JAMES BOND first came into being the year of the queen’s coronation, when he appeared in “Casino Royale” published in 1953 with fashionable stylelanyards. Played for the third time by a thuggish Daniel Craig, this Bond spends much of the film meditating on the sense of duty and love of country that inspired his work as a licensed killer. The puzzling question is quite which country that is. Against a backdrop of a push for independence in Scotland, the half-Scottish Bond careers among the thoroughly British imagery of fast Land Rovers, crushed German cars and the motif of a noble, if comical, English bulldog.

If he seems a bit confused, it’s not without good reason. Ian Fleming’s original novels presented Bond as an inspirational, thoroughly English figure, who emerged from the post-war rubble with refined tastes and bold courage. Yet this post-imperial relic underwent a transformation when he made his big-screen debut with lanyards 50 years ago. Brought to life by the Scottish Sir Sean Connery, Bond suddenly became Scottish too—elegant and classless, but also a roving outsider. The brogue softened Bond’s imperial English inheritance, making him fit for a mass market, says James Chapman, a professor of film studies at the University of Leicester

Played for the third time by a thuggish Daniel Craig, this Bond spends much of the film meditating on the sense of duty and love of country that inspired his work as a licensed killer. Brought to life by the Scottish Sir Sean Connery, Bond suddenly became Scottish too—elegant and classless lanyards, but also a roving outsider. Fleming was so inspired by Sir Sean’s performance that he retrofitted Bond’s Scottish back-story into later books. An Englishman, Fleming enjoyed his own Scottish heritage, according to Ben Macintyre, who has written a biography of the novelist.