{"id":3107,"date":"2008-05-10T01:25:11","date_gmt":"2008-05-10T00:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/05\/10\/recovering-bond\/"},"modified":"2023-11-23T12:39:16","modified_gmt":"2023-11-23T12:39:16","slug":"recovering-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/05\/10\/recovering-bond\/","title":{"rendered":"Recovering Bond"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"new_bonds.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Penguin is really coming up with the goods these days, living up to their reputation as a house with high standards of cover design, unlike Picador and the shabby way<\/a> they treated Cormac McCarthy recently.<\/p>\n

Ian Fleming’s Bond novels<\/a> are the latest to receive a makeover with some fabulous art from illustrator Michael Gillette<\/a>. 2008 is Fleming’s centenary so the books have been republished as demi-format hardbacks with these new designs adorning the jackets. Each cover features a different girl matched to the theme of the book (yes, I know they’re women but in Bond’s world women are always girls unless they’re Miss Moneypenny); each cover also features groovy period type which alludes to the hand-drawn elaborations of the Sixties and Seventies. The effect is reminiscent of the poster art for the 1967 film of Casino Royale<\/em><\/a> (below) which used a naked girl as the focal point; all Bond posters before and after this place oo7 himself centre stage. Penguin even dare to push the level of pastiche by making On Her Majesty’s Secret Service<\/em><\/a> look rather like an old romance novel, not such a surprising decision since this is the book where Bond gets married.<\/p>\n

\"casino.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My favourite Bond covers remain the old Pan paperbacks<\/a> from 1963 but that’s just me; these look great. There’s been a persistent moan recently from authors and publishers worrying about file sharing as they foresee the publishing world going the same way as the music business. The solution is obvious: you can’t stop texts being copied and distributed but you can make the books themselves desirable objects so make them worth buying and owning. Penguin has numbered the spines<\/a> of the new Bond books as they did with their recent Sherlock Holmes reprints<\/a>, a smart appeal to book collectors as well as a tip to read them in the order they were written. “Smart” is the key word here; Picador take note.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> The Pan covers mentioned above were designed by Raymond Hawkey. Bond site MI6.co.uk has some details<\/a> about the designer.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The book covers archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Repackaging Cormac<\/a>
\n\u2022 The World\u2019s Greatest Detective<\/a>
\n\u2022 James Bond postage stamps<\/a>
\n\u2022 Boys Own Books<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Penguin is really coming up with the goods these days, living up to their reputation as a house with high standards of cover design, unlike Picador and the shabby way they treated Cormac McCarthy recently. Ian Fleming’s Bond novels are the latest to receive a makeover with some fabulous art from illustrator Michael Gillette. 2008 … Continue reading “Recovering Bond”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,4,7,48,44,10],"tags":[432,431,1710,974],"class_list":["post-3107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-design","category-film","category-illustrators","category-painting","category-typography","tag-ian-fleming","tag-james-bond","tag-raymond-hawkey","tag-sherlock-holmes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-O7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}