Quote for those still who think Fleming-Bond worked for MI6
perdogg
Posts: 432MI6 Agent
I am on a crusade to persuade Bond fans that Fleming-Bond could never have worked for MI6 due to his employment by the Ministry of Defence as noted by 13 different references in the Fleming-Bond novels:
"in Fact, all of this wartime background was utilized, in one way or another, in his [Fleming] later work. He said: "I couldn't possibly have had a more exciting or interesting War. Of course, it's my experience in Naval intelligence [with NID 17], and what I learned about secret operations of one sort or another, that finally led me to write about them - in a highly bowdlerized way - with James Bond as the central figure"
Page 80, "Ian Fleming - The Spy Who Came in with the Cold" Henry Zeiger 1965 Duell, Sloan, and Pearce. NY
"It is inaccurate, of course to describe James Bond as a Spy"
Page 11, "The James Bond Dossier" Kingsley Amis, 1965, Jonathan Cape (Hardback) London.
"in Fact, all of this wartime background was utilized, in one way or another, in his [Fleming] later work. He said: "I couldn't possibly have had a more exciting or interesting War. Of course, it's my experience in Naval intelligence [with NID 17], and what I learned about secret operations of one sort or another, that finally led me to write about them - in a highly bowdlerized way - with James Bond as the central figure"
Page 80, "Ian Fleming - The Spy Who Came in with the Cold" Henry Zeiger 1965 Duell, Sloan, and Pearce. NY
"It is inaccurate, of course to describe James Bond as a Spy"
Page 11, "The James Bond Dossier" Kingsley Amis, 1965, Jonathan Cape (Hardback) London.
"And if I told you that I'm from the Ministry of Defence?" James Bond - The Property of a Lady
Comments
I'm very interested in this subject matter, as you know. Could you either PM me the 13 excerpts from Ian Fleming's work or post them in this thread? I'd be very interested in writing a collaborative piece on this with you as The Bondologist Blog specialises in this sort of thing, as I'm sure you know as you are a much treasured member of my blog, perdogg.
But I suspect that's alot to do with Fleming's own wartime service experience and how he input that into his fantasy version of the secret service.
And isn't SIS mentioned anyway in the later books? And, as we know, SIS is another name for...MI6.
And my take, for what it's worth, is that Fleming's secret service IS MI6, whether in Fleming's world it is run by the MOD or the FO.
I kind of agree that it's more of a euphenism for the secret service as it was all rather ill-defined in the earlier 1950s books who James Bond was working for. By the time of Thunderball in 1961, we are specifically told that Bond works for MI6 (or SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service). I think the whole MoD thing is a bit of a red herring here - he says he's from the MoD or from the police or that he woirks for the British Government or some such other euphenism to outsiders rather than admit he's a spy with a licence to kill for MI6 - not a very wise thing to admit to being even for as well-known a spy as James Bond.
And like you say Fleming worked for the MoD and may even have spies for Britain when he was a journalist so all of that fits with placing Bond under the MoD ambit. I bdon't think Fleming was very much concerned with the harsh realities of espionage or the nityy-gritty legal niceties in his books - he just wanted to create a new type of anti-hero in his novels by the name of James Bond who had a licence to kill in the line of duty and who worked for a a rather shadowy department of British Intelligence.
Sadly, when some of the continuation authors have tried shoe-horn in concepts form the real-world MI6, it starts to feel very wrong, rather forced.
I am looking at you, Messrs Gardner and Deaver.
Yes, and The Man From Barbarossa and Carte Blanche are the chief culprits, you might say. I plan to write about this on my blog at a later date under the title of James Bond Meets Reality.
The only reference to SIS in Thunderball occurs when they do a records check of Count Lippe. They also include CID and "Hong Kong" Station in Chapter 4. If Bond was a part of SIS why just do a "records check"?
If Bond worked for SIS, why would there be only three people in it?
I think that MI6 or SIS might be mentioned in some of the later novels too. No?
I have checked all of the Fleming books on my kindle using terms SIS and MI6. The kindle editions are the "Commonwealth" editions, not US editions.
Right. Strange that. You may be on to something there, then. Did you know that the MI6 HQ shown in AVTAK was actually where Fleming held meetings during WWII as Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence. It was an MoD building as I understand it. You can see it after the horse guards scene following the PTS and titles sequence. More grist to your mill there, perdogg. -{
How do you feel about collaborating on this one?
I'm up for it. It's a really interesting and important topic but also a very overlooked one, so it's just up my street then.
Also;
1. YOLT Bond arrives in the submarine where he meets both Moneypenny and M - M is wearing his RN uniform and Moneypenny is in her WREN uniform.
2. In The Spy Who Loved Me - Bond arrives in his uniform where he meets Capt Benson, Sir Frederick Gray - the Minister of Defence and the future M, Admiral Hargreaves. He then proceeds to take orders from Gray.
3. In TLD, Hargreaves tells the 00 section that " Gentlemen, this may only be an exercise so far as the Ministry of Defence is concerned. But for me, it is a matter of pride that the 00 section has been chosen for this test."
Deaver's Bond didn't work for MI:6. It was a splinter group. Like the Increment but with intelligence gathering capabilities. MI:6 doesn't engage in assassination (which is why we have The Increment) and so Bond's role within a real world espionage group could not allow him to be part of that particular service. Deaver got this 100% right. A real world Bond has to be part of another intelligence group closely allied with MI:6, but not part of it. It was Deaver's excellent knowledge on the machinations of the real world of British Intelligence that adhered me to the book. It isn't Fleming's Bond for sure, but a great experiment. I spoke to Deaver at length about a side to British Intel that isn't well known, and he was surprisingly well versed on the subject. Most notably 14 Company and its modern incarnation SRS.
Fleming could never be realistic in mentioning how the Services worked or even hint at it in that day and age and so close to the end of the war. The OSA was adhered to then, above and beyond its limits, and it was not the done thing to mention the Services, let alone have any detail. It's very different today where SOPs are discussed constantly in novels.
This all sounds very interesting indeed. Could you tell us more of your talk with Deaver, Aspy?
And Flemings secret service, according to MOONRAKER and GF seems to have more than 3 folk, no?
Aspy - I'm sure your chats with Deaver were about a 100% authentic organisation, but my point remains - JB's world is best as a fantasy one
Possibly. I wouldn't want any more Bond novels like Deavers. But as it stands I love Deavers work on Bond due to its accuracy and tradecraft knowledge in reality. But yes, Bond needs to have at least one toe immersed in the world of the incredible as it elevates him above the others and makes us want to be him. A more realistic Bond does tend to be a tad more grounded and therefore, a tad more boring too.
The conversation I had with Deaver was amazing and he signed my PPS box and stuff at the time too. The way he structured his plot and researched it was to an utterly inane level, the hints and strands he wove into the plot from the beginning were actually lost on me until he mentioned them and I re-read it again. Brilliant. He really does know his stuff and I understand what he was trying to do with Bond. And it worked. Not many Bond fans gave Carte Blanche the thumbs up, but it went down very well within espionage thriller circles. It was, commercially and critically, a very very successful novel.
Carte Blanche is a Bond novel to be read slowly and the information sipped. Now, this is not what Fleming wanted, and not what Fleming's Bond is about. Fleming wanted them to be pulp novels to be devoured and spat out quickly. That is why he was successful and why literary Bond fans found Carte Blanche hard going.
Yes, well Deaver's also a far more literary and thematic author anyway.
Thanks for the further inforemation, Aspy. Could you provide us with the hints and strands details Deaver referred to re Carte Blanche in his talk with you?
Well that's certainly another way of looking at it - as I've said before Carte Blanche is the new experimental James Bond last dseen in John Gardner's novel The Man From Barbarossa (1991), some twenty years before. So there was a literary Bond precedent for all of this, you see. I doubt very much that Deaver will have mentioned this to you, Aspy, though.
Actually, he understood him far better than most, both Bond and Fleming. He was a huge Fleming/Bond reader from his teens and still regularly delves into the novels now and again. His literary skill is never questioned. He has that in spades.
As for the strands. I suggest people read the book slowly and digest it when they are in a relaxed and slow reading frame of mind. As I usually do, when I first got the book, I devoured it within hours and missed the intricacy and detail woven throughout. In fact I read it a few times before Deaver told me what I was missing. Since then I've read it a few times and it has become one of my favourite novels.
I don't think Deaver really read the continuation Gardner novels. He had more freedom with Bond than Gardner. A Hell of a lot more freedom. I wonder what Gardner would have done with such freedom, because even with TMFB, he was constrained considerably.
No, I didn't think that he would have, really. It's just that I think that this was the closest that we ever came to an earlier version of James Bond Meets Reality way back in 1991 with The Man From Barbarossa. I guess that I just see the inherent similarities between the two. In TMFB Gardner has Bond be in an SIS where he was not around to remember agents from the 1960s - suggesting this too is an (early) updating of the James Bond character and his British Intelligence community environs.
Right, but there is also a 38 special on the cover of FRWL and a blackjack hand on the cover of Thunderball.
No more than three 00 agents at a time were in the group.
How can you be so sure there were only 3 - there are 3 mentioned in Moonraker but nowhere else.
Perhaps you are rather too flattered by your personal contact with Deaver but IMHO there is little in his book thst shows much skill beyond that of the airport pulpish he is.
It was a four day slog to finish and I have no desire to have another go, particularly not running my finger under each word
Not really. I don't really go for that kind of thing. They are just people the same as us, and I know the area better than he does or ever will. But to his credit, he did hold hiis own when discussing obscure military intel fact.
The only person that could ever have an effect on me if we met is Nelson, and he's long dead. Authors don't rate highly in my personality rankings.
Novels and films are entirely down to personal preference. It's not important. We can't all appreciate the same things that are less important or removed from their own interests than others. We all have different interests, backgrounds and lives. This all effects how we view the world, let along books.
Agree with all you've said here. Background, education, lifestyle and lifeftime experiences all contribute to our individual prefences, likes and dislikes, what we appreciate and value.
More so agree that the so called "famous" are no less ordinary than the rest of us.
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a lot more of what went on in the spy game during and after the war then a lot of
people were aware of, and that's not surprising given the position he held. In this
case, he was being patriotic and thought it best to just refer to SIS as the "Service"
or "Secret Service' - which is what many of his contemporaries in that business
called it at the time, just as career agents who work for the CIA call it just the "Firm"
or just the "Agency". Fleming was writing fiction, so he could fiddle with that facts
as much as he wanted up to a point, especially since he was dealing with such a
shadow world. For example..he used SMERSH as a threat in the early novels, despite the fact it only existed during WWII. There was never a 00 section in MI6 made up
of a few select agents. Fleming created it for Bond. It was based on his relations with
the SOS and OSS and his commando units during the war. These soldiers and spies did what Bond does in the novels - they were spies of course, but they were also
saboteurs and assassins. Bond held his rank of Commander, but it was as a Reserve Naval Intel Officer (as Fleming was) - not an active duty officer. It means he did not serve as a fleet deck officer on any ship (though they stupidly say he did in the films), but rather as a Naval Intel officer. Fleming never mentioned what Bond did
during the war, but given Fleming's knowledge, it's not too hard to imagine Bond being involved with the Assault Units Fleming ran. Bond would have never worn his uniform for any reason in dealing with his job in peacetime (even during the cold war). They conveniently had the character in his uniform in the films just to reinforce his military background and rank to the audience .
It was an opportunity to show his authority among other military officers in the scripts, but in the novels (and in real life) he would not do this, because he had become a spy. They had him dealing with the MOD in the films only because the Service does work with the military in dealing with foreign threats and sharing intel.
However, in real life the Minister of Defence would not be seen frequently with
the head of MI6 as he does in the films. He would have meetings with the Prime Minister and or the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee or Defence Intelligence.
Bond had plenty of meetings with the Minister of Defence in TSWLM, MR,FYEO, OP, AVTAK, TLD.
Yes, but those are the films and this topic concerns the novels of Ian Fleming. That's the difference.