Last week, in honor of Ian Fleming (perhaps I should write "in honour"), Mark Steyn reprinted an obituary he'd written previously on the Canadian actress who played "Moneypenny" in most of the Bond films.

She is interesting, indeed. Even more interesting is the woman who is widely regarded as the model for Moneypenny, but ultimately didn't have that much in common with her except for the old Executive Assistant trait of having power out of proportion to one's rank: Vera Atkins.

There are two biographies out about Ms. Atkins: a work of journalism and a sort of romanticized version of her life that gets her hair color wrong.

She sent somewhere between 400 and 470 agents behind enemy lines into France, including around 40 women. She lost 118 agents, including a dozen women. It was Ms. Atkins who investigated their deaths, and helped to bring their killers to justice after the war at the Nuremberg Trials.

For the rest of Ms. Atkins' life, she endured criticism for having sent females to their deaths. But not, I suppose, the far larger number of males.

The NYT obit on Atkins is one of the best short summaries of her life, by the way. The Telegraph tribute is also quite good.

What an extraordinary woman.

UPDATE: For more on the women of the SOE, go to 64 Baker Street. The interface is a bit old-fashioned, but it's an amazing site—a real labor of love. (Or a "labour of love." You get the idea; we really need to agree on some trans-Atlantic spellings, style rules, and grammar, stat. It's a smaller world now than it ever was in the past.)

Posted by: Attila Girl at 05:32 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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remarks A the H.

Hackbarth, whom I never tire of linking, has a red-meat clip of writer Stephen King displaying his ridiculous prejudices about the armed forces in a public Q&A.

"Just the U.S. military?" I ask. "Or is it all of 'em?"

"I think he regards them all that way," A the H responds. "There's one book [The Stand] in which he has a group of soldiers masquerading as civilians, but they are so stupid that even out of uniform they still stand at attention and salute their officers, so the clever progressives are able to detect them."

Ladies and Gentlemen, the lowest-common-denominator brilliance of Stephen King.

UPDATE: It gets better: according to Ace, King has shut down his own message board, and is sending his fanbots after Newsbusters. Ace:

Wow. Steven [sic] King managed to write something that wasn't a thousand pages long.

BTW, the Newsbusters link above has lots of juicy details on Stephen-gate*; highly recommended.

* As you can see, after fighting the power for decades WRT "gate" as a suffix affixed to any scandal, I've decided to embrace the linguistic suck [age].

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:27 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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to the next level.

"Vote early and often."

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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