26MI6 Agent
This subject is quickly catching on to me as intriguing. Allow me to copy and paste from the wikipedia page, and yes- I do believe them. Since most of the stuff I look up on there I can relate to, I believe them.
"According to Pearson, Bond was born on November 11, 1920. However, the novel You Only Live Twice implies the birth year as 1924. In the novel, M writes an obituary for James Bond after believing him to be dead. M writes that Bond left school when he was 17 years old and joined the Ministry of Defence in 1941 "claiming an age of 19." If Bond was 17 in 1941, then he was born in 1924. Also Tiger Tanaka, a Japanese secret agent, states that Bond was born in the year of the rat, which hints at 1924. However, the novel Moonraker (which is set in 1954) states that Bond's age is 37. This would place Bond's date of birth in about 1917.
A more complex date of birth, according to John Griswold and his book Ian Fleming's James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies is November 11, 1921. Griswold notes that Bond's joining of the Ministry of Defence was originally written in Fleming's manuscript as 1939 and later changed to 1941. Briefly, Griswold contends that Bond joined the Admiralty in 1939 (the same year Fleming joined) and 1941 is a year marker that places his recruitment into an organisation that was later attached to the Ministry of Defence by Fleming. Griswold believes that a lot of details in Bond's timeline make better sense with the original 1939 date. For instance, if one computes Bond's age for when he was admitted into the Admiralty to when his parents died, then Bond would have been 11 in 1933 from January 1 through to November 10 if he was born in 1921. 1933 is the year mentioned in Casino Royale for when Bond "bought" his first Bentley. Since all of the years claimed for when Bond was born would have made him too young to purchase this Bentley, a more likely scenario is that he "inherited" it from his late father. Griswold presented this idea to Ian Fleming Publications in February 2003. The company recognised this issue for its Young Bond series of novels featuring Bond as a teenager in the 1930s and along with its author, Charlie Higson, defined Bond being born in the year 1920. In Higson's series, the Bentley in question was purchased and used in December 1933 in Double or Die by Bond with money he had received for helping someone win a lot of money at a roulette table. Previously Bond had inherited a Bamford & Martin Sidevalve Short Chassis Tourer around Easter 1933 from his Uncle Max."
Very interesting piece of reading there. The only think we know is continuinity issues at its finest.
Edit: I just saw this
"The 2006 film Casino Royale is a reboot of the film series that depicts Bond's first mission as Agent 007. The film's official website[12] gives a biography of the Bond that parallels the backstory of Fleming's literary character, but it is updated to reflect Bond's new birth date of April 13, 1968; April 13 being the day in which Casino Royale was published in 1953 and 1968 being the year in which Daniel Craig was born. This version of the character was born in West Berlin, Germany. His parents, Andrew Bond and Monique Delacroix Bond, died in a climbing accident, so he was brought up in Kent, UK, by his aunt Charmain.
Like the original character, Bond is kicked out of Eton College and attends his father's alma mater, Fettes College. Bond attends the University of Geneva while at Fettes through an exchange program. After Fettes, Bond joins the Royal Navy and attends Britannia Royal Naval College at the age of 17.
The modern biography clarifies Bond's military service by stating he joins the Special Boat Service while in the Regular Royal Navy, where he obtains the rank of Commander, and then is placed in the 030 Special Forces Unit (a reference to Fleming's 30th Assault Unit during World War II, a unit he nicknamed his 'Red Indians'; see Casino Royale). Bond serves covertly in Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Libya and actively in Bosnia. He is then recruited by the RNR Defence Intelligence Group. Bond attends specialized courses at Cambridge and Oxford universities during this period, earning a degree in Oriental Languages from Cambridge. Bond is noted to be fluent in English, French, German, Russian, and Italian, and writing passable Greek, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese at the time he joins MI6. In training, he receives exceptionally high marks for physical endurance, logic, and Psychological Ops exercises. He serves in the Royal Navy from age 17 to 31, joining MI6 at age 30, and is promoted to 00 Agent at age 38 in 2006."
?:)?:)?:)
"According to Pearson, Bond was born on November 11, 1920. However, the novel You Only Live Twice implies the birth year as 1924. In the novel, M writes an obituary for James Bond after believing him to be dead. M writes that Bond left school when he was 17 years old and joined the Ministry of Defence in 1941 "claiming an age of 19." If Bond was 17 in 1941, then he was born in 1924. Also Tiger Tanaka, a Japanese secret agent, states that Bond was born in the year of the rat, which hints at 1924. However, the novel Moonraker (which is set in 1954) states that Bond's age is 37. This would place Bond's date of birth in about 1917.
A more complex date of birth, according to John Griswold and his book Ian Fleming's James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies is November 11, 1921. Griswold notes that Bond's joining of the Ministry of Defence was originally written in Fleming's manuscript as 1939 and later changed to 1941. Briefly, Griswold contends that Bond joined the Admiralty in 1939 (the same year Fleming joined) and 1941 is a year marker that places his recruitment into an organisation that was later attached to the Ministry of Defence by Fleming. Griswold believes that a lot of details in Bond's timeline make better sense with the original 1939 date. For instance, if one computes Bond's age for when he was admitted into the Admiralty to when his parents died, then Bond would have been 11 in 1933 from January 1 through to November 10 if he was born in 1921. 1933 is the year mentioned in Casino Royale for when Bond "bought" his first Bentley. Since all of the years claimed for when Bond was born would have made him too young to purchase this Bentley, a more likely scenario is that he "inherited" it from his late father. Griswold presented this idea to Ian Fleming Publications in February 2003. The company recognised this issue for its Young Bond series of novels featuring Bond as a teenager in the 1930s and along with its author, Charlie Higson, defined Bond being born in the year 1920. In Higson's series, the Bentley in question was purchased and used in December 1933 in Double or Die by Bond with money he had received for helping someone win a lot of money at a roulette table. Previously Bond had inherited a Bamford & Martin Sidevalve Short Chassis Tourer around Easter 1933 from his Uncle Max."
Very interesting piece of reading there. The only think we know is continuinity issues at its finest.
Edit: I just saw this
"The 2006 film Casino Royale is a reboot of the film series that depicts Bond's first mission as Agent 007. The film's official website[12] gives a biography of the Bond that parallels the backstory of Fleming's literary character, but it is updated to reflect Bond's new birth date of April 13, 1968; April 13 being the day in which Casino Royale was published in 1953 and 1968 being the year in which Daniel Craig was born. This version of the character was born in West Berlin, Germany. His parents, Andrew Bond and Monique Delacroix Bond, died in a climbing accident, so he was brought up in Kent, UK, by his aunt Charmain.
Like the original character, Bond is kicked out of Eton College and attends his father's alma mater, Fettes College. Bond attends the University of Geneva while at Fettes through an exchange program. After Fettes, Bond joins the Royal Navy and attends Britannia Royal Naval College at the age of 17.
The modern biography clarifies Bond's military service by stating he joins the Special Boat Service while in the Regular Royal Navy, where he obtains the rank of Commander, and then is placed in the 030 Special Forces Unit (a reference to Fleming's 30th Assault Unit during World War II, a unit he nicknamed his 'Red Indians'; see Casino Royale). Bond serves covertly in Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Libya and actively in Bosnia. He is then recruited by the RNR Defence Intelligence Group. Bond attends specialized courses at Cambridge and Oxford universities during this period, earning a degree in Oriental Languages from Cambridge. Bond is noted to be fluent in English, French, German, Russian, and Italian, and writing passable Greek, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese at the time he joins MI6. In training, he receives exceptionally high marks for physical endurance, logic, and Psychological Ops exercises. He serves in the Royal Navy from age 17 to 31, joining MI6 at age 30, and is promoted to 00 Agent at age 38 in 2006."
?:)?:)?:)
Comments
Also the medical report that Dr. Warmflash gives M in The World Is Not Enough says that he was born in May of 1961.
Reguardless of the changes made by Fleming and EON over the years and the actors respective ages, to me BOnd will always be between 35 - 40 years old.
What really bothers me is this "First in Oriential Langauges" baloney. It's one of those toss off lines in "You Only Live Twice" that makes no sense. I can't imagine Bond sitting in a class of Oriental Langauges, and given he spends little of his career in the far east, why would he undertake such a regime. It seems more fitting for David Niven's oo7, who "lets his entrails down and washes them by hand" a techinque he learned in Tibet.
Why this should become a part of the Bond charecter puzzles me. It's like putting "Flies Moonraker Shuttle" on his resume.
Bond’s Beretta
The Handguns of Ian Fleming's James Bond
By the time he'd written Bond's obituary in YOLT, Fleming had obviously become concerned about his character's advancing age, and shaved a few years off. Kingsley Amis's fantastic The James Bond Dossier has a bit of fun with this.
Daniel Craig's James Bond was born in Berlin in 1968, making him 38 when promoted to '00' status for the CR mission.
Nothing is ever in concrete, anymore; this should be obvious. It made sense for Tracy's tombstone, in FYEO, to list her death as having occurred in 1969, since it worked for Roger Moore's relative age, but as of now (post-CR, and pre-QoS), Bond has never been married.
Cheers, reboot haters!!! {[] {[] {[]
:007)
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM