Dear Reader,
Paris and I have made up. I first visited Paris with Nick after we’d been dating for six months. We took the elevator up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, where the elevator broke. We were stranded on the open observation deck for two hours without coats. It was evening. We had no food. Then a storm struck. On our second visit, after we’d been together for two years, we stayed in a cheap and not so cheerful hostel where the shower door dropped off its hinges and shattered while I was preparing to be fabulous in the city of fashion. Instead, I wound up in hospital for six hours while a doctor tweezed slivers of glass from my body. Not so fabulous. On our third trip, in 2019, we couldn’t find any gluten-free food. I’ve always loved Paris. It just didn’t love me back. Until now.
It was a beautiful long weekend, starting and ending with a visit to the world’s home away from home, Shakespeare & Company Bookshop. In the course of our travels we found gluten-free pan au chocolat, bread from the market, pizza, pasta, baguettes! Nothing exploded or stalled. We discovered a brilliant exhibition by chance, ‘Parisiennes Citoyennes!’ – charting the rise of feminism in Paris from the nineteenth century to today. We sat in squares and parks in the sunshine. We strolled by the Seine and sat on a bench in the Royal Gardens to watch dogs swap greetings. We went to Harry’s Bar, James Bond’s chosen spot in Paris:
If he wanted a solid drink he had it at Harry’s Bar, both because of the solidity of the drinks and because, on his first ignorant visit to Paris at the age of sixteen, he had done what Harry’s advertisement in the Continental Daily Mail had told him to do and had said to his taxi-driver ‘Sank Roo Doe Noo’. That had started one of the memorable evenings of his life, culminating in the loss, almost simultaneous, of his virginity and his note-case.
I was delighted to find ‘Sank Roo Doe Noee’ displayed in the window, but the references don’t stop there. There’s a James Bond cocktail, invented in 1963, three years after the short story that sees Bond in Paris, ‘From a View to a Kill’, was published. (If you’ve read Double or Nothing, you’ll know that ‘From a View to a Kill’ is one of my favourite Fleming stories.) The James Bond cocktail is indeed a solid drink: vodka, a lump of sugar saturated with angostura, champagne and lemon peel. It knocked my socks off and then put them back on inside out. Harry’s Bar seems to have changed very little, if at all, from the days when Hemingway and Fleming were IBFs (International Bar Flies) here. Primo Carnera’s boxing gloves, a signed baseball bat and swords hang above the bar. The wood panelling is decorated with college crests and flags. We were drinking in history, quite literally.
And then we joined the Club James Bond France for one of the most surreal and sublime days of my life, and the final stop on the Double or Nothing tour. The Club organised a cruise along the Seine, inviting actors, stuntmen, crew, and me, plus 300 guests. The highlight for me was meeting four grande dames of Bond: Martine Beswick (From Russia with Love, Thunderball), Luciana Paluzzi (Thunderball), Caroline Munro (The Spy Who Loved Me), and Carole Ashby (Octopussy, A View to a Kill). If you’ve had the chance to read my essay on the legacy of women in Bond, published in the Waterstones exclusive edition, you’ll know I feel incredibly honoured to join the line of women who have helped create the world of 007. To spend the weekend with these legends was a privilege. The quote of the whole affair came courtesy of Carole, a shining power. We talked about the perception of Bond Girls, and Carole told me that recently a journalist asked her if she felt downtrodden.
Carole’s reply: ‘Do I look downtrodden?’
No. She does not. Carole will be opening a one-woman show soon and I can’t wait – a born storyteller who was so gracious and took me under her wing when we arrived to the boat and I experienced what it’s like to be a Bond Girl for a day.
(With Carole)
We were greeted by 300 cheering and applauding people. When I realised a whole section were shouting my name I immediately turned me back on them all to face Nick.
‘Are those people calling your name so they can take pictures of you?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, eyes very wide.
‘Then you should probably turn around.’
Oh right.
(Addressing the audience on deck)
It only got more otherworldly from there.
I had so much fun talking with Coline Defaud – who plays young Madeleine – about that stunning No Time To Die opening, and Richard Sammel (Gettler, Casino Royale) about what motivates villains. It was incredibly surreal to be standing alongside Sebastien Foucan and Toshiro Suga, both responsible for some of the most iconic action sequences in Bond. And I loved discussing action with Daniel Craig’s lead stuntman Jean-Charles Rousseau, supervising stunt coordinator Olivier Schneider and fight choreographer Gregory Loffredo.
(With the stunt team)
Writing action sequences is a fun challenge because the scenes need to be led by, and drive, story and character. It turns out it’s the same on screen too, and it was fascinating to hear how they develop ideas. I was told that Daniel Craig was very involved, particularly in regards to his character ageing, considering what would be possible now versus then, not wanting to seem timeless. This grabbed me given his character’s relationship to time, the first Bond we’ve seen to gain his Double O status and the first Bond to… well, you know.
We enjoyed lunch as the boat cruised past the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre and the haunting scaffold of Notre Dame, but honestly I didn’t see much of anything because I was having too much fun talking with the amazing guests on my table: a geopolitician, a watch expert, a a writer on Bond, and a real life René Mathis! My host for the day was the founder of Club James Bond France, Pierre Rodiac, and it was an honour to discuss Fleming in depth with him on the club’s twenty-fifth birthday.
After the (delicious) food things got even more surreal. I settled beside the ladies of Bond, and for the next hour and a half I signed books and photographs and took pictures with wonderful people from all over the world. One of the most special aspects of Double or Nothing being published for me is becoming part of this diverse and welcoming fan community. James Bond brings people together around a common love, and as I took a photograph with a grinning young boy in a brilliant tux, I was struck by how lucky I am to be involved in this joy. Thank you so much to Club James Bond France for inviting me. I can’t wait to meet up with all these new James Bond friends again.
(Caroline, Martine, Luciana, Me and Carole)
And so au revoir Paris and home to Edinburgh. This month I’ll be finishing the second Double O novel, so you won’t hear from me for a few weeks. But for paid subscribers, watch out for more creative writing tips and Q&As very soon.
From Kim, With Love x