James Bond's ChipOx membership in doubt

James Bond's membership in the ChipOx club is in danger of being revoked due to irritating confusion about where he went to University.

Casino Royale's official movie website gives the following information in his CV:

Lineage:
Born: Glencoe, Scotland
Education: Fettes, London School of Economics

Education: Until age 11, J. Bond was educated in Switzerland and German, where his father was stationed as a Vickers executive. After the death of his parents, he was privately tutored by his aunt and guardian, Miss Charmain Bon (deceased) of Pett Bottom, Kent.
11-13: Eton (expelled, as the record notes, for repeated curfew violations and "trouble" with one of the maids.)
13-17: Fettes: Won numerous athletic competitions. Twice boxed for the school as a lightweight. Formed the first intermural judo league for the public school circuit.
17-31: Royal Navy
30 - Present: MI6

Then there is Ian Fleming’s book You Only Live Twice.

When 007 was believed to be dead, M sent an death notice to The Times. Fleming doesn't mention Bond's university education at all, in fact suggesting that it's either top secret or he just joined the MoD straight away.

Here's the passage from Chapter 21:

...he passed satisfactorily into Eton, for which College he had been entered at his birth by his father. It must be admitted that his career at Eton was brief and undistinguished and, after only two halves, as a result, it pains me to record, of some alleged trouble with one of the boys' maids, his aunt was requested to remove him. She managed to obtain his transfer to Fettes, his father's old school…

...By the time he left... it was 1941 and, by claiming an age of nineteen and with the help of an old Vickers colleague of his father, he entered a branch of what was subsequently to become the Ministry of Defence. To serve the confidential nature of his duties, he was accorded the rank of lieutenant in the Special Branch of the R.N.V.R., and it is a measure of the satisfaction his services gave to his superiors that he ended the war with the rank of Commander.

So did he even go to university?

Bond's Wikipedia entry says yes, but the evidence on his university attendance seems contradictory:

Per John Pearson's Authorised Biography and an allusion by Fleming in From Russia with Love, Bond also briefly attended the University of Geneva. With the exception of Fettes, Bond's attendance at these schools parallels Fleming's own life.

The film version of You Only Live Twice asserts he is a graduate with a degree in Oriental languages from Cambridge University. He also attends (presumably at some point) Oxford to study Danish in Tomorrow Never Dies, although in the film he's not there to study at all.

So maybe Vesper Lynd was wrong all along.

Maybe 007's “issues” aren’t the result of being humiliatingly bumped by the younger son of a Viscount during an election to the Rafia. 

Comments

[Chris C]

Perhaps you’re missing the key to Bond’s chippiness.

He’s suave, smart and went to a good school, but how good was he at filling in the ‘Section 10’ personal statement on his UCAS form? Could it be that he didn’t get in? Did it scar him?

It would certainly explain why he went to Cambridge to do a graduate degree – he’d fit in with most of the chippy “I-didn’t-even-want-to-come-here-as-an-undergrad” graduate community.

[David Lee]

So why didn't you do this research before posting your article yesterday?

Any long-term Bond fan could have told you he never studied at Oxford.

Wishful thinking on your part.

[Nick Anstead]

I seem to remember that at different points in the various books Fleming claims that Bond went to both Oxford and Cambridge, and that this is a source of much confusion...