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CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Simon Schama's Story Of Us: Revealing 007's secret agenda has Schama schaken and schtirred...
The name's Schama, Simon Schama . . . Schaken, not Schtirred. Telly's foremost cultural historian is nursing a soft spot for literature's most politically incorrect spy.
He didn’t choose action-packed shootouts or car chases, any more than he’d go into raptures over the trashy James Bond paperback editions of my youth, featuring half-naked models draped around enormous pistols (covers apparently designed by Dr Sigmund Freud himself). Sir Simon was intent on propounding his thesis that 007 was an artistic response to the decline of our empire, a right-wing fantasy that Britannia remained relevant in the Cold War world, writes Christopher Stevens Sir Simon was chiefly interested in the band’s political aims, but he made a game attempt to critique their radio-friendly style — ‘a musical fusion, the rhythm and melody lines of Jamaican ska, juiced up with punk rawness and bite .
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