Ian Fleming Centenary

After waiting more years than I can imagine is sensible for someone to do something constructive about featuring James Bond on a British postage stamp, I was enthusiastic to learn that 2008 would see this happen at last. Arguably the most famous literary character in fiction of all time, I think now even outstripping Sherlock Holmes of that title, it seemed to me that Ian Fleming’s secret agent 007 was long overdue to be immortalised on the nations’ postage stamps. I had envisioned that new specially designed images would be commissioned to represent the Bond character and his creator on this series of stamps, but alas this is not the case. What we’ve been presented with instead is a series of six of the 14 James Bond novels’ book covers presented four-up up together on one stamp in a set of six - and not one photograph of Ian Fleming in sight! When I look back at some of the beautifully designed stamps produced by the Royal Mail by specially commissioned artists and photographers over the last 30 years I can’t help but feel that Mr. Fleming has been sold painfully short, and that Bond collectors have been sold shorter!

The set of six stamps each feature four different book cover designs of the same title reproduced together side-by-side: CASINO ROYALE, DR. NO, GOLDFINGER, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, and FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE. Reading from left to right, each set of four images starts with the dustjacket design from a Jonathan Cape 1950’s first edition, and is then followed by one of the PAN Books covers from the Sixties designed by Raymond Hawkey, and then an awful jarring American cover design from a 1980 Jove Books edition nicely illustrated by Barnett Plotkin, and finally one of Roseanne Serra’s and Richie Fahey’s excellent faux retro cover designs, produced originally for Penguin Books (USA) in 2002, and now thankfully available in the UK.

So why the jarring Jove Book cover and not use another of the many superb PAN Books cover designs? As Jove Books are now owned by Penguin I can imagine this may have something to do with the final decision making, but the Jove image is an awful Americanised illustration of a James Bond as though played in our worst movie nightmares by an actor like Gil Gerard, Robert Urich, Christopher George, Dirk Benedict or James Brolin!!! And why use a very obvious American paperback cover at all on a British stamp? Why not use ALL fourteen original British Cape first edition dust jacket designs? And why were the six titles that were chosen singled out for inclusion on the stamps in preference to say LIVE AND LET DIE, MOONRAKER, THUNDERBALL, or ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE or any of the remaining four titles? Not of course that any of this will matter a fig to the man and woman in the street; they’re just stamps to be arbitrarily stuck on an envelope containing the payment for the telephone, gas, or electricity bill! But it is a wasted opportunity, because some truly memorable graphic imagery could have been created to celebrate the birth of the man who is the undoubted fountainhead of myriad other wonderful creative work that flowed directly from his original creation. Perhaps someone else will take a crack at it when the Bond films reach their 50th anniversary in 2012. Or probably not!

Ian Fleming Centenary Menu

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