How to judge a book by its cover

Published on Wednesday 25 June 2008 20:45

IT IS THE first ever depiction of super-spy James Bond, but it doesn't look much like the Bond we know today.

The gambler in the beige tux seems far too weedy to be a secret agent – in fact, the grey-haired croupier in the foreground could probably beat him in an arm-wrestle – and to make matters worse, the beautiful woman by his side appears almost catatonic with boredom. In 1955, though, when Pan Books commissioned the image from an unknown designer for use on the cover of Ian Fleming's thriller, Casino Royale, this was evidently what secret service operatives were supposed to look like.

Thankfully, times have changed, and the covers of Fleming's bestselling books have changed with them – as demonstrated by Bond Bound, a new exhibition in Edinburgh that charts the role artists and designers have played in developing the Bond image from the 1950s to the present day.

Staged to mark the 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth, the exhibition includes film posters, letters and previously unseen archive material. However, the book covers give the greatest insight into how attitudes to Bond – and to sex and violence – have shifted over the past half-century.

To illustrate these changes, we took one book – Fleming's first Bond adventure, Casino Royale – and asked Bond Bound curator Selina Skipwith to analyse what the different covers tell us about their respective eras.

1 BRYLCREEM BOND, 1955

THIS was the first time James Bond had ever been depicted on a book cover. The dustjacket of the first edition of Casino Royale, designed by Ian Fleming himself, simply featured some flowery text and a recurring heart motif. "Although he doesn't look like much of an action hero to us, you have to remember when that cover came out in 1955 none of the Bond films had been made yet, so it probably looked quite racy," says Skipwith. "To have gambling depicted on a book cover was in itself quite daring."

2 THE BOND GIRL TAKES CENTRE STAGE, 1962

CINEMA-GOERS will be familiar with the eye-watering chair-based torture scene illustrated on the cover of this edition from the recent Casino Royale film starring Daniel Craig, although as Skipwith points out, the image is "quite discreet" to avoid offending the delicate sensibilities of early 1960s Britain. "It's around about this time that the Bond girls start to become more prominent," says Skipwith. "In the 1955 edition the woman on the cover is almost completely covered up, but here she's the centre of attention."

3 THE PSYCHEDELIC MOVIE TIE-IN, 1969

"THERE was a spoof Casino Royale film made in the late 1960s which had Woody Allen, Peter Sellers and David Niven in it," says Skipwith, "and this image was used in some of the film posters. Obviously it's much more hippyish than the ones that went before, and once you get to the late 1960s the covers start getting more glamorous too."

4THE BRIC-A-BRAC STILL LIFE, 1972 "WITH the rise of feminism, the glamorous ladies start to disappear," says Skipwith. "Suddenly it's deemed not quite so appropriate to have sexy ladies on all the covers, so after the Swinging 60s you get a sudden … not a clampdown, exactly, but you certainly get people rejecting the more overtly sexual, hippy images and returning to what they maybe think of as a bit more grown-up."

5 RETRO-CHIC PENGUIN CLASSICS, 2004

AT THE beginning of the new millennium, retro-chic was all the rage and classic photographic images were very much in vogue. "I think Penguin wanted these covers to look classic so they fitted in with the feel of the Penguin Classics series," says Skipwith. "Also, at the start of the decade vintage photos had become very desirable so people walking into bookshops were likely to be attracted by them.

The whole point of having different book covers is to get people to buy the books, so I suppose the covers in this series were designed to make people go, 'Ooh, there's a classic image, I'd like to have that lying around the house.'"

6 CENTENARY EDITION DESIGNED BY MICHAEL GILLETTE, 2008

MORE retro chic, but this time a nod to the psychedelic Bond Girls of the 1960s. "It's a rather nerdy detail," says Skipwith, "but what's unusual about these books is the way the Penguin logo has been altered to incorporate it into a '007' – that's the first time that Penguin have ever altered their logo for a book cover."

Designer Michael Gillette says he was given a very specific brief for this series: "a mix of typography and naked ladies … but to show them all from the back, so the images could be sexy without being explicitly nude." Penguin are happy for sex to sell, then, but only if it's tastefully done.

&#149 Bond Bound: Ian Fleming and the Art of Cover Design is at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, from 5 July until 14 September. Tel: [phone]