Even reading only the first few paragraphs there are a number of things which stick out as being wrong here.
His Father was not killed at the Battle of the Somme. He was killed 20 May 1917, the Battle of the Somme lasted from 1 July 1916 to 18 November 1916.
James Bond was supposed to have spent two terms at Eton but then four to five years at Fettes (a posh Scottish school) so the Eton connection isn't terribly significant.
Ian Fleming's family might have entertained Disraeli but given that Disraeli was dead before either of Fleming's parents were born it wasn't a close connection.
If the reviewer is getting this stuff out of the book it's questionable how useful the book is.
Not only that, but the article seems disconnected from the title somewhat. I was interested to hear about the failures that made him, but after reading for 5 minutes I lost hope of them being discussed. I can't stand verbose articles like these, I wonder how many people actually read them.
BTW in case there was confusion being "killed while fighting on the somme" is not the same as fighting in the Battle of the Somme. The battle was a distinct period of some months, while fighting on the Somme occupied a period of years for the greater part of WW 1.
EDIT: In order to fix a typo I removed the text "to have occurred soon after his death" from the last sentence of the first paragraph
In 2021, that's just a few clicks away. In 1964, the reporter of the New York Times would have been hard pressed to find and access that information and likely relied on an incorrect second hand source.
> In 1964, the reporter of the New York Times would have been hard pressed to find
Yes totally agree. I might have suggested otherwise but I didn't mean to. Ludicrous how easy finding out stuff ... or a certain type of stuff at least ... is by comparison today.
His Father was not killed at the Battle of the Somme. He was killed 20 May 1917, the Battle of the Somme lasted from 1 July 1916 to 18 November 1916.
James Bond was supposed to have spent two terms at Eton but then four to five years at Fettes (a posh Scottish school) so the Eton connection isn't terribly significant.
Ian Fleming's family might have entertained Disraeli but given that Disraeli was dead before either of Fleming's parents were born it wasn't a close connection.
If the reviewer is getting this stuff out of the book it's questionable how useful the book is.