UK Telegraph-The Real "James Bond" Discovered In UK's MI6 Archives

British Royal Navy Commander Wifred Dunderdale and James Bond author Ian Fleming: UK Telegraph

(Story reported by Duncan Gardham for the UK Telegraph)

Commander Wilfred Dunderdale was known as “Biffy” because of his prowess as a boxer in the Royal Navy at the end of the First World War, according to the first official history of the service.

A picture from a false identity card shows he lacked his fictional counterpart’s good looks but Dunderdale is said to have become close friends with Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, in later life, and claimed to recognise some of his own stories in the books.

“A man of great charm and savoir-fair, in old age he became an incorrigible raconteur,” according to Prof Keith Jeffery of Queen’s University, Belfast, who was given access to all MI6 files from when it was founded in 1909 until 1949.

“He liked to tell the story of how, while still in his teens, as interpreter for a [Tsarist] White Russian general, he found himself translating outside a railway sleeping compartment where the general and his British mistress were seducing each other."

(Click here to read the full story on the UK Telegraph website.)