- Written by Ian Fleming [1,2]; edited by William Plomer [3,4]
- First (typewritten) draft completed by the end of February 1952 [5]
- Hard-cover novel of 218 pages published April 13, 1953 [6] by Jonathan Cape [7]
- First U.S. printing published March 23, 1954 [8] by The Macmillan Company [9]
- February 27, 2023 Statement on the Changes to the New Editions [10]
THE STORY
This was the very first James Bond story. The action was set approximately two years before the final date of publication {Goldfinger, page 19}.
“The main plot of Casino Royale deals with the attempt of a British agent to out gamble a Communist agent [‘Le Chiffre’] whose sexual predilections have cost him a lot of money and who must play for high stakes to carry out his program,” according to a summary for The Times Literary Supplement dated April 17, 1953 [11].
The game concerned baccarat and the especial charm of Mr Fleming’s book is the high poetry with which he invests the green baize lagoons of the casino tables. The setting in a French resort somewhere near Le Touquet is given great local atmosphere and while the plot itself has a shade too many improbabilities the Secret Service details are convincing ….
Behind that, time itself was a factor felt through the exposition — at some points, arguably a “character” of sorts. The opening words of the opening chapter of Casino Royale, for example, memorably read, “The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning” [emphasis added] {page 9}.
KEEPING TIME
Ian Fleming made scant few reference to watches of any kind in Casino Royale.
Most were simply matter-of-fact, if not arguably value-added to moving things along through the plot. As the torture of Agent 007 advanced, Le Chiffre “stopped [and] wiped some sweat from his face with a circular motion of his disengaged hand. Then he looked at his watch and seemed to make up his mind” [emphasis added], on pages 146-147.
Later, in the closing pages of this thriller, watches speak to character. A man with “a black patch over one eye,” a “middle-aged man, with dark brown hair brushed straight back and … particularly large, white teeth,” apparently Swiss, was twice further described as “a traveler in watches” {pages 205 and 207}. The early 1950s would have been too early to take this as any sort of connection with important sport-specific wristwatches to come [12]. And broad consideration of “Swiss watches” as “luxury” pieces positioning was still decades off in the future [13,14].
That period, did, however, mark a time of acute competition among “Swiss high-quality watch companies [which had become] strong after WWII, particularly on the US market [15].
[Companies] needed to differentiate their image and strengthen their brand identity leading to the construction of a new kind of global brand that did not rely only on technical characteristics.
This would have portended a flexibly that allowed the man with a black patch over one eye to have been considered a salesman, and implied a free and far-ranging travel routine. Yet, he could have been of the sort as 007 appeared to be via Universal Export (sic), and this casting would nicely support the view of a world in which such covers were necessary and evidently valuable.
JAMES BOND'S WATCH
Casino Royale was where the earliest James Bond watch was referenced.
Brand names abounded, and, indeed, stood-in for larger sets of histories and traits (as brands are want to do). Early reference to a .38 pistol “with the sawn barrel” was named as a Colt Police Positive {pages 16-17}. The chosen automobile was a 4½-litre Bentley with “the supercharger by Amherst Villiers” [16], bought almost-new in 1933 {page 44}.
But nothing like that for this wristwatch. In fact, it was mentioned only once, in Chapter XI, which was perhaps ironically titled, on page 94, “Moment of Truth” [17].
It was ten minutes past one by Bond’s watch when, at the high table, the whole pattern of play suddenly altered.
Virtually no description at all. Strap or bracelet? What sort of metal and finishing went into this piece? Nothing about performance needs or environment either. The watch never had to be read in the dark, for example. Agent 007 did no swimming, and there was no indication that he wore his wristwatch while bathing: Hence, no call for water resistance.
There was, however, Live and Let Die, written exactly one year later — or, from the perspective of the characters within, having set forth events that occurred the January {Live and Let Die, page 7} immediately following the end-of-summer denouement of Casino Royale {Live and Let Die, page 16}.
In the 1959 Goldfinger {Id, page 19}, a time frame for Casino Royale was retroactively set at 1951. That date or prior, then, is where any search to identify this watch would need to begin, properly.
DISPOSITION
What, then, ultimately came of this wristwatch?
Chapter XVII was rather expansive in describing James Bond as having been stripped naked, his wrists subsequently bound to the arms of a cane chair with “some flex.” A few chapters later, readers were told that “Nothing survived from his original wardrobe,” on page 179. Given details of “the thin man,” who worked for Le Chiffre, having not just taken the Beretta from Double-0 Seven, but also gone on to empty his pockets” {page 130}, it would seem unlikely that the wristwatch would not have been a part of this. All the less likely that wrists would have been bound to chair arms with flex that would have had to have been worked around a kept-in-place timekeeper strap or bracelet.
And yet— when Bond was wedged into the backseat of the Hugo Drax Mercedes, his hands were bound “with a long piece of flex {Moonraker, page 207}. And his watch was unquestionably retained throughout and after {Moonraker, eg, pages 229 and 235}.
Is it possible, then, that the Casino Royale watch survived? that researchers need not dismiss the notion of retention out-of-hand under some strict definition of “wardrobe” here?
Of course.
— Dell Deaton
Updated: April 18, 2024
March 18, 2006
REFERENCES (off-site)
- “Ian Fleming”
Ian Fleming Publications (accessed April 6, 2024) - Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond
1995 / Andrew Lycett / Turner Publishing: Atlanta - “William Plomer: South African Writer”
April 2, 2024 / Britannica (accessed April 6, 2024) - James Bond: The Man and His World
2005 / Henry Chancellor / John Murray: London (pages 5, 45, and 105-107) - “Collecting Ian Fleming”
November 1998 / Lee Biondi / Firsts: The Book Collectors’ Magazine / Firsts – The Book Collector’s Magazine: Tucson, Arizona (pages 29 and 33) - “The James Bond Books of Ian Fleming: A Descriptive Bibliography”
Ibid / Lee Biondi and James M Pickard (page 40) - Jonathan Cape: British Publisher
February 20, 2024 / Britannica (accessed April 6, 2024) - “The James Bond Books of Ian Fleming”
- “About Us”
MacMillan Publishers (accessed April 18, 2024) - “A Statement on the Changes to the New Editions of Ian Fleming’s Bond Stories”
February 27, 2023 / The Fleming Family / Ian Fleming Publications (accessed April 18, 2024) - “Spies and Charlatans – Ian Fleming: Casino Royale, Cape, 10s, 6d”
April 17, 1953 / The Times Literary Supplement, “Fiction” / London: The Times Publishing Company, Limited (page 249) - “The Most Famous Vintage Watches of the 1950s”
Vintage Watch (accessed January 18, 2024) - Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World
1983 / David S Landes / The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts (page 347) - “The transformation of global luxury brands: The case of the Swiss watch company Longines, 1880–2010”
March 2017 / Pierre-Yves Donzé / Business History, “4. The shift of the Swiss watch industry to luxury” (via Research Gate, accessed January 18, 2024) - “The transformation of global luxury brands”
“3. The example of Longines” - “The Bentley Story: The ‘Blower’ Bentley”
Bentley Motors (accessed January 17, 2024) - “‘Casino Royale’ (novel) wristwatch”
March 22, 2008 / Dell Deaton / James Bond Watches Blog (via Internet Archive, accessed January 26, 2024)