Featured Posts
Licence To Queer covers queer aspects of Bond books, video games and more. Search here for your favourite titles and characters or find content related to particular queer identities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, etc).
James Bond’s Comic Capers
James Bond comics predate the films and are still going strong today. This new series of podcasts starts with a run through of Bond’s history with ‘sequential art’ before segueing into a review of the first arc of the modern Dynamite series: VARGR by Warren Ellis and Jason Marsters.
Casino Royale: the cocktail
We’ll be starting our upcoming #TimeToDonate charity watchalong/drinkalong of Casino Royale around 9am. But if we start with the signature drink of that story - Vesper Martinis - we'll be wiped out before lunchtime! This twist on a classic Champagne cocktail (made with English sparkling wine) will work for breakfast time - or any time.
Our Months in Bond
Antony and David debate the merits of the various Bond comic books published by Dynamite Entertainment, including the new run by Garth Ennis. As usual for the 'Our Month' podcast, they look back on the many ways Bond has intersected with their daily lives and look forward to the major events happening in the coming months. They also create a new cocktail: the Casino Royale.
Live and Let’s Bow Tie
This year's International Jim Fanning Friday took place on Friday 16th February. In 24 hours, the Licence to Queer community raised hundreds of pounds for PAPYRUS - Prevention of Young Suicide.
Shadow of SPECTRE
“MI6 needs your help. It is critical you follow 007's trail. Gather intelligence, navigate the city and solve clues in a bid to outsmart Spectre…” A treasure-hunt style experience across London guided by your phone. We give our verdict here.
Bond Girls are for Everyone: the results (so far)
The enduring appeal of Bond girls goes well beyond their status as sexual objects bringing voyeuristic pleasures to a presumed heterosexual, cisgender male audience. Or does it? In the first research of its kind, we’re investigating the reasons why Bond girls appeal to so many different demographics. Are these reasons the same for gay and straight viewers? Are people with different sexual orientations and/or gender identities drawn to different Bond girls? Here are the initial findings…
Where to begin with the Bond continuation books
With a drought on the Bond film front, why is everyone not quenching their thirst with the Bond books? Perhaps it's because, with more than 50 continuation stories published in the sixty years since Fleming's death, it can be hard knowing where to start. Setting each other the mission of proving the case that there's a Bond book for every mood and every taste, Licence to Queer's David Lowbridge-Ellis and Mark Edlitz, author of James Bond After Fleming, have each curated a list of seven 007 continuation novels.
The (Stephen) Bourne Identity
Stephen Bourne saw Goldfinger in the cinema in 1964 as an ‘impressionable little gay boy’. Author of one of the first (if not the first) books to see Bond films queerly, Stephen reveals how his thinking about the ‘offensive’ characters in Bond has became more nuanced since he wrote the book - and urges everyone to keep a more open mind.
Build-A-Bond
What would a version of Casino Royale made in 1958 with an entirely queer cast have looked like? That was the challenge I set myself when I was invited on the Build-A-Bond podcast.
Our Year in Bond - Review of 2023
Antony and David review a year of book launches, film screenings, events, trips to Bond locations at home and abroad, charity fundraisers, awards and - most thrillingly of all - making new Bond friends. The episode ends with them talking about their Christmas trip to Venice and their exclusive first reading of the new Bond novel (due out in April 2024) A Spy Like Me.
“We’re just looking”: gazing at Bond through the ages
Daniel Craig emerging from the ocean was not as revolutionary as we think. In fact, it was more of an evolution of something that has always been there in the Bond series: an invitation, whatever our gender or sexual orientation, to look - lingeringly, even longingly - at James Bond himself.
What if we reframed the whole of the Bond franchise as the story of a man just trying to get a good night’s rest? Lifelong insomniac David Lowbridge-Ellis gets under the covers with 007 to explore when he sleeps, if he’s really the early riser he claims to be and why we should be concerned about his dreams.