Fettes College

Fettes College (pronounced "Fettis") is a 13–18 independent boarding school in Edinburgh, Scotland, which James Bond attends in many versions of the Franchise. Despite the inclusion of the word "college" in its name, it is a secondary, or high, school, not a tertiary college or part of a university. The school was founded in 1870.

Fettes is the school that James Bond's father Andrew Bond attended, as a boarder in Carrington House.

"Here the atmosphere was somewhat Calvinistic, and both academic and athletic standards were rigorous. Nevertheless, though inclined to be solitary by nature, he established some firm friendships among the traditionally famous athletic circles, at the school. By the time he left, at the early age of seventeen, he had twice fought for the school as a light-weight and had, in addition, founded the first serious judo class at a British public school."

After the death of his parents, James Bond goes to live with his aunt, Miss Charmain Bond, he briefly attends Eton College at "12 or thereabouts", but is removed after two halves because of girl trouble with a maid. After being expelled from Eton, Bond was sent to Fettes College.

Several young James Bond stories refer to, or feature, Bond's schooling at Fettes. The cover of This Time We Are All In The Front Line depicts a young Bond and Housemates leaving Fettes in uniform to rescue survivors of Luftwaffe bombing of Leith Docks in the Second World War.

James Bond (literary, Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Brosnan, Dalton)

James Bond in a Fettes uniform from Strike Lightning, with the main school building in the background.

In the novels, Bond's parents (Andrew Bond of Scotland and Monique Delacroix Bond of the Canton de Vaud, Switzerland) were tragically killed during a climbing accident in the French Alps when he was eleven. He had acquired a first-class command of the French and German languages during his early education, which he received entirely abroad due to his father's work as a Vickers armaments company representative. After the death of his parents, James Bond goes to live with his aunt, Miss Charmian Bond in the small village of Pett Bottom, Canterbury, where he completed his early education. He briefly attends Eton College at "12 or thereabouts", but is removed after two terms because of girl trouble with a maid, and is then sent to Fettes, his father's school. On his first visit to Paris at the age of sixteen, Bond lost his virginity, later reminiscing about the event in "From a View to a Kill".

James Bond (Daniel Craig)

During his teens, Bond spent time studying both climbing and skiing with local Austrian instructor Hannes Oberhauser of Kitzbühel during school holidays at Fettes, as he grew up alongside Oberhauser's son, Franz Oberhauser. Bond's one strong relationship, this friendship ended when Oberhauser disappeared mysteriously. Bond has referred to Oberhauser as a second father. During a stint at the University of Geneva under an exchange program with Fettes, Bond led an expedition to the very mountain where his parents had died. Bond climbed it with friends and never told them of his personal and tragic link to the location.

SilverFin

In Charlie Higson's SilverFin, Bond lives in Scotland but attends Eton rather than Fettes in his teens.

Strike Lightning

Steve Cole's Strike Lightning takes place when Bond is at Fettes.

John Pearson's timeline

According to Pearson's timeline Bond attends Fettes in 1936, at the age of fifteen or so. Instead of being expelled from Eton for trouble with a maid, it is said that he was thrown out for going to London to romance his friend "Burglar" Brinton's illegitimate half-sister. At some point after turning 16, Bond leaves Fettes and enrols at Geneva University.

Trivia and background

• As he remarked in a documentary and some interviews, Sean Connery had a job delivering milk to Fettes.

• Ian Fleming himself had some Scottish roots, and was supposedly so impressed by Connery that he decided to accentuate Bond's Scottish background, although Fettes itself does not play a role in the films. Fettes as the time had an image as a very tough school, churning out military officers and Scotland rugby players, so this may have been an influence.

• One of the possible bases for Bond was Sir Alexander Glen, aka Sandy Glen, an Old Fettesian. Glen was Winston Churchill's envoy to Belgrade during the Second World War.

• While Fleming never claimed there was any source for the name of Bond other than James Bond, an American ornithologist, there was a real life Commander James Bond RNVR who did attend Fettes. He was a frogman with the Special Boat Service, much as the fictional character Bond has a naval background. The school had his Who's Who entry copied and framed over the Second Master's office door in one of its main corridors. This has since been removed.

• Despite the use of the phrase "public school" by Fleming and others, and by the school itself in publicity, Fettes is not a "public school" in either sense of the word. The term "public school" is not traditionally used to refer to private schools in Scotland, unlike in England. It also does not fully qualify as a public school in the English sense, since it was not part of the Public School Act. Fettes is sometimes referred to as "the Eton of the North" or "the Scottish Eton", which is significant given Bond's previous school. Unlike Eton, however, it has been co-educational for forty years.

References

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Fettes College. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with James Bond Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

External links

• Official website