If you are looking for a gift for James Bond fans, the difficulty is that they usually already own the box set, the books, and at least one poster. This is a different sort of present, because it gives them something to read rather than something to recognise. It is a map of all twenty-five Eon-produced Bond films, drawn in the style of a London Underground diagram, with each film as a station and the recurring characters as lines.
I researched and drew it myself in East Sussex, working through the Eon filmography and the casting records film by film. The interesting part turned out not to be the six men who have played Bond. It was working out who else kept turning up and when they stopped.
The Longest Line on the Map Does Not Belong to James Bond
Desmond Llewelyn played Q in seventeen films, from From Russia with Love in 1963 to The World Is Not Enough in 1999. That is thirty-six years of the franchise, opposite five different Bonds: Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton and Brosnan.
No actor who played 007 comes near it. Roger Moore managed seven films and Sean Connery six across two spells, so on the finished map, Q is the spine of the whole thing, and Bond is the line that keeps changing hands.
There is one break in it. Llewelyn is absent from Live and Let Die in 1973, the only film in his run without him, so his line stops for a single station and starts again at the next one.
Peter Burton is the counterweight to all that. He played the quartermaster in Dr. No, was unavailable when the second film came round, and never returned. One station, and the part he let go ran on for another thirty-six years.
A Gift for James Bond Fans Who Notice What Is Missing
Bernard Lee played M in eleven films, from Dr. No in 1962 through to Moonraker in 1979. He had already started work on For Your Eyes Only when he died in January 1981.
Eon chose not to recast him for that film. The script was rewritten so that M was on leave, and his scenes went to Chief of Staff Bill Tanner instead. For Your Eyes Only is the only Eon Bond film in which the character M does not appear at all.
On the map, there is one clean gap in a line that otherwise runs from 1962 to 2021. It is the sort of thing a serious fan will spot from across a room and then walk over to check, which is exactly the job I want a print like this to do.
Blofeld Vanishes for Forty-Four Years, and the Reason Is Legal
Blofeld's line stops after Diamonds Are Forever in 1971 and does not restart until Spectre in 2015. Forty-four years is the longest absence anywhere on the map, and it has nothing to do with the writing.
Kevin McClory held partial rights to Blofeld and SPECTRE after a 1963 settlement with Ian Fleming, which left Eon unable to use the name freely for decades.
You can watch them work around it in 1981. The bald man with the white cat in the opening of For Your Eyes Only is never named on screen, and the credits list him as "Bald-headed man with white cat". MGM and Eon secured the full rights in 2013, and Blofeld had his name back two films later.
Five Times the Same Face Turns Up Twice
Mapping sixty years of casting throws up a set of returns that are easy to miss when you watch the films years apart. These are the ones I had to draw carefully, because the map has to show whether a line is resuming or a new one is starting.
| Who | First time | Second time | Why it matters on the map |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Hedison | Felix Leiter, Live and Let Die (1973) | Felix Leiter, Licence to Kill (1989) | Same man, same character, sixteen years apart. The first actor ever to return as Leiter. |
| Joe Don Baker | Brad Whitaker, villain, The Living Daylights (1987) | Jack Wade, CIA ally, GoldenEye (1995) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) | Same actor on opposite sides of the story, so two separate lines rather than one. |
| Maud Adams | Andrea Anders, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) | Octopussy, title role, Octopussy (1983) | Two different characters, nine years apart, one of them the film's namesake. |
| Sean Connery | Dr. No (1962) to You Only Live Twice (1967) | Diamonds Are Forever (1971) | Bond's own line breaks for George Lazenby's single film, then picks Connery back up. |
| Martin Campbell | GoldenEye (1995) | Casino Royale (2006) | The only director hired twice to launch a brand new Bond, eleven years apart. |
What Earns a Line, and What Does Not
Not everyone who appears more than once gets a line of their own. My rule here is that a character earns one by recurring across films in the same role within the ongoing story, which is why Q, M, Moneypenny, Felix Leiter, Blofeld and Bill Tanner run as lines while a one-film villain is named at their station instead.
Gareth Mallory is the case that made me think the hardest. He arrives in Skyfall as Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee rather than as M, and only takes the job at the very end, so he runs as his own line instead of being folded into Judi Dench's. Skyfall is the only film where two M-line characters run alongside each other.
Two films did not make it on at all. Casino Royale from 1967 and Never Say Never Again from 1983 are both Bond films, and neither is Eon, so including them would have broken the continuity everything else depends on. They still sit in my research sheet, carrying the gaps and question marks where the official records thin out, which is, in itself, an argument for leaving them off the wall.
The Aston Martin gets the same treatment as a character because, over sixty years, it behaves like one. The DB5 belongs to the sixties, then disappears completely through the Moore and Dalton years while Bond drives a Lotus Esprit and an Aston Martin V8 Vantage Volante instead, before turning up again in GoldenEye in 1995 and staying for most of what follows.
Choosing the Size for the Fan You Are Buying For
A2 (420 x 594mm) suits a hallway, a study or the wall above a desk, and it reads properly from a couple of paces back. A1 (594 x 841mm) is the one to pick if the person receiving it is the sort who will stand close and work through every name.
Prints start at £42, unframed or supplied in a black wood frame, and each is a Giclée on 230gsm textured matte fine art paper, archival and acid-free. For a fiftieth birthday or a Christmas that needs to land properly, the A1 in a black wood frame is the version that goes straight onto the wall.
If you are buying for someone who came to Bond through Daniel Craig, this still works as a present. Their five films are the last five stations, and the pleasure is following the lines they already know back to 1962.
Common Questions About the James Bond Films Map
Which character has the longest line on the map?
Not Bond. Desmond Llewelyn's Q runs through seventeen films between 1963 and 1999, longer than any actor who has played 007.
Why does one film have no M?
Bernard Lee died in January 1981, during the production of For Your Eyes Only. Eon did not recast the part for that film, so it is the only entry in the series without an M.
How many actors are named Bond?
Six, across twenty-five films: Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, each named in the films they appear in.
Where does the map stop?
No Time to Die (2021) is the final station. The map is drawn to the Eon filmography as it currently stands.
Where to Find the Print
The James Bond Films Map Art Print is available in A2 and A1, unframed or in a black wood frame, from £42.
If you are buying for someone whose taste leans toward other long-form films worth mapping, the Blade Runner Plot Lines Map, the Jaws Plot Lines Map, and the Back to the Future Plot Lines Map are natural companions.
The full range sits in the Gifts for Movie Fans collection, and if the person you are buying for is as particular about records as they are about films, the Music Wall Art Prints collection works the same way with discographies.
