2 replies to this topic

[glidrose]

http://www.npr.org/2...ving-james-bond

 

"About 30 years after I first read the book, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, I found myself, then deputy head of MI5, in the headquarters of the KGB in Moscow, making the first formal contact between the intelligence services of Britain and the USSR. I recalled Fleming's description of the office on the second floor of the building in Moscow from which the Soviet counterintelligence agencies, SMERSH (an acronym of the Russian "Death to Spies"), was directed. To my slightly fevered imagination, it was all there — the long conference table, the desk with four telephones and the row of men with inscrutable faces on the other side of the table."

[Dustin]

Great find, thanks for sharing. Though the same setting - conference table, phones, inscrutable faces - could probably be found in Fort Meade as well as in Cupertino, Beijing or the Vatican. Not in Mountain View though...   

[Revelator]

According to Rimington:

 

It is perhaps not surprising that in 1956, when Fleming wrote the book, he could imagine only two roles for women in the intelligence services: torturer or seductress. But it is a testament to his abiding influence that even in the '90s, his was still the popular image. The idea that women like me might be leading investigations, running sources or even running entire intelligence services was unimaginable.

 

She seems to have missed the part about Rosa Klebb being the head of an entire department of Smersh--hardly a mere torturer! It's Grant who reports to her. Rimington has never had anything interesting to say about the Bond books. (I wonder if her own are any good.)