Sound by Askew and Dialogue by Raven….Day 132 of Bond 365

Happy Tuesday evening! I just finished reading Stuart Gibbs' Spy School, an Edgar Allen Poe Award nominee and the Children's Best Seller List (#7). The story follows Benjamin Ripley, age 12, who initially enters the CIA Academy of Espionage believing he has the natural abilities and skills to become a spy. However, he soon finds out that he is bait in hopes of revealing a mole in the school. I'll be sharing a review shortly. In the meantime, let's see who's in today's Bond 365....

Maurice Askew

Born this day in 1916

Sound Recordist in Thunderball, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Maurice Askew was born in India, and his first job as a sound recordist was for the 1950 Lilli Marlene, a war drama from The Gates Studios in the UK. Overwhelmingly, Askew worked with sound in films, however he did work on a handful of children’s television shows – Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds – featuring puppets and model sets.

Simon Raven

Passed away this day in 2001

Additional Dialogue for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Simon Raven was a well-known novelist and scriptwriter of several television shows spanning 30 years. His writing and his life were controversial aspects of Raven. He came from a family of inherited money, he studied the Classics at King’s College, Cambridge. He was an intelligent fellow, but he didn’t apply himself. He often had money issues, and eventually, as funds were running out for his studies, he re-entered the army.

Raven described his writing as “brief, neat and plain” a result of his military experience. He was not confined by genre, writing a range of narrative structures and was compared with Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. In an obituary, his writing “came nearer than other novelists to exposing, in the grandeur of its squalor and dubiety of its standards, the times he lived in and saw through” (David Hughes, The Independent).

He was credited for writing additional dialogue in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), however because I am not familiar with his writing style, I could not hazard a guess where his contributions are found in the film. I did find a lengthy forum on the subject over at CommanderBond.net, which is well worth perusing.


Post Script - I have added a new link to my Blogs, Websites section - The James Bond Dossier. Packed with reviews and all things Bond, please pop over and support a fellow Bond aficionado. Thanks! 

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