This one’s kind of interesting, given our knowledge of Classicists among the spying set. SkyNews had a very interesting little post on one of its blogs with the headline:

• Official – James Bond Speaks Latin

… which reports on a closed session from the Chilcot Inquiry which (I had to look it up) is one of those parliamentary committees looking into the UK’s role in the Iraq War. The SkyNews thing includes some interesting dialog and also links to the transcript, so we’ll use the transcript version … check this out:

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: What were your views of the final report of Duelfer’s?
SIS4: “Sunt lacrimae rerum”,13 really.
SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Would you like to elaborate?
SIS4: I think it says it all.
SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: All right. We will stop there.
THE CHAIRMAN: “Tendebantque manus, ulteriore amore.”14 Shall we break for ten minutes?
SIS4: Yes, that would be lovely.

Sir Lawrence Freedman is a Professor of War Studies from King’s College, who may or may not have understood the reference (can’t tell from the context). The Chairman is Sir John Chilcot, who is a diplomat (who knows the Aeneid well enough to quote a somewhat obscure line). SIS4 is presumably a member of the Secret Intelligence Service (who also knows Latin well enough to quote it and understand it when spoken!) … the ‘footnotes’ there offer a translation of the Latin:

13 Literally “These are the tears of things” – Virgil, Aeneid Book I, line 462
14 “Their hands outstretched in yearning for the other shore”. Virgil, Aeneid Book VI, line 314

Nice bit of ‘capping’ by the Chairman and SIS4 … don’t see that much outside of Classics department lounges any more …

UPDATE (the next day): Amicus noster Jim O’Hara writes in and note:

Word missing in the second James Bond quote:

not

tendebantque manus ulteriore amore

but

tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore.

Nice instinct though to change ulterioris into the ablative in the absence of a word for it to modify.  And if you allow hiatus and ignore the last syllable he’s almost turned turned the hexameter into a pentameter.  Or was it the person doing the transcription?