A brief excerpt of Ian Fleming discussing 007’s propensity for violence, in a 1964 Playboy Interview:

“Playboy: You’ve been criticized for being ‘obsessed’ with violence in your books. Do you feel the charge is justified?

Fleming: The simple fact is that, like all fictional heroes who find a tremendous popular acceptance, Bond must reflect his own time. We live in a violent era, perhaps the most violent man has known. In our last War, 30 million people were killed. Of these, some six million were simply slaughtered, and most brutally. I hear it said that I invent fiendish cruelties and tortures to which Bond is subjected. But no one who knows, as I know, the things that were done to captured secret agents in the last War says this. No one says it who knows what went on in Algeria.”

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“I wanted a really flat, quiet name”: