I’ve been meaning to ask if there are any Krystyna Skarbek scholars on the forum. This book is on the way to me. Has anyone read it? I have had a theory or two about her for a few years.
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I have the book here for some time now; it’s in my pile of to-read nonfiction. Sadly, that’s also the pile I constantly get fresh updates I’m required to read, or sometimes reread, for some reason or other by a certain date, so I had to put Mulley’s book on the backseat time and again. I actually started it - late last year? - together with Alan Furst’s The Polish Officer, but only came to about page 50 before life interfered. So I cannot say anything beyond it’s a fascinating read about an intriguing woman.
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Sounds similar to my own reading (bad) habits, haha. The blessing/curse of a very good memory is a stash of unfinished books that you can re-start months, years later as if it was yesterday. The Skarbek book will be bumping The Limits of Power by Andrew Bacevich, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, Stephen King’s Dr. Sleep, The James A. Corey (“The Expanse”) series, and a two inch stack of the new volume of Conan comics.
Also, disputed theories aside, funny coincidence how one of Ian Fleming’s favorite Jazz musicians, Hoagy Carmichael, the model for James Bond’s face strongly resembles Krystyna Skarbek/Glanville.
Striking resemblance. Fleming at least saw her photo, I wonder if he ever noted it.
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I used to wonder if Fleming perhaps meant Stewart Granger (whose real name was James Stewart) when they talked about casting Bond for the original THUNDERBALL project. Because there’s also a striking resemblance to Fleming himself.
But after reading the Sellers book The Battle for Bond it’s quite clear these discussions were in fact about THE James Stewart and related to - vain - hopes to interest Hitchcock in a Bond project.
Also, Carmichael (and Granger, the Bond drawing commissioned by Fleming, and Fleming himself) are more or less what was then considered a certain ‘type’ of handsome. Facial features that Fleming found interesting and easy to sell to his readers.
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