Love and Let Die: James Bond, The Beatles, and the British Psyche

by John Higgs

Overview

A deep-dive into the unique connections between the two titans of the British cultural psyche—the Beatles and the Bond films—and what they tell us about class, sexuality, and our aspirations over sixty dramatic years.

The Beatles are the biggest band in the history of pop music. James Bond is the single most successful movie character of all time. They are also twins. Dr No, the first Bond film, and Love Me Do, the first Beatles record, were both released on the same day: Friday 5 October 1962. Most countries can only dream of a cultural export becoming a worldwide phenomenon on this scale. For Britain to produce two iconic successes on this level, on the same windy October afternoon, is unprecedented.

Bond and the Beatles present us with opposing values, visions of the British culture, and ideas about sexual identity. Love and Let Die is the story of a clash between working class liberation and establishment control, and how it exploded on the global stage. It explains why James Bond hated the Beatles, why Paul McCartney wanted to be Bond, and why it was Ringo who won the heart of a Bond Girl in the end.

Told over a period of sixty dramatic years, this is an account of how two outsized cultural phenomena continue to define American aspirations, fantasies, and our ideas about ourselves. Looking at these two touchstones in this new context will forever change how you see the Beatles, the James Bond films, and six decades of cross-Atlantic popular culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639363308
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	02/07/2023
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

John Higgs is the author of William Blake vs the World (his first book to be published in America) as well as other books published in Britain. John lives in England.

Editorial Reviews

11/07/2022

The James Bond films and the Beatles “were arguing for futures that were entirely contradictory,” according to this scintillating study from journalist Higgs (William Blake vs. the World). The two cultural phenomena are, Higgs contends, the clashing Freudian embodiments of Thanatos (the death drive) and Eros (love): Bond, the emotionally numb guardian of the British Empire, is an arrogant, cold-blooded operative who uses violence as a means to protect the status quo, and most of the women he sleeps with die. The Beatles, working-class upstarts who scoffed at the establishment, were the dream lovers of countless teenage girls, and their songs wielded “enormous emotional power.” Higgs builds his case around evocative profiles of the Beatles and their fandom—“When girls scream at boybands, the sound is at a higher pitch, simultaneously constant yet out of control”—and of Bond’s evolving persona and his real-life alter-egos, including his creator, Ian Fleming—whom Higgs writes had a “romanticized imperial imagination” and allowed his racism to seep into the Bond books—and Bond’s first screen avatar, Scottish actor Sean Connery. The result is a thoughtful romp through pop culture that’s full of fresh ideas and sharp connections. Alison Lewis, Frances Goldin Literary. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"With Love and Let Die, Higgs makes a powerful case for the enduring significance of 007 and the Fab Four."

Salon

"Fascinating."

|Los Angeles Times

"Poignant and entertaining. Higgs is a lively writer and has assembled many intriguing nuggets from six decades of British popular culture."

The Guardian

"The two post-war British phenomena, one representing Death, the other Love, are contrasted in many other ingenious ways."

The Spectator

"The first Bond movie and the first Beatle single, Dr No and "Love Me Do", were both issued on October 5, 1962, and from this remarkable coincidence, John Higgs weaves a daring, dazzlingly entertaining pop cultural critique. It’s smart and analytical, yes, but it’s also enormously good fun. There’s something provocative or revelatory on every page."

The Mail on Sunday

"An often brilliant meander through the British male psyche, the place where Bond the well-bred assassin blends with the self-made moptops from Liverpool. All things must pass, but Bond cannot die and the Beatles’ music still plays. Both franchises will pump out the product for eternity. This book is an excellent and oddly illuminating way to pass the time between installments."

The Wall Street Journal

The author’s examination of these two cultural icons, and the way they captured the imagination of Britain and the world, is imaginative and illuminating. A very interesting blend of pop culture and history.

Booklist 

"In Love and Let Die, John Higgs cleverly uses these two coeval phenomena to recount the cultural history of post-imperial Britain. In Mr. Higgs’s telling, the two British icons also embody contrasting attitudes to life and politics. He teases out this conceit with a critic’s attention to detail."

The Economist

Higgs’s writing is consistently clear and confident...rightly and persuasively emphasizing the primacy and power of the imagination in Blake’s work. It was fun to witness Higgs’s cogs turning, to hear his thoughts ricocheting against the walls of his internal archive of affinities, allusions and absorptions.

The New York Times Book Review

Praise for William Blake vs the World:

From the Publisher

"Poignant and entertaining. Higgs is a lively writer and has assembled many intriguing nuggets from six decades of British popular culture."

– The Guardian

"The two post-war British phenomena, one representing Death, the other Love, are contrasted in many other ingenious ways."

– The Spectator

"In Love and Let Die, John Higgs cleverly uses these two coeval phenomena to recount the cultural history of post-imperial Britain. In Mr. Higgs’s telling, the two British icons also embody contrasting attitudes to life and politics. He teases out this conceit with a critic’s attention to detail."

– The Economist

"The first Bond movie and the first Beatle single, Dr No and "Love Me Do", were both issued on October 5, 1962, and from this remarkable coincidence, John Higgs weaves a daring, dazzlingly entertaining pop cultural critique. It’s smart and analytical, yes, but it’s also enormously good fun. There’s something provocative or revelatory on every page."

– The Mail on Sunday

"Higgs displays Blake’s brilliance, noting the way his thought dovetailed with psychology, neuroscience, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. This rewarding biography suggests that Blake would have appreciated Walt Whitman’s long, lapping lines of poetry, agreed with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas concerning self-reliance and individualism, and championed free verse.

The Washington Examiner

Higgs’s is a systematizing imagination, able to harness disparate elements and find the patterns that animate them.

The Financial Times

"For a thought-provoking and very accessible introduction to Blake, his work, and the complex mytho-poetic cosmology that he created, I can't recommend John Higgs' recent William Blake Vs the World highly enough. One of the best Blake explainer books I've read."

BoingBoing

Absolutely wonderful! This book managed to make Blake's mind and mythology understandable to me at last—for that I am truly grateful."

Terry Gilliam

A glittering stream of revelatory light. Conventional expectations are ripped to shreds. Higgs's prose has a diamond-hard clarity. He knows how to make us relate. Before long you will find you are examining yourself as much as you are examining Blake. Fascinating."

The Times (London)

Higgs handles the complexities of Blake, particularly the later Blake, with adroit confidence, and in doing so he offers a crisp, ambitious and thoroughly contemporary introduction.

The Times Literary Supplement

Blake is a complete mystery to me, so I'm loving this book. You start to think: ‘Oh my God, that artist has been somewhere in my consciousness for the whole of my life, but I know absolutely nothing about them.’ There's a whole world just on my doorstep that I didn't realize existed.

The Observer (London) Simon Russell Beale