In the Ian Fleming novel Goldfinger (let's forget about the Hollywood treatment for now), there is a remarkable moment involving M, James Bond's boss.
This novel was published, let's remember, in 1959, during the heyday of the Bretton Woods system of international monetary affairs. There were strict rules in the UK, pursuant to the Bretton Woods agreement, about when gold could be taken out of Britain. Saying, "But I own this gold! I should be able to taken it on the cross-channel ferry with me if I want and sell it to the first Frenchman I met on the other side!" was not a defense, it was a confession. The Kingdom had a claim to that gold too, and if you as a subject of Her Majesty owned any gold you owned it, as a private person, only subject to that claim.
The passage I want to quote today is in an early expository bit of the novel. Bond and M are both recipients of a lecture from an official of the Bank of England, who explains to them what nasty stuff Goldfinger is up to and how he must be stopped. His now foreign gold must be repatriated.
The lecture is delivered by Colonel Smithers who, Fleming tells us, looks just as one would expect a "Colonel Smithers" to look. 'Nuff said.
Later M says to Bond, "Personally I should have thought the strength of the pound depends on how hard we all worked rather than how much gold we've got. However, that's probably too easy an answer for the politicians, or more likely too difficult."
Intriguing: M is inclined to side with Goldfinger on the merits of the underlying dispute, but he is a faithful servant of Her Majesty, and of the politicians who are working in her name, so he gives Bond the order to stop Goldfinger. The fellow does turn out to be a nasty piece of work as the plot unfolds, but still .... this early expository material fascinates me.
Lots of things might be said about this as a way of setting up the plot. I'll just leave them unsaid because I'm feeling lazy.
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