Eton College - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• A 1962 novel The Fourth of June by David Benedictus (who attended Eton) was controversial, as it was considered an attack on cruelty and snobbery at the school in the 1950s.
• British punk/new wave group The Jam have a song entitled "The Eton Rifles".
• In Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World, the main characters visit a school named Eton. Huxley was an old Etonian who taught there.
• The tag "where ignorance is bliss, ’Tis folly to be wise" is a quotation from Thomas Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.
• In the U.S. TV show The West Wing, the Deputy Director of Communications Will Bailey notes that he was an Eton valedictorian: "I'll take my hazing like the Eton valedictorian that I am."
• Captain Hook from the novel Peter Pan went to Eton before turning to piracy.
• In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Justin Finch-Fletchley tells Harry that he was going to attend Eton before he received his Hogwarts letter.
• In the novel "Silverfin" by Charlie Higson, future MI6 agent, James Bond, attends Eton College.