Andrew Bond
CmdrAtticus
United StatesPosts: 1,102MI6 Agent
According to Fleming, Bond's father was a representative for Vickers Armourment. Skyfall implies that his father was wealthy, since he owned such a large Scottish estate that employed a gamekeeper - and I would presume a small manor staff of servants.
The modern equivalent of the Vickers armourment subsidiary today would be a firm like General Dynamics. The salary of an international sales rep is around $76,000 annually. If Andrew Bond was paid an equivalent salary at that time, it would certainly not be enough to own and support an estate and it's staff like Skyfall.
I have to assume then that Andrew inherited it from his family along with a good size investment portfolio (possibly even with Vickers itself).
I realize that the whole SF scenario was cooked up by the writers and is not from Fleming. However, it seems as though they designed this background based on the fact Bond was sent to two exclusive, expensive schools and ended up in his adult life owning used Bentleys and living in an expensive neighborhood of London with a housekeeper. Having inherited wealth would certainly help explain a lot of this.
The modern equivalent of the Vickers armourment subsidiary today would be a firm like General Dynamics. The salary of an international sales rep is around $76,000 annually. If Andrew Bond was paid an equivalent salary at that time, it would certainly not be enough to own and support an estate and it's staff like Skyfall.
I have to assume then that Andrew inherited it from his family along with a good size investment portfolio (possibly even with Vickers itself).
I realize that the whole SF scenario was cooked up by the writers and is not from Fleming. However, it seems as though they designed this background based on the fact Bond was sent to two exclusive, expensive schools and ended up in his adult life owning used Bentleys and living in an expensive neighborhood of London with a housekeeper. Having inherited wealth would certainly help explain a lot of this.
Comments
It was never said that he was a descendant of Thomas Bond in OHMSS. It was just a famous Bond that Griffin Orr plucked out of the air and was trying to connect Bond too, but with little real chance.
Arnisdale House
Brazier Park
This to me implies that Bond came from modest means and was either adopted (rich Aunt is the usual story) who paid for his education.
This to me flies against what we see in Skyfall, including a mansion and gamekeeper, unless as it has been mentioned, it was inherited. Or, the Bonds were rich, and their death means James now must live within modest means. Perhaps his education was then paid by the charity of his family and a combination of sources.
You have to bear in mind Vesper is a fooking idiot. Other than coming on like a nervous teenager with dialogue to match, she fails to recognise an Omega from a Rolex and then replaces Bond's Brioni tux with a Brioni tux (!!!!!!!!!!?????) because he doesn't dress sophisticatedly enough and yet he has been clad in Brioni since the moment she met him!! And its his own Brioni tux he wears for the bulk of the gambling after the "tailored" one gets cut up on the first date..... 8-)
Fleming's Vesper is a bit of a feeble 50s gel needing man to look after her; the cinematic Vesper is drawn as equally hopeless. Disregard, therefore, all her juvenile speculation about JB and his background.
Precisely, after the death of his parents, Bond was raised by his Aunt Charmian (at least according to Pearson in his widely acclaimed biography of Bond).
Regarding Vesper, she's not an idiot at all. Not every woman can tell a Rolex from an Omega at a glance - that hardly makes her stupid (not every man can tell either :007) ). And you have to remember: it's a film, the dinner jackets were sourced in real life from Brioni but that's incidental to the plot. Casino Royale, the film at least, relates how Bond became who he is: it's implied that his clothes as well as his tastes in general become more sophisticated as the story progresses.
The choice word in her summation is "guess". It's hard to say why she believes Bond doesn't come "from money". How? He wears his clothes with disdain (contempt)? Why would she think that? I never got that dialogue even the first time I heard it. It sounded to me that she was just doing her best be verbally put him down.
In what way does Bond show contempt of his suit? How would you summize anyone has contempt for their clothes? He was impeccably dressed and sporting a Omega for heavens sake.
Where would she get the idea he went to a prestigious college through charity?
Obviously, she has no idea what she is talking about and that's pretty clear by the time we get to the third film SF. That whole scenario blatantly shows that Bond's family had substantial finances. By Fleming's account he ended up in Eton and Fettes and that would be because he had a trust that could fund it or.... his Aunt paid for it . After all, it's never mentioned by Fleming, but how do we know she wasn't wealthy as well?
Bond would not have been left to live modestly after his parent's died. Being their only child, they would have set up a trust fund and he would have also inherited the estate and the family investments. I still think Fleming was using his own family's background for Bond's. Fleming's grandfather founded a bank and was loaded. It's one of the reasons his father Valentine had wealth and Fleming's mother could still be well off after his death. She did her best to guide him into different careers in the military, banking and the stock market, but unfortunately for her, he hated them because he was an artist and had a creative mind. The only hold she had on him was the purse strings. The irony is she died just before Fleming himself, so he did not live long enough to enjoy his inheritance - though his brother Peter did since he lived until 1971.
I can only report what is on screen; Vesper's dialogue on the train IS that of a nervous teenager, if she's meant to be a "sophisticated and worldy" as she's portrayed she'd be able to tell the Rolex-Omega difference, still talks total immature rubbish -"contempt" of his clothes
She's an imbecile because that's the way she's written (though obviously that wasn't necessarily the writers' intention)
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Yes, but she noticed his "perfectly formed arse", so all the rest can be forgiven!
That's not Pearson- that's Fleming himself in YOLT (the obituary).
However, I always thought that the idea that Andrew worked for "Vickers" was a cover. Like many who work for military contractors or embassies, that's just a cover for covert work. The story that his mother and father died in a "climbing accident" always sounded like a cover story for something more sinister. That they both worked in intelligence as their son later did. That they were killed as "part of the job." Bond works for the government but seems to somehow always have money for the nicer things in life, for instance.
Bond's mother though did come from money according to Pearson's book. Their side of the family are the ones who saw to it that Bond got a top education, despite his efforts to sabotage it.
Bond was look at as an almost "Pleb" as he was only middle class.
I have read that George Osborne was bullied at school because his family
Were " Trades People"
In the book, James Bond talked about the old “stone house house in the Highlands” of Glencoe which was “still the centre of the family.” This was where his grandfather Archie Bond lived. Apparently his paternal grandmother had passed before Bond was born. They never called it “Skyfall” but there is clearly a precedent for there being an old stone ancestral family home in Glencoe.
Andrew Bond started off poor, but due to his rising in the Metro-Vickers company (he rose to become one of the top executives) he was well to do. They moved around a lot when Bond was young due to Andrew's work, but they always had maids and workers at the estates they lived in. However, Bond's mother Monique seemed to suffer from manic depression and spent money, had affairs and was generally a little out of control. Her family never approved of their marriage (Andrew Bond was poor at the time and had lost an arm in the war) and they had little contact with them after, which caused her some grief.
Monique Bond suffered from a nervous breakdown, causing Andrew Bond to reassess the importance of her and their family to him and he planned a vacation for the two of them to go back to Switzerland to visit her family to sort of reconnect and salvage her health and their marriage. However, things didn't go well there and Andrew and her parents had an epic row which caused Monique to flee to the Alps. Andrew Bond tracked her down and found her climbing up the mountain where they first met - in a pink dress. He finally caught up to her, convincing her to come down and come back to England. People who were watching all this from below the mountain couldn't tell if when they fell it was because they slipped, or maybe she threw herself onto Andrew causing them to tumble.
James and his older brother Henry had been sent to Glencoe to spend the summer with their grandfather when the accident in the Alps occurred. Andrew's sister Charmain had come from London to break the news that their parents had died in a climbing accident and that they'd be living with her in Kent from then on.
So now with the new SPECTRE film, they are filming at a glacier in Austria. Now as per the Octopussy book story, will there be a body/bodies found after many years at the end of the glacier?
Will this be Franz Oberhauser's father Hannes?
Or my idea is it could be Bond's parents bodies from the climbing accident !
It could be a far fetched idea-but the plot is supposed to relate to Bond's past and ideas mentioned in the Skyfall film.
Bleuville.
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Vive le droit à la libre expression! Je suis Charlie!
www.helpforheroes.org.uk
www.cancerresearchuk.org