It was a spy plot so far-fetched it would be worthy of James Bond - a transmitter concealed inside an artificial rock by British agents and placed next to a Russian street in order to steal classified data.

Since corrected, but an embarrassing end to an embarrassing week for Ed Miliband: And RIP Bob Holness, the second James Bond. Hat-tip for the screengrab: Mark Wallace

Matthew Dunn, a former field officer with MI6, has lifted the lid on the Secret Intelligence Service to create a fictional spy, say Neil Tweedie and Thomas Harding.

Here is a website that I have come across about the late, very great John Barry, the composer best known for all those superb James Bond tunes, as well as films such as Out of Africa. He was never nominated for an Oscar for any of his 007 tunes. As Mark Steyn has observed, a classic case of snobbery at work....

James Bond spoof courtesy of Chris Muir at Day By Day, of course! addthis_url='>'; addthis_title='>'; addthis_pub='Joshuapundit';please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Described as a "smooth operator" and likened to Pierce Brosnan's portrayal of James Bond Sir John Sawers took up the post of head of MI6, known as "C", in November 2009.

When gender testing first came to the Olympics in 1966, Ukrainian track and field stars Tamara and Irina Press disappeared from the sports scene. Yet the methodology is still disputed. I'd like to suggest a quicker and easier test: identifying movie preferences. Generally speaking, women love films about loss and self-sacrifice (Love Story, Casablanca) whereas men prefer stories of conflict a...

Here, via the Flickr blog, is this charming photo (click on that to see it as big as you want), which combines an ancient agricultural procedure with some much more modern civil engineering, somewhere near Treviso, in north east Italy: Ideal circumstances, all here will surely agree, for a James Bond car chase. Goldeneye, which was shown on ITV2 last night and is on ITV2 again tonight, has a car c...

In a short statement that European diplomats said was intended as a rebuke to Israel, EU foreign ministers said that the assassination was "profoundly disturbing" and that its citizens' rights were violated. Dubai has accused Israel of being behind the killing of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Israel has not denied or confirmed it played any role but its foreign minister, visiti...

James Bond and George Smiley can eat their hearts out. Who really won the Cold War for the democratic world? The French, naturellement. This rather startling claim is made by the publicity for a brooding, brilliant, French spy movie which reaches cinemas next week. Although somewhat far-fetched, the boast that French intelligence "changed the world" does have some basis in fact.