James Bond At 50

James Bond celebrated its 50th anniversary on the Big Screen yesterday, half a century after the release of the seminal "Dr No". Based on the 1958 Ian Fleming novel of the same name - Dr No starred Sean Connery and was directed by Terence Young. Since then, it has been followed by 22 Bond Films, whilst a 23rd in the series, entitled Skyfall, is due to be released later this month. Sean Connery was the first to play the role of the sleuth, and was followed by David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and more latterly Daniel Craig. Whilst the films have gone from one success to the other, with its guns, cars and babes being deeply embedded in popular culture, Flemings literary works, which spawned the franchise, were much less well received. The fourteen novels he penned from 1953 were, according to his niece Kate Grimmond "despised". Speaking to Sky News she said of the novels:

"They were rather despised and rather controversial, the literary set didn't like them at all but people bought them. They were rather ahead of their time. He wrote in very short sentences and this was mocked at the time but it's been emulated ever since. "I think he was quite often hurt by it (the success of the films) but he had a great urge to write the early books and he also longed to get it onto the big screen."

To mark the anniversary of the Bond films, yesterday was recognised as "Global James Bond Day". Since the release of Dr No, the series' have grossed just over $5 billion in box office returns alone, making it one of the highest-grossing series of films ever.