Having just been reading Moonraker and in light of product placement coming to UK television.
What would Ian Fleming do if he, were alive today and, published James Bond novels online?
In Sebastian Faulks’ recent series “Faulks on Fiction”, he listed James Bond amongst his examples in the ‘The Snob’ episode; Faulks suggested that Bond is a snob because of his exacting standards in terms of what he consumes: driving a Bentley, drinking Dom Perignon, Vichy water, smoking Morland cigarettes with the Turkish tobacco denoted by the 3 gold bands.
An excerpt from Moonraker (1955) with product linking where possible :
“On Wednesday morning Bond woke early in dead man’s bed.
He had slept little. Drax had said nothing on their way
back to the house and had bidden him a curt good-night at
the foot of the stairs. Bond had walked along the carpeted
corridor to where light shone from an open door and had
found his things neatly laid out in a comfortable bedroom.
The room was furnished in the same expensive taste as the
ground floor and there were biscuits and a bottle of Vichy
(not a Vichy bottle of tap-water. Bond established) beside
the Heal bed.
There were no signs of the previous occupant except a
leather case containing binoculars on the dressing-table and
a metal filing cabinet which was locked. Bond knew about
filing cabinets. He tilted it against the wall, reached under-
neath, and found the bottom end of the bar-lock which
protrudes downwards when the top section has been locked.
Upwards pressure released the drawers one by one and he
softly lowered the edge of the cabinet back on to the floor
with the unkind reflection that Major Tallon would not have
survived very long in the Secret Service.”
Chapter XIII Dead Reckoning
p91 PAN books X234 (Paperback) (13th Printing 1963)