Overview

A deep-dive into the unique connections between the two titans of the British cultural psyche--the Beatles and the Bond films--and what they tell us about class, sexuality, and our aspirations over sixty dramatic years. The Beatles are the biggest band in the history of pop music. James Bond is the single most successful movie character of all time. They are also twins. Dr No, the first Bond film, and Love Me Do, the first Beatles record, were both released on the same day: Friday 5 October 1962. Most countries can only dream of a cultural export becoming a worldwide phenomenon on this scale. For Britain to produce two iconic successes on this level, on the same windy October afternoon, is unprecedented. Bond and the Beatles present us with opposing values, visions of the British culture, and ideas about sexual identity. Love and Let Die is the story of a clash between working class liberation and establishment control, and how it exploded on the global stage. It explains why James Bond hated the Beatles, why Paul McCartney wanted to be Bond, and why it was Ringo who won the heart of a Bond Girl in the end. Told over a period of sixty dramatic years, this is an account of how two outsized cultural phenomena continue to define American aspirations, fantasies, and our ideas about ourselves. Looking at these two touchstones in this new context will forever change how you see the Beatles, the James Bond films, and six decades of cross-Atlantic popular culture.

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9781639363308

Table of Contents

Reviews

Higgs builds his case around evocative profiles of the Beatles and their fandom and of Bond's evolving persona and his real-life alter-egos. The result is a thoughtful romp through pop culture that's full of fresh ideas and sharp connections. -- Publisher's Weekly Higgs's writing is consistently clear and confident...rightly and persuasively emphasizing the primacy and power of the imagination in Blake's work. It was fun to witness Higgs's cogs turning, to hear his thoughts ricocheting against the walls of his internal archive of affinities, allusions and absorptions. -- The New York Times Book Review In Love and Let Die, John Higgs cleverly uses these two coeval phenomena to recount the cultural history of post-imperial Britain. In Mr. Higgs's telling, the two British icons also embody contrasting attitudes to life and politics. He teases out this conceit with a critic's attention to detail. -- - The Economist Poignant and entertaining. Higgs is a lively writer and has assembled many intriguing nuggets from six decades of British popular culture. -- - The Guardian The first Bond movie and the first Beatle single, Dr No and Love Me Do , were both issued on October 5, 1962, and from this remarkable coincidence, John Higgs weaves a daring, dazzlingly entertaining pop cultural critique. It's smart and analytical, yes, but it's also enormously good fun. There's something provocative or revelatory on every page. -- - The Mail on Sunday The two post-war British phenomena, one representing Death, the other Love, are contrasted in many other ingenious ways. -- - The Spectator Praise for William Blake vs the World:

A glittering stream of revelatory light. Conventional expectations are ripped to shreds. Higgs's prose has a diamond-hard clarity. He knows how to make us relate. Before long you will find you are examining yourself as much as you are examining Blake. Fascinating. -- The Times (London) A journey into the iconic poet's sensuous, idiosyncratic mythology. Besides offering perceptive close analyses of Blake's work (including the art that illustrates this volume), Higgs locates him within the turbulent political and religious contexts of his times. An appreciative, well-informed portrait. -- Kirkus Reviews Absolutely wonderful! This book managed to make Blake's mind and mythology understandable to me at last--for that I am truly grateful. --Terry Gilliam Blake is a complete mystery to me, so I'm loving this book. You start to think: 'Oh my God, that artist has been somewhere in my consciousness for the whole of my life, but I know absolutely nothing about them.' There's a whole world just on my doorstep that I didn't realize existed. -- Simon Russell Beale, The Observer (London) Higgs displays Blake's brilliance, noting the way his thought dovetailed with psychology, neuroscience, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. This rewarding biography suggests that Blake would have appreciated Walt Whitman's long, lapping lines of poetry, agreed with Ralph Waldo Emerson's ideas concerning self-reliance and individualism, and championed free verse. -- The Washington Examiner Higgs handles the complexities of Blake, particularly the later Blake, with adroit confidence, and in doing so he offers a crisp, ambitious and thoroughly contemporary introduction. -- The Times Literary Supplement Higgs's is a systematizing imagination, able to harness disparate elements and find the patterns that animate them. -- The Financial Times Higgs's writing is consistently clear and confident...rightly and persuasively emphasizing the primacy and power of the imagination in Blake's work. It was fun to witness Higgs's cogs turning, to hear his thoughts ricocheting against the walls of his internal archive of affinities, allusions and absorptions. -- The New York Times Book Review Laudable. We cannot understand Blake without understanding what he meant by imagination or taking seriously his visions. Higgs does this admirably, by exploring what we know about the mind while maintaining, for our secular times, the sacred quality of Blake's attention. -- The Spectator Praise for William Blake vs the World: For a thought-provoking and very accessible introduction to Blake, his work, and the complex mytho-poetic cosmology that he created, I can't recommend John Higgs' recent William Blake Vs the World highly enough. One of the best Blake explainer books I've read. -- BoingBoing

A journey into the iconic poet's sensuous, idiosyncratic mythology. Besides offering perceptive close analyses of Blake's work (including the art that illustrates this volume), Higgs locates him within the turbulent political and religious contexts of his times. An appreciative, well-informed portrait. -- Kirkus Reviews Higgs displays Blake's brilliance, noting the way his thought dovetailed with psychology, neuroscience, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. This rewarding biography suggests that Blake would have appreciated Walt Whitman's long, lapping lines of poetry, agreed with Ralph Waldo Emerson's ideas concerning self-reliance and individualism, and championed free verse. -- The Washington Examiner Higgs's is a systematizing imagination, able to harness disparate elements and find the patterns that animate them. -- The Financial Times Higgs's writing is consistently clear and confident...rightly and persuasively emphasizing the primacy and power of the imagination in Blake's work. It was fun to witness Higgs's cogs turning, to hear his thoughts ricocheting against the walls of his internal archive of affinities, allusions and absorptions. -- The New York Times Book Review In Love and Let Die, John Higgs cleverly uses these two coeval phenomena to recount the cultural history of post-imperial Britain. In Mr. Higgs's telling, the two British icons also embody contrasting attitudes to life and politics. He teases out this conceit with a critic's attention to detail. -- - The Economist Poignant and entertaining. Higgs is a lively writer and has assembled many intriguing nuggets from six decades of British popular culture. -- - The Guardian The first Bond movie and the first Beatle single, Dr No and Love Me Do , were both issued on October 5, 1962, and from this remarkable coincidence, John Higgs weaves a daring, dazzlingly entertaining pop cultural critique. It's smart and analytical, yes, but it's also enormously good fun. There's something provocative or revelatory on every page. -- - The Mail on Sunday The two post-war British phenomena, one representing Death, the other Love, are contrasted in many other ingenious ways. -- - The Spectator Praise for William Blake vs the World: For a thought-provoking and very accessible introduction to Blake, his work, and the complex mytho-poetic cosmology that he created, I can't recommend John Higgs' recent William Blake Vs the World highly enough. One of the best Blake explainer books I've read. -- BoingBoing

Author Information

John Higgs is the author of William Blake vs the World (his first book to be published in America) as well as other books published in Britain. John lives in England.

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