James Bond
The real people who inspired the fictional character.
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James Bond was created by flamboyant author Ian Fleming from a diverse concoction of his unique personal experiences, extraordinary historical events and remarkable real-life people.
These real-world exploits and adventures are sometimes more sensational than the fictional stories they inspired. We investigate the real Bonds, including a heroic commander who disobeyed orders and, in doing so, saved the lives of over 4000 people, a descendent of Russian nobles recruited by the secret service who wore solid gold cufflinks and drove around London in a Rolls Royce and a POW who developed invisible ink to secretly transmit the details of a prototype German Bomber.
In the 1950’s and 60’s, the original character of James Bond flooded the imagination of readers and cinema-goers with images of a tuxedo-wearing secret operative who was involved in cold war espionage and used ingeniously designed gadgets to outwit his opponents. He would gamble in casinos until the early hours, heavily drinking and smoking, seducing a different femme fetal every night, yet still wake early in the morning refreshed, strong and athletic with a clear mind and the stamina to fight off the outsized henchmen of his cunningly evil adversaries.
The Secret Service was a world Fleming had personally and professionally been involved in. The drinking, womanising and alcohol reflected Ian Flemings’s luxurious and often debaucherous lifestyle. To find out about the incidents in Fleming’s own life that inspired some of the stories, including being kicked out of Sandhurst after contracting gonorrhoea, developing the blueprints that formed the CIA, letters of flagellation and his ingenious plans to hide fake secret documents into the corpses of dead airmen click here.
Fleming was in awe at the remarkable achievements and fortitude of some of the men he met during his lifetime, especially those involved in the military and secret services during the Second World War and beyond. The people below are heroes he admired whose traits gave Bond his grit, ingenuity, sharp thinking, courage and physical prowess.
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Patrick Dalzel-Job RNVR
Duško Popov OBE MI5 agent 'Tricycle'
Col. Conrad Fulke O'Brien-Ffrench
Cmdr. Wilfred Albert Dunderdale CMG MBE RNVR
Lt. Col. Robert Peter Fleming OBE DL
The Commando, whose disregard for orders, saved over 4,000 Norwegian civilians.
During the Second World War, whilst mainly working in an office role for Naval Intelligence, Fleming formed a unit of Commando’s, 30 Assault Unit (30AU), consisting of specialist intelligence troops trained to advance covertly into enemy territory, capturing documents and equipment using safe cracking and lock picking skills. Patrick was one of the fearless servicemen recruited to this unit.
Previous to joining 30AU, Partick had been involved in several daring missions.
In 1940, the Wehrmacht’s advancement across Europe and the threat of attacks on the port of Narvik in Norway led to the Allied forces withdrawing their troops from the area. Patrick was a Sub-Luitenant then and feared the local population would face German attacks. Disobeying orders to leave, he organised local fishing boats to evacuate over 4,000 civilians just before the German bombers flattened the town. Due to his courage, only 4 people died in the raid.
On returning to the UK, he faced a court martial for insubordination. He was spared any disciplinary proceedings due to King Haakon VII of Norway intervening, awarding him the Knights Cross of the Order of Saint Olav.
Popov had all the elements of Bond; Fleming tracked and observed this promiscuous, chain-smoking double agent during a mission at the Casino Estoril where to gain the trust of his Nazi ‘friends’ he placed a large bet against a Jewish opponent; this became the opening scene of the first James Bond book, Casino Royale.
Born in Serbia, to the Yugoslav intelligence service was Dusko; to his German handlers, he was Ivan; and to MI5, his codename was ‘Tricycle’ due to being the wheel at the centre of disinformation.
Popov disliked Nazism, and his misleading information led the Germans to place thousands of troops in Calais, believing the Allied forces would try to liberate Europe from there, thus helping reduce casualties during the Normandy landings. Popov also informed the FBI of the impending attack on Pearl Harbour. The Americans distrusted him as a double agent, and the information was unfortunately not passed on to the military commanders.
Trained as a Canadian Mountie, from covert missions behind enemy lines to jaw-dropping encounters with notorious spies, O’Brien Ffrench’s tales painted an exhilarating portrait that fuelled the creative fire within Fleming.
After joining the Royal Irish Regiment, in WWI, he was captured and spent the next three years in a German POW camp. His spirit of survival led him to create a secret code, and by obtaining a solution of potassium iodide from a medical orderly, he developed a type of invisible ink. Under the disguise of sending letters to his partner back in England, he concealed information for the British Secret Intelligence Service.
Nicknamed Biffy Dunderdale, Wilfred was a friend of Ian Fleming.
Born in Ukraine, his father owned a large shipping business, and his mother was a descendant of Russian nobility.
He was enrolled in the British Foreign Intelligence Service to monitor Russia after the communist takeover. After stopping a coup in Istanbul in 1926, the SIS moved him to Paris to receive intelligence on the USSR and the threat of German armed forces. In 1930, through his contacts, he supplied Bletchley Park with its first Enigma machine to help them decipher encrypted German messages.
As a boy, Ian Fleming grew up intrigued by the adventures of his older brother, Rober Peter Fleming.
He was an author who travelled the world; he wrote about lost explorers after his journey through the Amazon. He took the Trans-Siberian Express from Moscow to Peking before travelling overland to India. This journey of 3,500 miles was described in the book ‘News from Tartary’.
Peter’s adventures caught the eye of the Military Intelligence Department (MIR). An astute man with a knowledge of the East would be an asset during wartime secret operations.
He was involved in a diverse array of operations and locations, such as training troops in the UK and abroad in preventing the anticipated German invasion, organising Norway’s resistance fighters, training Greek guerrilla combat, and most successfully of all, from 1942-1945 in New Delhi, a complex campaign of deception in the Far East.
The names Bond, James Bond ornithologist.
Fleming was looking for a name that did not attract attention. He was a keen bird watcher and noticed his copy of field guide to Birds of the West Indies had been written by an ornithologist called James Bond.
In an interview published in the Manchester Guardian in 1958, Fleming said, “I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, ‘James Bond’ was much better than something more interesting, like ‘Peregrine Carruthers’. Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure—an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.”
Komodo
Kerala
Matterhorn
Cappadocia
Malgovik
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