James Bond committed some unsavoury acts in his lifetime but one of his most egregious crimes was against the Irish nation when he visited Shannon Airport’s duty-free shop.
In his Diamonds are Forever book, Bond’s creator Ian Fleming gave his spy the small task of infiltrating a diamond-smuggling ring that stretched across three continents. At one stage, Bond had to make his way from London to New York, via a stopover at Shannon Airport.
The book was published in 1956 and those were indeed the glory days of air travel. Bond watched the cabin crew wheeling around their trolleys laden with cocktails and caviar and smoked salmon canapés. When he alighted at Shannon, he had steak and champagne for dinner, followed by a wonderful goblet of Irish coffee. So far so good, Ireland is emerging from this story covered in glory.
But then our hero took a misstep when he went for a wander through the duty-free area. Ian Fleming wrote that Bond took a glance at the “junk” in the airport shops, “the ‘Irish Horn Rosaries’, the ‘Bog Oak Irish Harp’, and the ‘Brass Leprechauns’, all at $1.50, and the ghastly ‘Irish Musical Cottage’ at $4, the furry, unwearable tweeds and the dainty Irish linen doilies and cocktail napkins.”
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And to heap insult upon injury, he went on to describe the melodic announcements in our native language as “Irish rigmarole coming over the loudspeaker”.
These slurs did not go unnoticed. The book was brought to a staff meeting at the airport and the offending passage was read aloud. It’s fair to say that the staff were both shaken and stirred at the description of their prized merchandise.
John G Ryan, the commercial division manager, dispatched a strongly worded letter to Fleming. He said shop merchants were astonished to read that Bond had dismissed their goods as junk, when the shops were known for their “beautiful Irish linen, woollen goods and famous Irish tweeds ... German cameras, Swiss watches and French perfumes”.
The man with the golden typewriter wrote back to the airport manager and said he was “greatly impressed that Shannon should have taken cognisance of my lighthearted thriller. I often come through Shannon and it will certainly be a great pleasure to meet you on my next visit and apologise in person for my happy-go-lucky references to the goods on offer in your shops”.
But then he ruined his apology by adding: “Perhaps by then all the Bog Oak Irish Harps and Brass Leprechauns will have been bought up by the GIs!”
The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami appeared to be more genuine in his contrition when he accidentally insulted the people of Nakatonbetsu in Japan. In his short story Drive my Car, the narrator watches his chauffeur throw a lit cigarette from her car window and idly muses that this is probably something that everyone does in Nakatonbetsu. Well, let me tell you, he picked the wrong townspeople to accuse of casual littering. They did not care for the way he portrayed them and the town assembly immediately demanded an explanation for the slur from the magazine that published the story.
Local official Shuichi Takai noted that the good citizens of Nakatonbetsu worked flat-out to keep their roads clean, and as 90 per cent of the area was covered in trees, they were determined to prevent wildfires.
Did Haruki Murakami hold a grudge against Nakatonbetsu? Did he have a run-in with someone from the area and was thus determined to disparage the town every chance he got? The truth was somewhat simpler. The writer explained he had picked this town because he liked how the name sounded. He promised to change the name when the story was published in a book and he was true to his word.
But not every writer tries to mollify annoyed residents after insulting their home place. Dostoevsky heaped insults on St Petersburg in his various writings, portraying it as dirty, gloomy and crime-ridden. And the response from the city? He got a big statue. George Orwell described Wigan as a dreadful place full of slag-heaps, a world from which vegetation had been banished. He was also rewarded with a statue.
And back in Dublin, James Joyce never held back when it came to criticising his home. Dublin was a city of paralysis that was full of hypocrites, and Ireland was the sow that ate her farrow. And now you can’t move in Dublin without running into a statue, memorial or plaque of the writer.
If time heals all wounds, perhaps the other James – Bond, James Bond – will eventually get his own memorial at Shannon Airport?
Or will the Skyfall first?
