Our hero is on his way to confront danger, feign love and give away a little of his soul. As he takes a long plane journey over Europe into enemy territory, he reflects on what his younger self would make of him now: “Would he recognise himself beneath the surface of this man who was tarnished with years of treachery and ruthlessness and fear?”

You would be forgiven for imagining these as the thoughts of Thomas Shelby, screenwriter Steven Knight’s war hero-turned-Peaky Blinders gang leader. Or the meditations of Viggo Mortensen’s Russian mobster with a heart of gold in Knight’s 2007 film, Eastern Promises.

In fact, this is a passage from Ian Fleming’s fifth James Bond novel, From Russia With Love (1957) – a favourite read of another conflicted, powerful man, John F. Kennedy.

Like Bond, Knight’s protagonists are intelligent, charming, witty, courageous, withdrawn and ruthless – scarred by violence with a seam of cold anger. It is this crosscurrent that makes Knight such a strong pick as the scribe for Bond’s next cinematic incarnation, expected to be released in 2028.

Knight talks about his appointment.

If you’ve not read Fleming before, you might be surprised by Bond’s self-reflection and melancholy here – a strand throughout the books which we saw manifest most significantly on screen during Daniel Craig’s tenure. It’s something I am confident Knight will bring to the screen with crackling intensity, and which I have explored in my own Double O trilogy.

As a lifelong Bond fan, it was a dream come true when the Ian Fleming Estate commissioned me to write a trilogy of novels expanding the world of 007. My mission was to introduce new “Double O” agents.

In Double or Nothing (2022), Bond has gone missing and Moneypenny – now chief of the Double O Section, in the world’s most overdue promotion – doesn’t know if he’s been captured or even killed. In the sequel A Spy Like Me (2024), a rogue Johanna Harwood (003) infiltrates the lion’s den to rescue 007. In the final novel, Hurricane Room, out in May 2026, Bond returns as the Double O agents make their last stand.

The Hurricane Room title comes from the same chapter of From Russia With Love, as Bond’s plane experiences turbulence. As “lighting flung its hands across the windows”, Bond draws on the image of the hurricane room:

In the centre of Bond was a hurricane room, the kind of citadel found in old-fashioned houses in the tropics … To this cell the owner and his family retire if the storm threatens to destroy the house, and they stay there until the danger is past. Bond went to his hurricane room only when the situation was beyond his control, and no other possible action could be taken.

I read From Russia With Love aged 12. It was my first Bond novel and I fell in love with this hero whose inner resources keep him from ever giving up. This is also a quality that Knight unpacks beautifully with the dangerous but soulful Tommy Shelby – probably the only gangster to get a Rambert dance treatment (the series has been adapted into a ballet by the British dance company).

Creating icons

An icon is recognisable by eye. We know Bond by a series of images – the tuxedo, the martini, his Walther PPK pistol – just as we know Shelby by his extreme fade, club collar and peak lapels.

But if a character is as flat as a religious icon, they can’t grow or evolve. That’s not the case with Shelby, who we’ve seen grow with Cillian Murphy over a decade, or Bond, who has evolved with us for seven decades and as many actors. Knight can give us a Bond who is both iconic and human.

Another shared strand between Fleming and Knight is the deliberate use of national myth. Fleming set Bond up as a symbol of Britain. When the villains of From Russia With Love want a scandal that will destroy Britain, they look for a symbol: “Of course, most of their strength lies in myth – in the myth of Scotland Yard, of Sherlock Holmes, of the Secret Service… Myths are built on heroic deeds and heroic people. Have they no such men?” And the reply: “There is a man called Bond.”

With Tommy Shelby, Knight created a recognisable icon.

Fleming then spends the book destroying him. But Bond’s power as a symbol has endured, exemplified in the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony as Daniel Craig, using all the magic of the movies, parachuted in with the Queen.

In Peaky Blinders, Knight takes totemic images from our national consciousness, such as the trenches in the first world war, the Houses of Parliament and Birmingham’s industrial past. But he also gives us the wider picture, from working-class veterans with PTSD to Italian, Jewish and Black families, and women struggling for independence. It’s this refreshing look at our identity that promises Knight’s take on Bond as a symbol will be just as fascinating as Fleming’s.

When Fleming first sat down to write Bond, he told a friend: “I am going to write the spy story to end all spy stories.” He certainly revolutionised the genre, but it wasn’t the end, only the beginning.

It’s been my honour to write in this universe, and I can’t wait to see where Knight takes it next. James Bond Will Return.

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Kim Sherwood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.