Literary bird people like to recall that Ian Fleming (1908-1964) took the name of his character James Bond (1924- ?) from the ornithologist James Bond (1900-1989) who clearly has chronological priority. I have a book with an autobiographical note by Ian Fleming in which he writes: “I was looking for a name for my hero … and I found it, on the cover of one of my Jamaican bibles, Birds of the West Indies by James Bond, an ornithological classic. (Only a couple of weeks ago, I met him, the real James Bond, and Mrs Bond, for the first time. They arrived out of the blue and couldn’t be nicer about the theft of the family name. It helped at the customs, they said!)” Wouldn’t help much getting the flame-throwing biro past Australian Customs. They have an INTELLIGENCE-DRIVEN strategy and would have that name in their computer.
From: Bob Gosford [
Sent: Thursday, 18 April 2013 6:15 AM
To: NT Birds group; COG list
Subject: [canberrabirds] Interview with Nate Rice, bird collection manager, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia
All,
Here is a teaser: “Some of the most famous ornithologists in the world have been associated with us – John Audubon, Alexander Wilson, Rudolph Meyer De Schauensee, James Bond, Leo Joseph, Frank Gill – all of those folks have worked here and contributed to the collection and to the growth of the collection.” The Academy dates back to 1812 and has been on this site since 1876.
--
Bob Gosford
Crikey.com
The Northern Myth blog
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/
Alice Springs, NT
Australia
Ph: (+61) 0447024968
Twitter: @bgosford
"The NT Government does not respond to random electronic gossip sites."
