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Licence To Queer covers queer aspects of Bond books, video games and more. Search here for your favourite titles and characters or find content related to particular queer identities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, etc).
That or the priesthood: Bond’s queer calling
In the world of Bond, religion is often portrayed as being as hollow as a diamond smuggler’s Bible. But questioning an institution does not necessarily preclude believing in it. Queer Christian Kathleen Jowitt uncovers deep connections between religion and 007, revealing that a monk and a hitman might have more in common that we might think.
No Crying Shame
No Time To Die has prompted discussion about what is and isn't "Bond", and has provoked emotional responses from fans and sceptics alike. In this unflinchingly honest and beautiful piece, Craig Gent reflects on his childhood relationship to 007 and how Daniel Craig's final bow has given him the Bond he longed for all along.
I wanna take Craig to a gay bar - here’s why
How are we supposed to feel about Daniel Craig’s ‘revelation’ that he prefers gay bars to straight equivalents? Why are some appalled while others are applauding? Why is this even a story anymore?
Book Review: No Time To Die - The Making of The Film by Mark Salisbury
There are Making Of books and there are Making Of books. This is the latter.
No Time To Die ‘off the cuff’
No Time To Die is a deeply, magnificently queer film, so it will take me some time to pull together my thoughts and polish them into a queer re-view. However, this is the rough first draft - in podcast form.
“Keep the fruit”: mixing up Felix Leiter’s masculinity
The line didn’t exist in the earlier drafts of Casino Royale. Is it just a throwaway quip or something more revealing of Felix’s character?
LGBT: Lesbians and Gays Bond Together
Watching a double bill of Casino Royale and A View To A Kill with married couple Han (who had never seen a Bond film) and Maz (who loved Bond as a child but was bullied into not liking it at school) was like seeing both films for the first time all over again. Listen in as two same sex couples banter about Bond with themed drinks along the way.
4 Bond Blondes
Daniel Craig was vilified before he’d even stepped foot on the set of Casino Royale, with much of the opprobrium targeted at his distinctly un-Bondian, unmasculine blonde hair. Some said they couldn’t see him as the hero, but they would buy him as the villain. Here are four blonde Bond villains who helped to create the cinematic stereotype of blonde men as Other.
What if Noël had said Yes to Dr. No?
I’ve yet to find anyone who thinks having Noel Coward play Dr. No would have been even a vaguely good idea, and that included the man himself. So what did Ian Fleming see in Coward - friend, neighbour, best man, godfather to his son - which the rest of us have missed?
The World Is Not Enough – The Reimagining of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service?
Sam Rogers delves into the similarities between the films in detail, exploring whether the overlaps are merely coincidences, nice easter eggs or whether there is something more substantial going on.
Queer re-view: Dr. No
You would think that a film which opens with three men pretending to be blind would alert us to the need to look at things differently. But six decades of straight-washing has obscured quite how queer Bond’s beginnings were - and still are to this day. It’s high time we took the blinkers off: Bond was born this way.
James Bond is not always the best role model for staying mentally healthy. When faced with battles in his own brain, he’s far likelier to slip into avoidance behaviours (martinis, girls, guns) than deal with them head on. Even so, within the pages of the original Fleming’s books, we find that Bond’s creator was ahead of his time: he was not only interested in the treatment of mental difficulties, but also armed 007 with a coping technique recommended by professionals today.