"He (Bond) is really a mixture of all that the defenders and the attackers say he is. When I spoke about Bond with (Bond creator, Ian) Fleming, he said that when the character was conceived, Bond was a very simple, straightforward, blunt instrument of the police force, a functionary who would carry out his job rather doggedly. But he also had a lot of idiosyncrasies that were considered snobbish–such as a taste for special wines, et cetera. But if you take Bond in the situations that he is constantly involved with, you see that it is a very hard, high, unusual league that he plays in. Therefore he is quite right in having all his senses satisfied–be it sex, wine, food or clothes–because the job, and he with it, may terminate at any minute. But the virtues that (Kingsley) Amis mentions–loyalty, honesty–are there, too. Bond doesn’t chase married women, for instance. Judged on that level, he comes out rather well."