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)
“It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
“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.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper.”
—Gerald Early (b. 1952)