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[quantumofsolace]

James Bond had a bigger role in winning the Cold War than you might think, argues historian Dominic Sandbrook

Today Bond has become such a familiar personification of British style that it is easy to lose sight of his Cold War origins. In Ian Fleming’s early novels, Bond was explicitly a blunt instrument for bashing the Communists. On the screen, however, Bond’s Cold War connotations were gently toned down: his early enemies, for example, work for the international crime network SPECTRE, not (as in the books) the Soviet intelligence agency SMERSH, while the films’ obsession with novelty, fashion and design felt a long way from Fleming’s hard-bitten conservatism. Yet in its way, even the aggressive product placement of the Bond films was a weapon in the wider Cold War. http://www.telegraph...e-Cold-War.html