Bonds of the West Indies

Birds of the Caribbean by James Bond.

The original James Bond was an American ornithologist and expert on birds of the Caribbean. His book, Birds of the West Indies, first published in 1936, was owned by keen bird watcher Ian Fleming whilst living in Jamaica. He was looking for a name for his spy that sounded “as ordinary as possible”. Fleming first used the name in his novel Casino Royale in 1953, and “a second James Bond was born”. The real James Bond didn’t find out about his fictional namesake until the early 1960s, when Bond became big in the States. He was pretty chuffed.

Birds of the Caribbean by Taryn Simon.

Birds of the West Indies is also a two-part body of work (2013-14) by artist Taryn Simon. The first part of the work was a “photographic inventory of the women, weapons and vehicles of James Bond films made over the past fifty years”; the second part was to cast herself as James Bond, the ornithologist, by classifying and photographing all the birds that appear in James Bond films. The book was published by Hatje Cantz in 2013.

Previously on Barnflakes
James Bond book covers
2 Willow Road