Hi jeme -- I'm getting the first part of this info from Raymond Benson's The James Bond Bedside Companion (Dodd, Mead and Co., NY), 1988, so I haven't gone back and checked through all the books on this question. But Benson quotes a passage from On Her Majesty's Secret Service which, he says, "reveals the only clue to Bond's childhood interests". That passage, in part, reads
"It reminded him almost too vividly of childhood -- of the velvet feel of the hot powder sand, and the painful grit of wet sand between young toes when the time came for him to put his shoes and socks on, of the precious little pile of sea-shells and interesting wrack on the sill of his bedroom window ('No, we'll have to leave that behind, darling. It'll dirty your trunk!), of the small crabs scuttling away from the nervous fingers groping beneath the seaweed in the dancing waves -- always in those days, it seemed, lit with sunshine -- and then the infuriating, inevitable 'time to come out'."
Then, the rest of the info that Fleming gives on Bond's background is in the obituary in You Only Live Twice. That tells us that Bond's father was Andrew Bond of Glencoe, Scotland, "a foreign representative of the Vickers armaments firm" and his mother was Monique Delacroix, from the Canton de Vaud in Switzerland. Bond's early childhood was spent on the European continent where they travelled due to his father's work (and from this early education he "inherited a first-class command of French and German"). When he was eleven, his parents were killed in a climbing accident. He then lived with his aunt, "Miss Charmian Bond ... at the quaintly named hamlet of Pett Bottom near Canterbury in Kent". At age twelve or thereabouts he was sent to Eton, but he was expelled "as a result ... of some alleged trouble with one of the boys' maids". He then went to Fettes ("his father's old school"). The obit goes on, "By the time he left, at the early age of seventeen, he had twice fought for the school as a light-weight and had, in addition, founded the first serious judo class at an English public school. By now it was 1941, and by claiming an age of nineteen and with the help of an old Vickers colleague of his father, he entered a branch of what was subsequently to become the Ministry of Defence."
I hope that's of help! There's more info in that obituary in You Only Live Twice, but that's most of the material on his childhood and early background.
in Octopussy we learn who his ski instructor was before the war
in Casino Royale we learn a bit about his first two kills that earned him his 00 license, and neither of them take place in a lavatory
I think thats also where we learn that he acquired his vintage Bentley in 1934 and kept it stored in a garage through the war
in From A View To A Kill we learn how, when, and where he lost his virginity
theres various details scattered round about his exploits in WWII and in the Navy, but because he is 38 years old both in 1952 and 1962, these details contradict
by 1962 he had to lie about his age to enlist
John Pearsons Authorised Biography of 007 fleshes all this out and adds in all kinds of other information, some of which is worthy and some of which is not
according to Pearson the whole virginity/Bentley/first kill business was quite a bit more complicated than the hints we get from Fleming
jeme
Posts: 3MI6 Agent
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"It reminded him almost too vividly of childhood -- of the velvet feel of the hot powder sand, and the painful grit of wet sand between young toes when the time came for him to put his shoes and socks on, of the precious little pile of sea-shells and interesting wrack on the sill of his bedroom window ('No, we'll have to leave that behind, darling. It'll dirty your trunk!), of the small crabs scuttling away from the nervous fingers groping beneath the seaweed in the dancing waves -- always in those days, it seemed, lit with sunshine -- and then the infuriating, inevitable 'time to come out'."
Then, the rest of the info that Fleming gives on Bond's background is in the obituary in You Only Live Twice. That tells us that Bond's father was Andrew Bond of Glencoe, Scotland, "a foreign representative of the Vickers armaments firm" and his mother was Monique Delacroix, from the Canton de Vaud in Switzerland. Bond's early childhood was spent on the European continent where they travelled due to his father's work (and from this early education he "inherited a first-class command of French and German"). When he was eleven, his parents were killed in a climbing accident. He then lived with his aunt, "Miss Charmian Bond ... at the quaintly named hamlet of Pett Bottom near Canterbury in Kent". At age twelve or thereabouts he was sent to Eton, but he was expelled "as a result ... of some alleged trouble with one of the boys' maids". He then went to Fettes ("his father's old school"). The obit goes on, "By the time he left, at the early age of seventeen, he had twice fought for the school as a light-weight and had, in addition, founded the first serious judo class at an English public school. By now it was 1941, and by claiming an age of nineteen and with the help of an old Vickers colleague of his father, he entered a branch of what was subsequently to become the Ministry of Defence."
I hope that's of help! There's more info in that obituary in You Only Live Twice, but that's most of the material on his childhood and early background.
in Casino Royale we learn a bit about his first two kills that earned him his 00 license, and neither of them take place in a lavatory
I think thats also where we learn that he acquired his vintage Bentley in 1934 and kept it stored in a garage through the war
in From A View To A Kill we learn how, when, and where he lost his virginity
theres various details scattered round about his exploits in WWII and in the Navy, but because he is 38 years old both in 1952 and 1962, these details contradict
by 1962 he had to lie about his age to enlist
John Pearsons Authorised Biography of 007 fleshes all this out and adds in all kinds of other information, some of which is worthy and some of which is not
according to Pearson the whole virginity/Bentley/first kill business was quite a bit more complicated than the hints we get from Fleming