Not just Martinis
Everyone knows that James Bond drank a lot, but how much exactly, and what did he gulp down, other than the notorious “shaken, not stirred” Martinis?
Well, there’s research on the topic! This paper on the British Medical Journal, aptly titled “Were James Bond’s drinks shaken because of alcohol induced tremor?” has measured that across the 14 books in the James Bond series his weekly consumption was of 92 units, well above safe level. The authors conclude that
“The level of functioning as displayed in the books is inconsistent with the physical, mental, and indeed sexual functioning expected from someone drinking this much alcohol.”
The paper is a most enjoyable one.
For this instalment, I will present an old data card about drinks in Fleming’s Bond books - I did it a few years ago when this project was not what it is now yet, and it looks veeery unrefined.
Disclaimer
It has been well established that Bond’s character is sexist and even misogynist, for the way he belittles women and uses them as sexual objects, a repeated pattern that is clear in each iteration of the story. It looks like the movie franchise tried to clean up this image in the more recent films, something that has raised a few eyebrows as it feels a bit like a revisionist approach aimed at hiding the bad stuff under the carpet. It is a very interesting discussion but it’s out of scope for this post; however, I will point to two interesting articles I read on this:
- Why I’m still shaken and stirred by James Bond, R Smith on Vogue (2021)
- Is James Bond a misogynist? He doesn’t have to be Connery, Moore or even Craig’s vision forever, D P Fisher on The Conversation (2021)
Bring-along items (or not)
Frankly, I struggled with finding items for this journey. I don’t want to suggest any of the books or the movies in the franchise because I haven’t really read the first and I’ve only watched a few of the second, and because of the reasons outlined in the disclaimer above. So I’m left with not many more ideas to be honest - I could go off the tangent and recommend something not related but somewhat linked, but I don’t think it would add much. So we’ll do without for this time.
The data card
There are 14 books that Ian Fleming wrote in the Bond series - I downloaded the texts from all the ones I could find online, ending up with 12 of them. The texts have been downloaded from Project Gutenberg Canada (PG) or the Internet Archive (IA) and are, in order of publication:
- Casino Royale (PG)
- Live and Let Die (PG)
- Moonraker (PG)
- Diamonds are forever (PG)
- From Russia with love (PG)
- Dr. No (PG)
- Goldfinger (PG)
- For your eyes only (PG)
- Thunderball (IA)
- The spy who loved me (PG)
- On her majesty’s secret service (PG)
- You only live twice (PG)
- The man with the golden gun missing
- Octopussy and the living daylights missing
Then, I simply counted the occurrences of all alcoholic beverages I could think of, making sure to consider both singulars and plurals.
It looks like despite the fact that a Martini is Bond’s signature drink, there’s more mentions of champagne and whisky in the books. Bear in mind that the counts I’ve derived won’t refer solely to Bond as the drinker. Things like rum and cognac barely seem to make an appearance at all, and in the middle you have a variety of booze types.
Hope you enjoyed this even if it wasn’t much detailed! Catch you next time.
Oh, I have a newsletter (see link in navigation above), powered by Buttondown, if you want to get things like this and more in your inbox you can subscribe from here, entering your email. It’s free.