Roald Dahl - Spy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/7931835/Roald-Dahl-was-a-real-life-James-Bond-style-spy-new-book-reveals.html
This does not really surprise me. But I would advise caution as to the nobility and practicality. A lot of people do a lot of things for personal reasons, (that they would have done anyway) and then chalk it up to patriotism. I seem to remember tales of Noel Coward justifying his hanging out at American cocktail parties as part of spying and gauging American public opinion towards Britain, (or at least the opinion of a few cafe society types in Greenwich Village...). Orson Welles spent a huge amount of time with a film crew down in Brazil getting drunk and screwing everyone in sight, all with the claim of making a pro-American film to keep the Brazilians out of Germany's propaganda clutches, (I don't think the film was ever completed, I doubt there was even a serious effort to shoot it). A drunken Hemingway tried to get government funding to have him go out on his boat with Jai alai players supposedly lobbing grenades into U-boat snorkels!!! Just an excuse to try and get federal funding to fuel his liquor-laden fishing trips. I'm sure that there were thousands of similar scams. Dahl's womanzing sounds like a possible candidate....
(Thanks for the link, Mathew!)
This does not really surprise me. But I would advise caution as to the nobility and practicality. A lot of people do a lot of things for personal reasons, (that they would have done anyway) and then chalk it up to patriotism. I seem to remember tales of Noel Coward justifying his hanging out at American cocktail parties as part of spying and gauging American public opinion towards Britain, (or at least the opinion of a few cafe society types in Greenwich Village...). Orson Welles spent a huge amount of time with a film crew down in Brazil getting drunk and screwing everyone in sight, all with the claim of making a pro-American film to keep the Brazilians out of Germany's propaganda clutches, (I don't think the film was ever completed, I doubt there was even a serious effort to shoot it). A drunken Hemingway tried to get government funding to have him go out on his boat with Jai alai players supposedly lobbing grenades into U-boat snorkels!!! Just an excuse to try and get federal funding to fuel his liquor-laden fishing trips. I'm sure that there were thousands of similar scams. Dahl's womanzing sounds like a possible candidate....
(Thanks for the link, Mathew!)
posted by mendip at
12:30 PM
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