Licence To Queer – Details, episodes & analysis

Michael Gillette’s art is nothing short of beloved by Bond fans. In 2008, he created a set of 15 instantly iconic covers for the Fleming centenary editions of the novels. Since then, he has also produced covers for continuation books. In October 2024, he releases his highly conceptual and utterly gorgeous covers for the new hardback editions of the Fleming originals. The project has been gestating for six years! Michael tells the full story here for the first time. Michael also shares how it feels to be such an integral part of what he calls 'the Bondiverse', relates his own Bond beginnings (including his experiences of reading Fleming for the first time) and how his work has been influenced by the places he’s lived, the music he loves and the Bond cover artists who came before him.

The episode’s title is a quote from Quantum of Solace, specifically the scene where Mathis attempts to get to the bottom of Bond’s sleep problems. In the Bond films we don’t see our hero getting healthy, natural sleep all that often. Perhaps because, as Hitchcock famously asserted, ‘drama is life with the dull bits cut out’, we’re supposed to assume Bond sleeps like a normal human being when we’re not looking. On the occasions where we do see Bond waking up, it’s usually because he’s been drugged or knocked unconscious. But this is a different story in the books. David has gone back through Fleming’s 14 Bond books and found there are more than 400 direct references to sleep - that’s more than 30 per book! Might this suggest that Fleming himself had an interesting relationship with sleep that he transposed into his character? There are definite patterns across the books, which David guides us through here, highlighting particularly intriguing examples from Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Moonraker, From Russia, With Love and Thunderball. Is there anything from the Bond films and the Fleming books we can use to help us address our own sleep problems? Both Alex and David have wrestled with sleep issues their entire lives, including experiencing prolonged periods of insomnia. But there are differences… Alex is a night owl, an evening person, someone who has no issue being wide awake really late at night. David is the opposite, a lark, who is mentally and physically most alert early in the morning. Although neither Alex nor David are sleep scientists (and sleep science as an academic discipline is still very new!), both have put in a lot of effort to resolving their sleep issues, including reading some of the same books - sometimes with different results! Here, both talk through the approaches they’ve tried and tested over the years and reveal how they have reframed their relationships with sleep. Sleep hygiene is key for both of them. How does alcohol, caffeine and what we do in the hour before bed make a difference? Alex and David also tackle: Why is it important to know your chronotype (night owl/morning lark, etc)? How does insomnia relate to anxiety? What happens if we never sleep? (Like Gustav Graves in Die Another Day) Should we be concerned if we don’t dream? If we experience night terrors (like Bond does in the books) how can we deal with these? What are the ups and downs of sleeping pills? (There are a lot of them in Fleming!) How do sleep rhythms differ internationally? Why is jet lag so evil? What’s the sun got to do with sleep? Why is it sometimes more difficult to sleep in hotels than home? How does Fleming’s Bond always wake up on time without an alarm clock? And what is his standard wake up time? What chronotype does that make him?

Mental health is not discussed enough, despite it being an important element of the 007 stories. In this series, David talks very openly about mental health with members of the Bond community. He has a theory: these are the sorts of things on many of our minds but we often struggle to put them into words. Maybe we can change that? Here, David talks with Blake Powers ( @BondLifeChicago ) about hypervigilance. As a first responder in the Police, Blake is the ideal person to guide us through what it's like to be in an elevated state of constantly assessing potential threats. Blake can certainly relate to Bond in this regard and has written a brilliant article about this in which he insightfully makes many links with Bond's behaviour in the books and films. David and Blake focus in particular on the film of Quantum of Solace and Fleming's Thunderball. Together they explore: What impact does hypervigilance have on the brain and body? What should you do when you go 'off duty' and find yourself slipping into a depression-like state? How do we avoid using coping strategies which are bad for us? How much should we follow the example set by Bond? Read Blake's article here: https://spygestmag.com/posts/the-melancholy-spy/ If you are interested in appearing on a future episode of 'On Our Minds Only?' then please get in touch.

James Bond is dead! But only in a literal sense. With classical parallels aplenty, No Time To Die secures Bond’s place in the pantheon of queer heroes, making a myth out of 007 by turning him into a being we recognise as human - whoever we might be.

This is the podcast version of an article published on www.licencetoqueer.com

This is my pure, unadulterated 'off the cuff' take on No Time To Die, 24 hours after seeing it for the first time.

The first segment (14 minutes) is completely spoiler free: although I usually keep my opinions to myself, this time I give them free reign.

And then I get stuck into no-holds-barred spoiler territory (don't worry - it's very clearly signposted so you will know when to stop listening). This is my unfiltered 'queer re-view', before I've had chance to do my usual extensive research and restrain my free-wheeling thoughts, taming them into something more civilised and refined.

Enjoy!

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?

After exploring the changes to the script of Casino Royale and the queer connotations of fruits and vegetables (it all makes sense, I promise!) we dig into a short history of gin and how it has fallen out of favour and back in again.

Two days before the world premiere of No Time To Die, big UK broadcaster ITV chose Diamonds Are Forever as their Sunday afternoon film, one of my favourites of the series. Could I resist watching it on TV even though I had several copies on Blu Ray and DVD? Of course I couldn't! And despite me giving no warning about it, neither could many of you, including the following lovely folks on Twitter: @andytowne @shaggythetyke @jordan_welshy @tomsmason91 @seaniebird @lioneltwigg @notperfectedyet

Rather than talk over the film, I recorded my thoughts during the ad breaks. It was a huge nostalgia trip, taking me back to watching the Bonds on TV as a child.

Watching a double bill of Casino Royale and A View To A Kill with married couple Han (who 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.

For more on the drinks we had, check out https://www.licencetoqueer.com/blog/lgbt-lesbians-and-gays-bond-together 

I’ve yet to find anyone who thinks having Noël Coward playing 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?

Was the humour intentional or not? Does it matter?

After a discussion of the Camp aspects of Dr. No, I have a go at coming up with a score (out of 007) to rank it - purely in terms of queerness - in relation to the other Bond films.

Finally, some post re-view reflections on why people get worked up about the gender binary, an excerpt from a brilliant book by Meg-John Barker and Alex Iantaffi (link below) which has shaped my thinking and the acknowledgements.

https://www.rewriting-the-rules.com/self/new-book-life-isnt-binary-out-today/ 

Full references on www.licencetoqueer.com/dr-no