The Ian Fleming Novels and Short Stories

“I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink.”
—James Bond

Over the past 15 years, the cinematic James Bond’s bar choices have been parsed down to three drinks: vodka martinis (shaken, not stirred), champagne, and whiskey on the rocks. With the recent exception of Die Another Day (which adds three rum drinks to the martinis and champagne), this strict formula has been in place since The Living Daylights. But it wasn’t always that way.

The literary 007 (and by extension, the film version) takes his drinking habits from his creator, Ian Fleming. Bond often shares a love for cocktails such as gin and tonics or stingers that would strike most of us as highly atypical. According to biographer Andrew Lycett, Fleming preferred gin and vermouth, and also liked the exotic drinks found around his winter home in Jamaica. “Fleming himself really didn’t hold his drink very well. More than two glasses of wine at lunch time and he was done for.”

According to notes from the archives of Random House, Fleming’s publisher, this concern with sobriety found its way into the novels: “Drink relaxed Bond. His only rule was not to get drunk but perhaps for 20 years he had hardly gone to bed cold sober. His other rules were not to drink at midday or after dinner, and never to drink liqueurs.” Why does 007 prefer his martinis “shaken and not stirred”? Lycett theorizes that Fleming thought stirring a drink diminished its flavors.

Interestingly, Fleming’s novels reverse the simplification trend found in the films. In the initial books, the drinks are often window dressing, a device to show that Bond is indeed eating dinner in a swank restaurant or is traveling in a foreign country. But as the series progresses, the drinks and the circumstances surrounding them become increasingly more complex, more integral to the plot. This can be attributed to Fleming’s maturation as a writer, his increased financial success, and his failing health. The latter found voice in the air of foreboding and melancholy that pervades the later novels, such as the opening chapters of both Goldfinger and Thunderball, where Bond’s drinking leads to ruminations on health and mortality.

Obviously, Fleming used alcoholic beverages to emphasize the exotic locations to which Bond travels, with 007 often imbibing local wines or liquors. Some are very specific, such as when he drinks raki in Turkey or sake in Japan (in fact, in the novels, sake is Bond's number two drink, due to the vast amounts he drinks in You Only Live Twice). Some are more general: when he’s in the Western Hemisphere Bond usually has bourbon, and in the Eastern, he often drinks scotch. Above all, he prefers “solid” drinks.

There are many reasons for James Bond’s appeal, including foreign locales, beautiful women and extreme danger. But a large part is certainly his love for the finer things (echoing the growth of our modern consumer culture), from clothes and cars to good food and well-made drinks. If you haven’t read Fleming’s novels, you might be surprised at the James Bond revealed within: a bored and somewhat cynical civil servant who sometimes drops his jacket on the floor. But as this section tries to show, you’ll also encounter a man who definitely knows what he wants, especially at cocktail hour. And if we ourselves live vicariously through 007, at least we can have a few great martinis on the way.