Timothy Dalton fantasy plots and humour. A fan of the literary character, often seen re-reading and referring to the novels on set, Dalton determined to approach the role and play truer to the original character described by Fleming. His 007, therefore, came across as a reluctant agent who did not always enjoy the assignments he was given, something seen on screen before, albeit obliquely, only in George Lazenby's "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". In "The Living Daylights," for example, Bond tells a critical colleague, Saunders, "Stuff my orders! ... Tell M what you want. If he fires me, I'll thank him for
The James Bond Dossier In the 1968 essay 'A New James Bond', anthologised in "What Became of Jane Austen? And Other Questions" (1970), Kingsley Amis revisits the literary character, and explains why he accepted the commission of writing "Colonel Sun" (1968), discusses the challenge of impersonating the writer Ian Fleming, and explores the stylistic and world-view differences among the spy novels of Ian Fleming, John le Carré, and Len Deighton. Moreover, under the pseudonym 'Lt.-Col. William "Bill" Tanner' — M.'s CoS and 007's best friend in SIS — Amis wrote his second Bond book, "The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007"