James Bond has a new watch — and it’s British
A wartime timepiece with deep ties to the real-life servicemen who inspired Ian Fleming.
- Words by: Harry Jarman
We may not yet know who will be the next James Bond, but we do now know what watch he’ll be wearing. And, rather fittingly, it’s British.
In King Zero, the new Bond novel from bestselling author and Young Bond creator Charlie Higson, 007 has swapped the familiar names we have come to associate with him for something altogether more unexpected: a Vertex Cal. 59 W.W.W., the military watch produced by the British watchmaker during the Second World War.
Higson’s Bond wears a vintage military watch with a history of its own.
It is a choice that somehow feels entirely right. Bond is one of Britain's greatest fictional exports, created by Ian Fleming and shaped by the author's own experiences in British naval intelligence. Vertex, meanwhile, is a British watchmaker whose history is intertwined with the country's military past. Bringing the two together feels less like a product placement and more like something that probably should have happened years ago.
British connections: the Cal. 59 alongside King Zero, Higson’s latest Bond adventure.
In the novel, Bond inherits his Vertex from a great-uncle who served with the 6th Airborne Division.
Higson doesn't exactly give Bond a box-fresh example, either. Early in King Zero, his contemporary, 35-year-old Bond wakes and looks towards the Vertex on his bedside table. It is described as a “slightly battered Cal 59 W.W.W. navigation model with a small crack in the glass.”
Better still is the story Higson gives the watch. Bond inherited it from a great-uncle who served with the 6th Airborne Division and helped secure Pegasus Bridge on D-Day. For Bond, the old Vertex carries memories and provides what Higson describes as a “solid reminder of the real world”. And that provenance isn't entirely fictional.
British heritage, Swiss manufacture: a close look at the 15-jewel Calibre 59 movement.
Vertex was the only British manufacturer among the now-famous “Dirty Dozen” watch companies commissioned to supply the War Office during the Second World War. The company produced an estimated 15,000 examples of its Cal. 59 W.W.W, the initials standing for “Watch, Wristlet, Waterproof”, in preparation for the D-Day landings.
W.W.W. lettering, the broad arrow and issue markings record the watch’s military origins.
It makes Higson's choice particularly clever. His Bond might live in the modern world, but the watch on his wrist connects him directly with the generation from which Fleming's original character emerged. Higson himself has spoken about Bond being a product of the Second World War and of Fleming's fascination with the commandos and agents with whom he worked.
Arabic numerals and a small-seconds dial define the Cal. 59’s functional military design.
There is also a pleasing symmetry to what the Cal. 59 represents for Vertex today. Don Cochrane, the great-grandson of company founder Claude Lyons, revived the marque in 2015 after discovering the company's history through a Cal. 59 given to him by his mother. Vertex's first modern watch, the M100, followed in 2016 and was directly inspired by the wartime original, with just 600 examples produced.
Cochrane apparently had no idea that Higson had selected Vertex for Bond until the publishers contacted him. For a man who grew up with the films before falling in love with Fleming's novels, it must have been quite the telephone call.
Of course, watches and James Bond have always gone hand in hand. But there's something particularly satisfying about Britain's most famous secret agent wearing a watch from a British company that once made timepieces for the very servicemen who helped inspire his creation.
We think it looks rather good on 007's wrist.
