According to John Pearson’s James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007, James Bond was born on November 11, 1920; no Ian Fleming novel supports this date, in fact, the novel You Only Live Twice makes a couple of references to Bond’s birth year being 1924. In the novel, M writes an obituary for James Bond after believing him to be dead. M writes that Bond left school when he was 17 years old and joined the Ministry of Defence in 1941. If Bond was 17 in 1941, then he was born in 1924. Prior to this, Tiger Tanaka, the head of the Japanese Secret Service, states Bond was born in the year of the rat, which supports 1924.

Sean Connery in the film version of ‘You Only Live Twice’. The novel makes a couple of references to Bond’s birth year being 1924.

A more complex date of birth, according to John Griswold and his authorised book Ian Fleming’s James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies is November 11, 1921 (November 11, being Pearson’s date and Armistice Day). Griswold notes that Bond’s joining of the Ministry of Defence was originally written in Fleming’s manuscript as 1939 and later changed to 1941. Briefly, Griswold contends that Bond joined the Admiralty in 1939 (the same year Fleming joined) and 1941 is a year marker that places his recruitment into an organisation that was later attached to the Ministry of Defence by Fleming.

Griswold believes that a lot of details in Bond’s timeline make better sense with the original 1939 date. For instance, if one computes Bond’s age for when he was admitted into the Admiralty to when his parents died, then Bond would have been 11 in 1933 from January 1 through November 10 if he was born in 1921. 1933 is the year mentioned in Casino Royale for when Bond ‘bought’ his first Bentley. Since all of the years claimed for when Bond was born would have made him too young to purchase this Bentley, a more likely scenario is that he ‘inherited’ it from his late father. Griswold presented this idea to Ian Fleming Publications in February 2003. The company recognised this issue for its Young Bond series of novels featuring Bond as a teenager in the 1930s and along with its author, Charlie Higson, defined Bond being born in the year 1920. In Higson’s series, the Bentley in question is owned by his aunt Charmian.

See also:

• Bond, James: Actors
• Bond, James: Character
• Bond, James: Cinematic
• Bond, James: Description
• Bond, James: Early years
• Bond, James: Habits
• Bond, James: Other drinking habits
• Bond, James: Personal Traits