It has been intriguing to watch the culture war surrounding the James Bond franchise. Slowly mobilising for a while now, the lead-up to the latest instalment, Spectre, the twenty-fourth Bond film, and the second directed by Sam Mendes, has seen it kick up a notch. Is the character a misogynist? Is he too violent? Maybe the next Bond should be black – a debate fuelled by internet outrage over a comment by Anthony Horowitz, author of the latest Bond novel, that Idris Elba, star of the BBC series Luther and a possible future contender for the role, was 'a bit too rough, a bit too street' to play the spy.

Of course, Bond has always been appropriated and contested. The character was a product of the fiercely anti-communist, upper-class politics of English writer, Ian Fleming. President John F. Kennedy cited Fleming as his favourite author, and long-serving US intelligence director Allen Dulles encouraged Fleming to portray the Central Intelligence Agency in a favourable light. The Agency even attempted to copy some of Bond's more memorable gadgets. For their part, the Soviets banned the Bond books and films, branded 007 a sadist and a Nazi, and came up with their own fictional spies.