I've actually just started work on an academic book project that will involve Bateson (focusing more on his relationship with John C. Lilly and early psychedelic drug researchers). I went to the Library of Congress last month to look at his letters with Mead. One unexpected takeaway from that trip was that he was a bit of a war hero, albeit a secret one (undercover mission to Southeast Asia with OSS). I also liked this from a letter that Bateson wrote to a friend during WW2:

“M[argaret] says that you have ‘grown up.' I wonder - I suppose I would be said to have ‘grown up’ too - respectably working at a desk from 9 to 5:30, doing some teaching, married and with young, and so on. But is it in us really to alter after our 20s? I think not in fundamentals. I am sure that I shall go to my grave with my shoes untied, my trousers unpressed, my hair overdue for a cut, and probably imperfectly shaven. I shall still leave undone those things which I ought to have done — and shall still feel unhappy and guilty about it.”