About Licence to Queer’s creator and editor

David Lowbridge-Ellis MBE has made it his mission to uncover why James Bond appeals so much to LGBTQIA+ people and educate the world about what he has suspected all along: the world of 007 is spectacularly queer.

David launched Licence to Queer in 2020. The site now has thousands of unique visitors each month and articles written by more than a dozen queer Bond fans.

David's work on Bond has been featured in Esquire, GQ, The Independent, The AV Club and many more.

Licence to Queer had been in David's head for decades but was only unleashed on the world when the start of the COVID pandemic meant he couldn't procrastinate any longer. Since April 2020, Licence to Queer has grown into a website, social media platform, podcast and YouTube channel. While the website features queer takes on all Bond media, the core is David's 'queer re-views' of each Bond film, an in-depth reappraisal through queer lenses, uncovering new insights into these much loved adventures.

David always intended Licence to Queer to reach the widest possible audience, not just people who identify as LGBTQIA+. To that end, Licence to Queer straddles the line between being educational and fun. There are Harvard references alongside double entendres requiring the most Roger Moore-ish of raised eyebrows.

When not immersed in Bond, David is a school leader and his education-focused articles have been published by all of the leading education magazines (Schools Week, Teacher Toolkit, Teach Secondary) as well as the platforms of the biggest teaching unions, examination boards, various universities and the Department for Education. For his services to education at a national level, he was invited to Her Majesty the Queen's Garden Party at Buckingham Palace in 2019. This was in recognition of his tireless efforts to address teacher workload and wellbeing issues and create queer inclusive curricula so that children gain the knowledge they really need to thrive as citizens of modern Britain. In June 2023, he was made MBE in the first of King Charles’s Birthday Honours.

He has contributed chapters to several books, including Routledge's The Everyday Lives of Gay Men, an autoethnographic exploration of lived experience. His was the 5000 word opening chapter, entitled '17 Times A Day I Think About Being Gay', setting the authentic tone for the remainder of the book.

David has also had published several short stories and poems.

He has a First Class Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Birmingham and a MSc in Educational Leadership and Management.

He lives in the West Midlands with his husband and three cats, each named after their favourite cultural and historical icons, making their full monikers impractically lengthy.

“Come out 007, your time is up”

A message from David

For years, I had wanted to read articles analysing the James Bond phenomenon from a queer point of view. Pieces that were academic and thought-provoking but fun to read.

When Covid struck, in Spring 2020, I was still waiting.

As an educator working in schools, I was very busy during lockdowns. Even while working 80+ hour weeks I found it difficult to relax when I wasn’t working. I needed something to absorb my concentration, taking my mind off work and what was happening in the world.

I started writing about James Bond and found it difficult to stop. Licence to Queer was born: a mix of academia and personal reflection which doesn’t take itself too seriously.

There have been countless books, articles and even academic theses written about 007, but few have attempted to unpick why Bond has queer appeal. Fewer still have gone out of their way to recognise the contributions that queer people, both behind and in front of the camera, have made to the world’s longest running film franchise.

My intention is to bring the queer aspects of 007 into the light. A coming out if you will.

Let’s just get this out the way now: Ian Fleming and the producers of the James Bond films have never intended 007 to be taken as a gay man. But why does a character who is so overtly ‘hetero’ appeal so much to me, a gay man, and other queer people?

Representation is important. Many of us grew up feeling like we were alone to a greater or lesser extent, a feeling that didn’t go away as we moved into different social spheres and struggled to identify people ‘like us’. For as long as I can remember, I have always loved Bond films. In my teens, I ploughed my way through the original novels. Explicitly queer content was thin on the ground in both - and often blatantly homophobic. But queer people take representation wherever we can find it. Who cares if Diamonds Are Forever’s Mr Wint and Mr Kidd are psychopaths - they’re gay! When I first saw Sean Connery’s 1971 outing, I remember telling myself (but not sharing this insight with my family sitting around me): other gay people DO exist!

To my mind however, queerness in Bond goes beyond a few overt characters and situations. There is something intrinsically ‘queer’ about the whole premise of Bond and the world he inhabits. For nearly four decades, queer theorists have argued that the queerest texts (films, books, plays, etc) are often those that don’t feature any gay or lesbian characters. A queer moment is anything that upsets heteronormativity - that is, the idea that the only normal or natural relationships are those between one man and one woman. Queer theory also calls us to call into question the extent to which gender is a binary. As you will read across these articles, the Bond series challenges binaries of all kinds.

I’ve known since I was around six or seven years old that my life wasn’t heading in a heteronormative direction. Coincidentally (or not?), this was also the time I saw my first Bond film. I don’t, of course, mean James Bond made me queer. If anything, he made me a feel (a bit) better about being queer because he gave me an alternative aim for. As complicated and controversial a figure as he sometimes is, he showed me another way to be myself.

This website is something I’ve had in my head for decades, and a lot of what I have written so far contains thoughts that have been on my mind for a long time. Even so, this is still very much a work in progress. Although I have tried to put myself in others’ shoes in my writing, my perspective is essentially that of a white British cisgender gay man so there will be - inevitably - omissions.

That’s why Licence to Queer is, above all, a community: it contains the viewpoints of Bond fans who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, asexual and aromantic people. And we’re always after new points of view, whether you use any of these labels or not.

Where contributors are happy for me to share their queer status I have done so. Visiblity is important. But it’s also important to respect the fact that coming out is not the same for everyone and being able to be safely yourself is a luxury not all have.

Not every contributor is queer. There are some great contributions from LGBTQ+ allies too. Fostering mutual understanding is one of the goals of this site - it’s the only way we make society a better place for everyone.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch via email, Twitter/X, Facebook or Instagram.

David Lowbridge-Ellis
West Midlands, UK

Academic language and references

More than anything, I want these pieces to be fun to read. Therefore, where I have used analytical tools from academic fields (primarily film and literature but also linguistics, semiotics, sociology and psychology) I have tried to make the meaning clear without being patronising or without giving long-winded explanations for those already familiar with these them. I have tried to avoid using obscure terminology where there are alternatives in every day language. Where this has been unavoidable I have put any specialist terms in a Glossary accessible at the top of each page.

Rather than break the flow with tonnes of references, I have included my sources as hyperlinks throughout each article. The only exception is comments from the production team of each film which have been taken from the DVD/Blu Ray commentaries unless otherwise noted. Sometimes I highlight particularly useful sources at the ends of articles.

A brief note on ‘queer’ language and stereotypes

‘Gay man’ is an identity, one which I identify as. In the 1990s, epidemiologists coined the umbrella term ‘men who have sex with men’ to include any man (including those labelling themselves as ‘heterosexual’) who has sex with men. Many of today’s medical and social researchers prefer the term because it does not exclude sizeable demographics, including the concerning number of ‘heterosexual’ men who use condoms with their wives to prevent conception but still don’t see the need to wear them when they have sex with men.

Sometimes I may use the term ‘gay’ because it’s in the vernacular. And although ‘men who have sex with men’ is more accurate in certain contexts, it hardly trips off the tongue.

Some lesbians prefer the term ‘gay woman’. Unless a lesbian contributor identifies themself as ‘gay’, I will use ‘lesbian’ for consistency.

I have also used - in a tongue-in-cheek fashion - some stereotypical words, phrases and ideas which some may find offensive but which are nevertheless part of ‘queer culture’. Some have been used to offend gay people and, although they have been reclaimed in recent times, they still possess the power to wound when wielded inappropriately.

They also have the power to bring queer people (and their allies) together.

To paraphrase the queer poet Walt Whitman, ‘queer culture’ is large and contains multitudes. It’s different things to different people and queer people are as multitudinous as any other community. Some are Timothy Dalton-serious and others are as wry as Roger Moore’s right eyebrow. Most of the time, we’re a mix of both. My intention is not to offend but merely to indulge my passion for Bond and explore my queerness in a quasi-academic way.

And if all that sounds super serious, there will also be jokes.

The language and content is ‘family friendly’ in the same way that James Bond films are.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my husband Antony (Twitter: @remylebeau) for the ‘tech support’ and embracing my 007 obsession.

Herring & Harris provided the fabulous artwork for each ‘queer re-view’ up to and including Skyfall.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged this project since its inception in April 2020. In particular, thanks to John Dabell (@John_Dabell on twitter) who has encouraged my writing in the field of education and gave me the push I needed to stop procrastinating and start writing about other things.