Licence to Thrill

Over two decades after its initial publication in 1999, Licence to Thrill remains the go-to academic and popular study of the James Bond film franchise. In this third edition, Chapman updates his excellent cultural history and nuanced analyses of the Bond films to include the final Daniel Craig film, No Time to Die . A completely new introduction offers insight into the explosion of Bond criticism in the twenty-first century.

Over two decades after its initial publication in 1999, Licence to Thrill remains the go-to academic and popular study of the James Bond film franchise. In this third edition, Chapman updates his excellent cultural history and nuanced analyses of the Bond films to include the final Daniel Craig film, No Time to Die . A completely new introduction offers insight into the explosion of Bond criticism in the twenty-first century.

In this new edition of Licence to Thrill , James Chapman exhibits his keen critical sensibility and capacious knowledge of film history to address the corpus of Bond films, including the most recent of these starring Daniel Craig as Ian Fleming’s most famous creation. The result is an indispensable study that every scholar and fan alike will want (and need) to read.

James Chapman is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester, UK. He is the editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, and his most recent books include Dr No: The First James Bond Film (2022), Contemporary British Television Drama (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) and Hitchcock and the Spy Film (I.B. Tauris, 2018).