No Mr Bond, we want you to teach!

The world's most famous spy gets schooled in the forthcoming 007 spin-off for children by award-winning crime writer Mike Craven

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JAMES BOND is facing his greatest challenge courtesy of award-winning crime writer M W Craven — going back to school to help train the next generation of secret agents.

The author says his new children’s series will bring 007 into the 21st century by using the super-spy’s young proteges to challenge his outdated sexism.

But this is not James Bond going woke, Craven insists; rather a clever reimagining of the world’s most famous secret agent in a spin-off designed to get youngsters reading.

And the Newcastle-born author believes exploring Ian Fleming’s iconic character through the eyes of children is “more interesting” than simply following in the footsteps of other established writers who have penned adult Bond books.

Best-known for his Cumbria-based Washington Poe-Tilly Bradshaw series, the seventh of which, The Final Vow, has just been published, Mike has been commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate to write a new series with the overarching title of James Bond and the Secret Agent Academy.

Each book will see “quite a grumpy Bond” teaching 12and 13-year-olds to become the next generation of agents on His Majesty’s Service.

The author, 57, says: “The Fleming estate has got a definite way of doing things.

“So the only character who has been announced is James Bond himself.

“There will be a lot of other characters, some very familiar, others straight out of my imagination.”

He adds: “Their initial plan was to have Bond as an older character. I wanted to have Bond’s licence to kill revoked so he’s only a couple of years older than he is in Fleming’s books, sort of late thirties.

“He doesn’t want to be there, so he’s quite a grumpy Bond. He’s a bit like Poe in that sense and I find grumpy men quite easy to write. But I’ll stay as true as I can to the original Bond.”