In a message dated 24/04/02 18:26:16 GMT Daylight Time,
Erick.Anderson@Nike.com writes:
<< Orphaned at 11. Public school education. Kicked out
of college. Served his
country during WWII. No friends. No family. Kills for a
living -- in hot
blood and cold -- and wonders if it's all bullshit.
Follows no ones rules.
Variously described as cruel, ruthless, cold, taciturn.
PLUS:
>>
I am sure you all know this, but, Public School in Britain
means Private, fee-paying, elite school, to say someone had
is "Public School", is probably akin to saying someone is
"Ivy League". In Bond's case it means he had money for the
fees, probably "old" family money. College also almost
certainly means Oxbridge - outside Scotland there wasn't
really much higher education untill the 20th Century, those
institutions would be described as universities. To say
"Thrown out of college" at that time would almost certainly
mean that he was thrown out of one of the colleges of the two
great universities, Oxford and Cambridge (the great
recruiting grounds for the secret services), again something
that would guarantee that he had family money and cachet to a
certain degree. Not that I want to get involved in a complex
discussion of the British class system. His US equivalent
would probably have been to an Ivy League university, screwed
up and then been recruited via family connections to the CIA
- the only thing that springs to mind is Harlot's Ghost by
Norman Mailer - Bond is at the very least upper class and
socialy well connected. Whether that renders his
hardboildness moot I leave to you. I don't even think of him
in that way - an upper class playboy and spy, entertaining
and culturally important for a while. Cheers. Colin
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