One of the most prestigious shopping thoroughfares runs in a circulatory route between Oxford Street and Piccadilly and is the only street running between the two. Most shoppers erroneously would call it Bond Street. Running through the centre of Mayfair it’s prosaically named after Sir Thomas Bond, the landowner who had it developed in the 1720s.

But hold on, there is no Bond Street featured on the Geographers’ A-Z. Did you ever notice that Bond Street doesn’t actually exist as a road? You’ll find a Bond Street tube station and numerous brands advertising that their shop fronts the street, but the road itself is strictly termed New Bond Street, or Old Bond Street.

Sir Thomas Bond’s family motto was Orbis non sufficit, which translates as The World is not Enough. Where have we heard that recently?

The phrase originated from Sir Thomas Bond, 1st Baronet, a 15th-century landowner, who was used by Fleming as an ancient ancestor of the modern-day Bond. The coat of arms was first revealed in the novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and it was subsequently used in the film adaptation of the novel as well. It’s implied elsewhere in Ian Fleming’s novels that Thomas was an ancestor of the illustrious spy.

Featured image: In High-Change in Bond Street (1796), James Gillray caricatured the lack of courtesy on Bond Street (young men taking up the whole footpath), which was a grand fashionable milieu at the time.