2 replies to this topic

[perdogg]

1. Mistake by Ian Fleming? According to the information on the ticket Tuesday, June 20th occured in 1961. However, in the very first page Bond references a scandal, quote " All over the world there was quiet. All over there was quiet....even the newspapers yawned vacuously - in the latter scratching at domestic scandals for readership, for bad news." Could this be in reference to the Profumo affair that occured in 1963?

2. Does Bond not work for the MI6 which is a part of Foreign Ministry? Apparently Fleming doesn't think so. In talking with Mr Snowmann " And If I told I am from the Ministry of Defence?"

3. Do you think Bond would have slept with Maria Freudenstein and will we ever get her in a movie?

[Jim]

1. Mistake by Ian Fleming? According to the information on the ticket Tuesday, June 20th occured in 1961. However, in the very first page Bond references a scandal, quote " All over the world there was quiet. All over there was quiet....even the newspapers yawned vacuously - in the latter scratching at domestic scandals for readership, for bad news." Could this be in reference to the Profumo affair that occured in 1963?

2. Does Bond not work for the MI6 which is a part of Foreign Ministry? Apparently Fleming doesn't think so. In talking with Mr Snowmann " And If I told I am from the Ministry of Defence?"

3. Do you think Bond would have slept with Maria Freudenstein and will we ever get her in a movie?

1. I expect so; it was written in summer 1963. Oddly enough, Profumo and Property of a Lady, The are next to each other in the index to the Andrew Lycett biography of Fleming. OK, not so odd given the way the alphabet works, but a fun moment given the question. As for a mistake, Fleming never really let the facts get in the way of even a mediocre story.

2. Interesting question (albeit they could - suppose have told him they were from any department really). I always assumed military intelligence was associated with the War Office / MoD, but I suspect I'm wrong.

3. Doubtful, given how Fleming describes her. As for appearing in a film, they'll probably use the name at some point.

[Dustin]

Re 2

John Griswold in his Annotations and Chronologies takes a closer look at this question:

Colin Gubbins, who became SOE's Executive Director in 1943, fought hard for the SOEto have a post World War II future with a new objective of counteracting the impending thread of Communism. Researching further, an interesting fact was found concerning the Special Operations Executive (SOE). At the conclusion of World War II, there was speculation that the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Defence might assume responsibility for the SOE. At another point, "the SOE perception of things was not that SOE should be absorbed by SIS, but rather, a new global secret service would be createdwith two branches, Secret Intelligence (SI) and Special Operations (SO), on an even footing much as the OSS's SO and SI branches had been during the war, with C's joint headship of SIS and GCHQ as a precedent." Possibly, Fleming was aware of these discussions or speculated that this potential reorganisation might occur in the post-war period.
...
The actual post-war placement of the SIS and SOE as either separate adjuncts or as a combined adjunct to the Ministry of Defence never occurred. The final decision of SOE's fate was decided by the Attlee administration in January 1946, and it was to disband the SOE. What remained was absorbed into MI6. Gubbins continued in his post at the now defunct SOE for a few additional months to oversee its dismantling.


Fleming appears to have created an alternate history and outcome for both the SOE and SIS. Instead of having the SOE fade away while keeping the SIS under tha auspieces of the Foreign Office Ministry, he chose to have both the SIS (MI6) and SOE transformed into the British Secret Service under the Ministry of Defence in 1946.

Edited by Dustin, 09 April 2011 - 09:07 AM.