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Johanna Harwood was the first, and until Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s hiring on No Time to Die, the only woman screenwriter to work on the Bond films. Harwood was there at the beginning, gaining credits for her work on Dr No (1962) and From Russia with Love (1963), but her chequered experiences of trying to gain leverage within the film industry as a writer, having to contend with institutionalised as well as individualised sexism, prompted her eventual decision to leave Bond, her former employer Harry Saltzman, and the film industry behind. Her story not only provides valuable insights into the genesis of Bond on screen, it also shows the importance of incorporating production studies into discussions of gender and James Bond films, thinking about off-screen as well as on-screen female representation. Beyond Bond, it also illuminates some of the obstacles faced by women trying to build a career in the film industry in the 1960s (not that their problems are limited to that decade) and how film production labour done by women frequently goes uncredited or is discredited, despite its often formative importance.

In 2020, the latest James Bond film will hit cinema screens. The film has been produced by Eon Productions, is based on Ian Fleming’s suave, sophisticated super spy and stars Daniel Craig in the title role. With a troubled production shoot well-documented in the media, Daniel Craig often seeming and contradictorily at odds of being both enamoured and loathing with the role, a director leaving through ‘creative differences’ and numerous screenwriters being drafted in as last-minute replacements or add-ons, it will be interesting to see how the latest Bond adventure fares both critically and financially.

At their heart, the Bond adventures – originally in Ian Fleming’s novels and short stories, and then in their film incarnations before spilling out into newer platforms – offer pure escapism for the reader, viewer, listener and gamer. Set against the backdrop of exoticism in a post-war climate, the stories centre around MI6 Agent, James Bond, stopping enemies of the British Empire in their attempts at world domination. They gave the reader a sense of both an attempt by Fleming/Bond to recapture Britain as an important power on the world stage. Whilst Bond may have sipped martinis as he coolly dispatched the latest despotic tyrant, they also offered up ideas about time, place, culture, the social climate of the period and gender.

This book will focus on numerous aspects of the Bond-catalogue, but in particular paying particular attention to how the portrayal of gender, both in the stories and behind the scenes, has helped shape one of the most significant, important and successful British franchises.