Editing From Russia, with Love (novel) (section)

===Characters===
To make Bond a more rounded character, Fleming put further aspects of his personality into his creation. The journalist and writer Matthew Parker observes that Bond's "physical and mental ennui" is a reflection of Fleming's poor health and low spirits when he wrote the book.{{sfn|Parker|2014|p=208}}{{sfn|Panek|1981|p=316}} The early depictions of Bond were based on earlier literary characters. In ''[[New Statesman]]'', the journalist William Cook writes of the early Bond:

<blockquote>James Bond is the culmination of an important but much-maligned tradition in English literature. As a boy, Fleming devoured the [[Bulldog Drummond]] tales of Lieutenant Colonel [[H. C. McNeile|Herman Cyril McNeile]] (aka "Sapper") and the [[Richard Hannay]] stories of [[John Buchan]]. His genius was to repackage these antiquated adventures to fit the fashion of postwar Britain&nbsp;... In Bond, he created a Bulldog Drummond for the jet age.<ref name="Cook (2004)" /></blockquote>

Following on from the character development of Bond in his previous four novels, Fleming adds further background to Bond's private life, largely around his home life and personal habits, with Bond's introduction to the story seeing him at breakfast with his housekeeper, May.{{sfn|Benson|1988|p=106}} The novelist [[Raymond Benson]]—who later wrote a series of Bond novels—sees aspects of self-doubt entering Bond's mind with the "soft" life he has been leading when he is introduced in the book. Benson identifies Bond's fear when the flight to Istanbul encounters severe turbulence from a storm, and notes Bond's apparent nervousness when he first meets Romanova; he seems concerned and guilty about his mission.{{sfn|Benson|1988|pp=106–107}} The other characters in the book are also well developed, according to Benson. He considers that the head of the Turkish office, Darko Kerim Bey, is "one of Fleming's more colourful characters"; Kerim is a similar type of dependable and appealing ally that Fleming also created with Quarrel (in ''Live and Let Die'') and Enrico Colombo (in the short story "[[Risico]]").{{sfn|Benson|1988|pp=107–108}} Parker considers that Kerim is "an antidote" to Bond's lethargy,{{sfn|Parker|2014|p=209}} while the essayist [[Umberto Eco]] sees the character as having some of the moral qualities of the villains in the series, but that those qualities are used in support of Bond.{{sfn|Eco|2009|p=39}}<ref name="Synnott: Beauty" />

''From Russia, with Love'' is one of the few stories by Fleming in which the Soviets are the main enemy,{{sfn|Panek|1981|p=208}} although Eco considers Bond's opponents "so monstrous, so improbably evil that it seems impossible to take them seriously".{{sfn|Eco|2009|p=46}} Fleming introduced what was a new development for him, a female opponent for Bond, although much like the former adversaries in the series, Rosa Klebb is described as being physically repulsive, with poor hygiene and gross tastes.{{sfn|Benson|1988|p=108}}{{sfn|Black|2005|pp=28–29}} Eco—and Anthony Synnott, in his examination of aesthetics in the Bond novels—consider that despite Klebb being female, the character is more akin to a "sexually neuter" individual.{{sfn|Eco|2009|p=39}} Red Grant was Fleming's first "psychotic opponent" for Bond, according to Benson.{{sfn|Benson|1988|p=108}} [[Charlie Higson]]—who later wrote the ''[[Young Bond]]'' series—finds Grant to be "a very modern villain: the relentless, remorseless psycho with the cold dead eyes of a 'drowned man'."{{sfn|Fleming|Higson|2006|p=vii}}