Auric Goldfinger was the villainous treasurer of SMERSH the Soviet counter intelligence agency. He was an evil looking character played brilliantly by the German Gert Frobe and voiced by Michael Collins.

He was born in Latvia and after years spent in the Bahamas became a naturalised citizen of the UK commonwealth. He amassed a great fortune in gold bullion and smuggled it around the world as required using his jewellery and metallurgy businesses as a front for his nefarious activities.

In the Bond film Goldfinger he plans an attack on Fort Knox where the U.S. gold bullion stock resides. In the book he planned to steal the gold but this plan was obviously flawed, in reality it would have taken days just to move that amount of gold and so when it came to the film production they altered the story.

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It is common to find discussion and argument about who the best James Bond was. Which actor perfectly captured the blend of charisma, refinement and brutal psychopathic violence? For me the answer is obviously Sean Connery but who was the worst actor to take on the role? There are plenty of candidates; strictly speaking no fewer than eight actors have performed in films as James Bond. We can discount Connery because he was easily the best so let’s examine the rest.

The first actor to play Bond on film was actually an American named Barry Nelson. He took on the role of Jimmy Bond, as he called him, in a television movie in 1954. It was an adaptation of Casino Royale which sounds totally appalling save for the fact that Peter Lorre played the villain. Nelson admitted he’d never read the book and, although I’ve never seen it, the idea of a yank Bond is more than enough to put me off.

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Francisco Scaramanga was the triple nippled villain also known as The Man with the Golden Gun. He was supposed to be the ultimate assassin, a skilled sharpshooter capable of picking off his victims with a single shot. He lived on a remote island paradise and worked for the highest bidder. Played by Christopher Lee he was quite a memorable Bond villain.

The film was actually a pretty embarrassing Bond outing with Roger Moore at the helm, the offensively named Nick Nack as a kind of miniature Odd Job and one of the weakest storylines to feature in a Bond adventure. The book was the last that Ian Fleming ever wrote and it was published posthumously. There were rumours that he actually died before completing it and the manuscript was finished by other writers however this is disputed.

Scaramanga had a colourful past as a Catalan circus performer who performed trick shots for the crowds. He was also charged with looking after one of the circus elephants.

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Oddjob has always been one of my favourite Bond baddies. He appears in the Bond film Goldfinger played by the Japanese American wrestler Harold Sakata. He was inhumanly strong, ever vigilant, an expert in unarmed combat and he possessed a secret weapon. His bowler hat concealed a razor sharp disk and he could throw it to slice victims apart. He also appeared as the first in a long line of memorable henchmen to big Bond villains.

Oddjob was the mute henchman of the evil Auric Goldfinger. He was a superior class of henchman acting as chauffeur and golf caddy to his master. In the book we learn he is also a karate and judo expert and has formed hard calluses on his hands the better to beat people with. He was always ready to kill on Goldfinger’s whim and he used his hat during the film to despatch the unfortunate Tilly Masterston, throwing with deadly accuracy and breaking her neck.

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With 22 films featuring the character, James Bond is undeniably a permanent fixture in pop culture. He has been played by seven different actors who took direction from fourteen different directors. It's easy to understand how the character could have changed so much over the years.

But there's more to Bond's transformation than just the crews who brought him to the screen. In the end, the cinema versions of James Bond reflect the changing values and perceptions of the culture that bears them. Throughout the 60's Sean Connery's Bond was slick and not just a little laconic. It was like watching Frank Sinatra battling spies with a tiny gun. Of course, that's exactly what the martini-drinking swinger crowds of the 1960's wanted. He was an antidote to the restrictive suburbanism that had taken over Western (and especially American) society. Since then, Bond has seen many permutations that build on that initial style.

But something strange happened in the 1990's. Up until 1989, there had been a new Bond film practically every year and a half since Dr. No.

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Quantum of Solace is the latest Bond film to be released. It hit cinemas in late 2008 and starred Daniel Craig as the psychotic secret agent James Bond struggling to come to terms with the loss of his lover in his last outing, Casino Royale. It is gritty and violent as Bond chases down villain Dominic Greene across various locations from Italy to Bolivia.

Daniel Craig is a new kind of Bond and part of the success of the license is down to this ability to regenerate and bring a new angle to the character. There is a new sense of reality in the last two films, perhaps less so in Quantum of Solace than in Casino Royale but Bond is now completely without interventions by Q with his corny gadgets. The character names are almost believable, although the MI6 agent who tries to control Bond in Bolivia and inevitably gets seduced is called Strawberry Fields.

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James Bond has become synonymous with gadgetry over the years and with each new entry in his growing film library there are new additions to the spy gadget range. The funny thing is the original Bond books as written by Fleming made little mention of gadgets. There were occasional hidden weapons but nothing as complex as the devices Q Branch would end up constructing for the films.

The idea of a secret agent with a clever device or gadget to help him in his covert work is an attractive one. From miniature cameras to garrotte watches and underwater cars the Bond films developed a reputation for coming up with new gadgets and audiences began to anticipate these clever devices with each new film. Sadly the film makers seemed to get carried away with the idea and what had started out as practical and realistic sounding aids to subterfuge became increasingly unlikely and ridiculous inventions.

The whole thing began with the simple briefcase Bond was given in his second celluloid outing, From Russia With Love. It had concealed weaponry and ammunition, some hidden emergency cash and a bottle of talcum powder which was actually tear gas.

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If, like me, you always imagined Ian Fleming as a suave, sophisticated man in the mould of his famous invention, James Bond, then prepare for a rude awakening. Although undeniably creative and talented as a writer Fleming was also privileged, enjoyed rich food and alcohol in liberal quantities and always used a cigarette holder. He was born into money and received a terrific education and all the advantages his standing might bestow. His family owned a merchant bank and their contacts extended all over the world where they seemed to derive all of their vast income from Anglo imperialist interests.

Fleming was educated at Eton and then the military academy of Sandhurst. He went on to a brief stint in the army where he was recruited by Rear Admiral John Godfrey and served as a personal assistant. He worked on naval intelligence and generated a number of bizarre plans while in service there, including the idea of using Aleister Crowley to trick Rudolf Hess into believing there was an anti-Churchill movement in Britain.

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From Russia With Love was released in 1963 just a year after Dr. No and with Connery reprising his role as Bond and Terence Young back in the director’s chair it turned out to be even more special than the debut. Bond is after a Russian decoding machine and he sets off to Turkey to try and claim it for his secret service bosses but SPECTRE are out for revenge after the death of Dr. No and they plan to kill Bond once and for all, of course it is easier said than done!

The memorable opening to this film sees Bond sneaking around a maze of hedges outside a stately home being stalked by the Aryan assassin Red Grant (Robert Shaw) who garrottes him. We gasp in horror but then the floodlights come on and the corpse is revealed to be a man wearing a very realistic Bond mask.

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Dr. No was the first film to feature our favourite secret agent from MI6. It was released in 1962 and while the critical response was somewhat mixed the general public loved it and it was a box office success.

Our first glimpse of Bond is a memorable scene and we join him in a crowded casino as he chats to a beautiful brunette. His face is not revealed but we can see he is well dressed and he addresses the woman after a win by saying “I admire your courage, Miss…” she introduces herself as Sylvia Trench and responds “I admire your luck, Mister…” the camera cuts back to reveal Connery in a tuxedo, confident and handsome with a cigarette casually hanging from his mouth. “Bond.

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