What she sees is a lonely outsider, an ordinary boy who didn't fit in with the other boys at his posh school, a man with a permanent chip on his shoulder. There's a great scene in which Craig and Eva Green chat each other up on a train, and she tells him some home truths. And by Brosnan's time, Bond almost seemed apologetic – the kind of guy who might worry about condoms and how many units of alcohol he was drinking.Īnyway, I didn't envy Craig's Bond. Of course, that confidence seeped away on Moore's watch, which is why the films became so 70s-camp. He portrayed a man who came from an era, as the poet and Bond-fan Philip Larkin once pointed out, when England, in the popular imagination, was always right, and foreigners were always wrong. He was king of his world – not exactly happy, but always purring with self-satisfaction. But that's realism for you, isn't it?Īnd then, half-way through Casino Royale, I realised what it was that had been nagging away.
One thing about Fleming's Bond was that he got into a lot of fights, but did not look like a bruiser, because he was so good at neutralising his opponent. Craig's Bond is attractive, but not in the refined way suggested by Ian Fleming. Not an important detail, but Bond is always described as dark. Let's see: for a start, he has blond hair.
