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“The identify is Dunderdale, ‘Biffy’ Wilfred Dunderdale,” doesn’t fairly have the identical steely ring as “Bond, James Bond”, however a brand new e-book means that 007 was based mostly on this improbably named sailor, spy and finest pal of Ian Fleming.
The claims are made in a biography of Wilfred Dunderdale by Colonel Tim Spicer, a veteran British military soldier and adventurer who as soon as led the largest non-public military in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Sierra Leone.
“Biffy was a gentleman sailor, courageous, eccentric and on the centre of worldwide spy-craft, it makes him the right function mannequin for 007,” stated Spicer, who spent three years researching this unsung hero for his e-book, A Suspicion of Spies, revealed this week.
The absurd nickname Biffy stems from his quick proper hook, perfected within the waterfront bars of Odessa, the place he was born. He turned a detailed pal of Ian Fleming and so they remained in contact for nearly 25 years till the novelist’s dying in 1964.
As a spy, he led a vibrant life with superb Bond-like glamour and hazard, allegedly driving round Paris in an armoured Rolls Royce and paying off British girls within the sultan of Constantinople’s Harem with gold sovereigns earlier than discovering an escape route for them in a naval cruiser.
Born in 1899, he joined the British Secret Service in 1921 and headed the Paris station 5 years later, ultimately taking part in a key function as an intelligence officer throughout the Second World Conflict.
Fleming hints that Bond was based mostly on individuals he knew. “My plots are improbable, however [the] complete concept is predicated on reality and all the things I write has a precedent in fact,” he wrote.
Circumstantial proof that Biffy helped the Bond creator could be seen in a replica of Diamonds are Ceaselessly inscribed: “To Invoice, who has helped me with the subsequent one, with affection from Ian”. That subsequent e-book was From Russia with Love.
Fleming confirmed that a lot of the data for that e-book concerning the Soviet spy community got here from a Colonel Grigori Tokaev – crucially this defector was dealt with by Biffy.
An try and kill Bond on the Orient Specific was based mostly on the dying of Captain Eugene Karpe, a US naval attaché, who was pushed from the Arlberg Specific in 1950. Biffy would have identified how Karpe needed to depart Romania in a rush after exposing a blown US community in Russia. A Romanian agent later admitted to murdering him on the orders of Russia.
A part of the circumstantial proof for Biffy being Bond is a gun utilized by Crimson Grant, the Spectre spy in From Russia with Love. It was based mostly on a KGB cigarette case developed for the assassinations carried out by the Russian Nikolai Khoklov who defected to the US in 1954.
There isn’t any conclusive proof that Biffy was the one mannequin for Bond, however like Bond, he definitely was a bon viveur who dressed immaculately, loved champagne and was a connoisseur of vodka. It’s not clear if he appreciated his martinis shaken however not stirred, however he did drink dry martinis on the bar of the Lodge George V in Paris. He additionally shared his enjoyment of smoking Turkish cigarettes, utilizing an extended black ivory cigarette holder. Bond had three gold bands embossed on every cigarette, an embellishment differing from Biffy’s.
The Bond-like adventures of Biffy started in 1916 in Russia and seem straight from the pages of the 007 thrillers. The 17-year-old labored for his father, taking submarines from Vladivostok to St Petersburg for the Russian Imperial Navy. He took a submarine out for sea trials and after recognizing some German ships, he gave the order to assault and sink 4.
On returning to Kronstadt, breaking free from an anti-submarine internet with simply half-hour of oxygen left, he opens the hatch to seek out each gun within the port going through him and his crew. Fluent in Russian, he rapidly defuses the scenario. For this motion, he’s awarded by Tsar Nicholas II the Order of St. Stanislav and the Order of St. Anne, imperial Russia’s highest knighthood for navy valour and ‘bravery in battle’.
Aged 18, he was engaged by British Naval Intelligence as an interpreter on account of his language expertise – English, Russian, French, Polish and German. He would quickly develop right into a buccaneering member of the British Secret Intelligence Service in a profession spanning forty years which Biffy described as “40 years of licensed thuggery.”
Biffy seems in over 60 books and web sites, however nobody has ever written his life story. “He was reasonably like a ghost one knew was there, however the apparition by no means stood nonetheless lengthy sufficient for a transparent view,” says Spicer, including, “he was a unprecedented man – suave, subtle, genial and wealthy but additionally a ruthless and efficient spymaster in a profession that spanned the Russian Revolution to the Chilly Conflict and past. Actually, the motion and intrigue in his life might be taken straight from the pages of From Russia with Love, for which Biffy acted as a ‘advisor’.”
The historian Andrew Roberts offers a ringing endorsement to this Bond-buster, stating, “With educated assassins, aliases, rendezvous, booby-trapped safes, messenger pigeons, clandestine air-drops, brothels, and Gestapo raids at daybreak, this e-book reads like a terrific film script, however each phrase of it’s true.”