Signed, Sealed, and Shaken, Not Stirred

There’s a genuine art to newspaper headline-writing. Most examples are rather pedestrian, intended to attract only with their shock or immediacy (“U.S. ATTACKED,” The New York Times, September 12, 2001), but every once in a while you stumble across a banner that draws you in simply because of its wit.

“James Bond on Her Majesty’s Postal Service,” trumpeted a recent heading in Britain’s Telegraph. For crime-fiction fans, that could have been foreshortened to “On Her Majesty’s Postal Service,” and we would’ve understood the reference, but I suppose that others needed to have the joke explained. The story beneath was no laughing matter, though. It began:

James Bond has kept Britain safe from the world’s villains for years. But now the spy has a new role--helping deliver the nation’s letters.

Royal Mail unveiled a set of stamps yesterday that feature the covers of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels. They will go on sale from Jan. 8 to mark the 100th anniversary of the author’s birth in 1908.

See the full set of these postal imprints for yourself and read more about the Royal Mail’s project here.

I only wish that the Bond stamps were being marketed in the States, as well. Unfortunately, the U.S. government doesn’t seem to have the same literary appreciation as the UK, or even Nicaragua, which three decades ago issued a series of stamps celebrating the 50th anniversary of Interpol and featuring the faces of 12 famous fictional sleuths. If I’m not mistaken, the last time an American stamp even vaguely referring to crime fiction was a full decade ago, when the sad-eyed mug of Humphrey Bogart (who’d played both Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade in the movies) was featured on a postal imprint celebrating the “Legends of Hollywood.”

You can read more about “Detective Fiction on Stamps” at this site.

(Hat tip to Bill Crider.)