I try hard to like the new, darker James Bond, but I miss the camp insouciance of the earlier films. If you’ve grown up with the type of 007 who briefly interrupts a bout of exotic love-making to sabotage a Russian spyplane with a champagne cork, it’s hard to warm to a character who spends most of the film engaged in the kind of fighting you’d expect to see in a pub car-park in Maidstone.
But, like him or not, there is nothing un-British about the new Bond. In many ways, crude, inelegant but effective is what Brits do best: the Routemaster bus, PG Tips, the London taxi, the full English breakfast, the Aga, the Blower Bentley and the 125 High Speed Train are all fine examples of our ‘it’s not fancy but it works’ approach.
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