Although Donovan "Red" Grant did wear a Girard-Perregaux watch in the novel "From Russia with Love," it never became a James Bond wristwatch
Some myths die hard.
They go down kicking and screaming, in fact.
For perhaps as many as fifty years, maybe more — too many watch writers insisted that Girard-Perregaux was a James Bond watch.
But it never was.
And I busted that myth here on this James Bond Watches Blog two years ago this month. See “The Girard-Perregaux wristwatch that James Bond did not wear,” February 14, 2010.
Confusion stemmed from reference to villain Red Grant’s “bulky gold wristwatch on a well-used brown crocodile strap,” described by Ian Fleming on the first chapter of From Russia with Love (Jonathan Cape, 1957).
“It was a Girard-Perregaux model designed for people who like gadgets, and it had a sweep second-hand and two little windows in the face to tell the day of the month, and the month, and the phase of the moon.”
Fast forward into climax and denouement of the novel: Bond’s own watch destroyed by Grant, Bond kills Grant, Bond takes watch of Grant’s dead wrist and wears it as his own from there on out.
Trouble with such simplistic wristwatches of James Bond stories is that they miss what happened in between continue reading…
