Licence to Thrill

James Chapman is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester, UK. He is the editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, and his most recent books include Dr No: The First James Bond Film (2022), Contemporary British Television Drama (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) and Hitchcock and the Spy Film (I.B. Tauris, 2018).

• Introduction: (Still) Taking James Bond seriously 1. The contexts of Bond: Ian Fleming and the British spy thriller2. Snobbery with violence: Dr No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964)3. Bondmania: Thunderball (1965), Casino Royale (1967), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)4. Bond in transition: Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)5. Keeping the British end up: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979)6. Cold warrior reborn: For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), Never Say Never Again (1983), A View to a Kill (1985)7. Continuity and change: The Living Daylights (1987), Licence to Kill (1989)8. Millennial Bond: GoldenEye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999), Die Another Day (2002)9. Revisionist Bond: Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008)10. Jubilee Bond: Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015), No Time to Die (2021)Coda: James Bond will returnNotesFilmographyBibliographyIndex

Over two decades after its initial publication in 1999, Licence to Thrill remains the go-to academic and popular study of the James Bond film franchise. In this third edition, Chapman updates his excellent cultural history and nuanced analyses of the Bond films to include the final Daniel Craig film, No Time to Die. A completely new introduction offers insight into the explosion of Bond criticism in the twenty-first century.