This week past, I heard a talk by a former high security official, who cannot be identified. One of the audience, warning that her query would be cheesy, asked him (or her) what s/he thought about James Bond, and if secret service life was in any way related? S/he said it wasn't like that, but that Bond was useful to the secret services. Why? Because he bolstered the myth, and the myth of a secret service was among its dearest possessions, dearer than Aston Martins which fire rockets at global criminals but which, said the high official, we didn't have anyway.

This did not disappoint, for Bond is mythic, or nothing. The high official recognised this and - for s/he was bookish as well as spookish - referred us to the essay "James Bond and the Decline of England" by David Cannadine, in which the historian notes that critics "acclaimed (Bond) as a welcome escape". We got just that this past week, in Bond: The South Bank Show (ITV, Wednesday) and Ian Fleming: Where Bond Began (BBC1, Sunday).