He's known as the archetypal Englishman, but 007 also has a Caledonian streak.
The 23rd Bond movie, Skyfall, was partly filmed in Scotland and, ahead of its release, Russell Leadbetter maps the spy's Celtic connections
GLENCOE Bond himself was, lest we forget, partly Scottish. In the Fleming novels, his father, Andrew, was from Glencoe and worked as a representative with the Vickers armaments company. (Bond was orphaned aged 11, when his father and Swiss mother died in a mountain-climbing accident.) In Skyfall, the eagerly awaited 23rd Bond picture, Bond returns to his Scottish roots. In a chase sequence filmed in the Highlands on the A82 near the striking peak of Buachaille Etive Mor, the secret agent's iconic Aston Martin DB5 manages to get upstaged by the atmospheric scenery.
BELLSHILL Bellshill-born Sheena Easton sang the title song in For Your Eyes Only (1981).
RUTHERGLEN Robbie Coltrane, from Rutherglen, featured in Goldeneye and The World Is Not Enough as the gangster Valentin Zukovsky. He gets some great lines, too.
EILEAN DONAN CASTLE Picturesque Eilean Donan Castle had a cameo in The World Is Not Enough (1999), when it became "MI6 headquarters, Scotland" after the organisation's London base was damaged in an explosion. The exterior bristles with antennae and microwave dishes. In Q's office, a piper turns his pipes into a gun, then a flamethrower. "I suppose we all have to pay the piper sometime, right, Q?" asks Bond (Pierce Brosnan). "Oh pipe down, 007," says a predictably irritable Q.
GARE LOCH In 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond (Roger Moore) learns that the worrying loss of British submarines is no accident but is in fact down to the dastardly plans of Karl Stromberg (Curd Jurgens). The scene, which was shot at HM Naval Base Clyde, on the eastern shore of Gare Loch in Argyll and Bute, is also one of the very few in which we see Bond in full navy uniform.
GLASGOW
In The World Is Not Enough, Glasgow-born Robert Carlyle played a great Bond villain – Renard, a terrorist who can feel no pain thanks to a bullet lodged in his brain.
THE HIGHLANDS In his solitary 007 outing, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, George Lazenby wears a full Highland costume while posing as Sir Hilary Bray, baronet, an eminent genealogist.
DORNOCH
In Goldfinger, Connery's Bond tangled with Gert Frobe, an accomplished golfer. Connery had to learn the game so that he looked as if he could defeat Frobe. As he puts it in Being A Scot: "During the filming of Goldfinger I learned the essential challenge of links golf in Royal Dornoch in the northeast Highlands." As a result he became hooked on golf for life.
ABERFELDY Alan Cumming, from Aberfeldy, walked away with several scenes in Goldeneye as Boris Grishenko, a Russian computer programmer. His fate? He is frozen alive.
EDINBURGH Sean Connery was born in Edinburgh and while his 2008 book, Being A Scot, makes scant reference to James Bond, the actor will forever be associated in the public mind with 007. A young Connery impressed the producers of the first movie, Dr No, with his masculinity and his self-assurance. He walked into the role and fashioned Bond in his own image. He later starred in From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again. Despite strong showings by Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, Connery is still seen by many as the best-ever Bond. US group Garbage, fronted by Edinburgh-born singer Shirley Manson, performed the title song in The World Is Not Enough.
CARLISLE George Macdonald Fraser, creator of the Flashman series (and at one time a deputy editor of our sister paper, The Herald), co-wrote Octopussy (1983). He was born just over the Border in Carlisle, the son of a Scottish doctor and a nursing sister.
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