In Fiction and Popular Culture
Notable fictitious alumni include President Josiah Bartlet from the television series The West Wing and Andrew Bond, the father of Ian Fleming's James Bond and Jim Hacker, the fictitious Minister and Prime Minister of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (in which the Prime Minister is regularly derided by his Permanent Secretary for not having attended Oxford or Cambridge).
The LSE features in the book, Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis. The autobiographical book, charts how Lewis's career in investment banking was begun while enrolled at the university. First published in 1989, it is considered one of the books that defined Wall Street during the 1980s, along with Bryan Burrough and John Helyar's Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, and the fictional The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.
In John LeCarré's spy novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the detention of two Czech academics at the LSE is ordered by the character Bill Haydon.
The LSE is mentioned in the film The Social Network, as being one of the first three UK universities to have a Facebook network, along with Oxford and Cambridge.
Read more about this topic: London School Of Economics
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, fiction, popular and/or culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“My mother ... believed fiction gave one an unrealistic view of the world. Once she caught me reading a novel and chastised me: “Never let me catch you doing that again, remember what happened to Emma Bovary.””
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“But popular rage,
Hysterica passio dragged this quarry down.
None shared our guilt; nor did we play a part
Upon a painted stage when we devoured his heart.”
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“Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing—he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)