We use the word love interchangeably for Pret A Manger sandwiches and the man we marry. And love is what I felt for the James Bond films. It was unconditional.

By the age of 10 I knew the films by heart, and could tell them apart with my eyes closed, literally.

THE NAME IS BOND. JAMES BOND. OR IS IT? 007 IN THE 2000S BY POLINA SIMAKOVA AKA AGRIPPINA DOMANSKI 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 42

I have been brought up on James Bond movies as much as on Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories, Leonard Cohen’s songs, and my mother’s blackcurrant jam. The James Bond movies were a special point of connection with my father, and all that was masculine.

I would like to say that my father was an avid cinema fan who went on to introduce me to Hitchcock and Federico Fellini, but he was not. He did watch a lot of movies, in part because he was lonely and in part to relax after work. At that stage my parents were no longer a couple. He didn’t care much what he watched, as far as I can remember, but James Bond in its abundance of action, plot diversity, and humour matched his mood most of the times. I think he would agree with Christoph Waltz that ‘Bond movies [are] practi…