AN
OBITUARY
By "M"
By "M"
"The nature of Commander
Bond's duties with the ministry, which were, incidentally, recognized by the appointment
of C.M.G. ... must remain confidential, nay secret, but his colleagues at the
ministry will allow that he performed them with outstanding bravery and distinction,
though occassionally, through an impetuous strain in his nature, with a streak
of the fool-hardy that brought him in conflict with higher authority. But he possessed
what almost amounted to "The Nelson Touch" in moments of the highest emergency,
and he somehow contrived to escape more or less unscathed from the many adventurous
paths down which his duties led him. The inevitable publicity, particularly in
the foreign press, accorded some of these adventures, made him, much against his
will, something of a public figure, with the inevitable result that a series of
popular books came to be written about him by a personal friend and former colleague
of James Bond. If the quality of these books, or their degree of veracity, had
been any higher, the author would certainly have been prosecuted under the Official
Secrets Act. It is a measure of the disdain in which these fictions are held at
the ministry that action has not yet - I emphasize the qualification - been taken
against the author and the publisher of these high-flown and romanticized caricatures
of episodes in the career of an outstanding public servant."
- M's obituary
for Bond, "You Only Live Twice," Chapter 21
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