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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).

David Lowbridge-Ellis David Lowbridge-Ellis

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?

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David Lowbridge-Ellis David Lowbridge-Ellis

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.

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David Lowbridge-Ellis David Lowbridge-Ellis

‘So poetic a pleasure’: Simon Raven and the seductive poetry of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Credited with writing ‘additional dialogue’ for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and responsible for some of the film’s most memorable and poetic lines, outrageously outspoken queer writer Simon Raven had much in common with Bond, including his snobbery, his far from conventional sexuality and a scandal from his school days.

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