I am in a James Bond mood again today, and was just on the sofa reading an essay on Bond and Britishness by James Chapman, one of the world’s leading writers on the bond phenomenon. It was a very good essay in a very good collection. Having referenced another of Chapman’s essays in my MA thesis, I thought I’d google to see if he’d written or said anything about the Bond olympic stunt. I wanted to see whether my fascination is shared by proper Bondian academics. I wasn’t disappointed: I found this rather fascinating interview with Chapman for a Canadian radio station. In it, he begins to unpick the Bond phenomenon, it’s politics, and what it says about our culture. It’s a bit stop start, but I thought it worth linking to. Chapman points out, for instance, that the 007 character is increasingly coming to represent ‘brand Britain’: the image of ourselves we want to present to the world, one of unfaded power and importance – an image fast becoming an illusion. (I once touched upon something similar in this entry).