James Bond was secretly based on a Ukrainian-born boxing-mad British spy nicknamed ‘Biffy’, an army expert claims.
A biography of World War Two hero and multi-lingual intelligence officer Wilfred Dunderdale insists the sailor-turned-spy – who was also one of 007 creator Ian Fleming’s best friends – was the real inspiration behind Bond.
The book’s author is Colonel Tim Spicer – a veteran British army soldier and adventurer who once led the biggest private army in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Sierra Leone.
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He says in the biography: “‘Biffy’ was a gentleman sailor, brave, eccentric and at the centre of international spy-craft – it makes him the perfect role model for 007.”
Col Spicer spent three years researching naval hero Biffy for his newly-released book A Suspicion Of Spies. The spy’s nickname comes from his fierce and fast right hook, which he perfected in his birthplace of Odessa – Ukraine ’s third biggest city.
There seems to be a stack of evidence linking Biffy’s real life spy adventures to Bond’s – from his links to shadowy murders to his experiences with Russian 007-style gadgets.
(Image: Getty Images)
As well as being a self-confessed thug and bruiser in the ring, Biffy was said to be a smooth, multi-lingual gentleman with a taste for saving damsels in distress.
Biffy has appeared in more than 60 books and websites, but Col Spicer is the first person to have written his life story.
Col Spicer added about Biffy’s resemblance to super-spy Bond: “He was rather like a ghost one knew was there, but the apparition never stood still long enough for a clear view.
“He was an extraordinary man – suave, sophisticated, genial and rich but also a ruthless and effective spymaster in a career that spanned the Russian Revolution to the Cold War and beyond.
“Certainly, the action and intrigue in his life could be taken straight from the pages of From Russia With Love, for which Biffy acted as a ‘consultant’.”
Biffy and Bond creator Fleming were pals for 25 years until the novelist’s death in 1964.
As a spy, Biffy is said to have driven around Paris in an armoured Rolls Royce.
He’s also thought to have paid off British women in the sultan of Constantinople’s harem with gold sovereigns before helping them escape his clutches in a naval cruiser.
He was part of the British Secret Service in 1921 and headed its Paris bureau five years later. His efforts as an intelligence officer played a key role in defeating the Nazis during the Second World War.
Fleming has also admitted Bond was based on people he knew, once saying: “My plots are fantastic, but the whole idea is based on truth and everything I write has a precedent in truth.”
And the writer has said his From Russia With Love book about a Soviet spy network was partly inspired by Colonel Grigori Tokaev – a defector handled by Biffy.
Biffy headed up submarine attacks on Nazis and used his fluent Russian to defuse tense stand-offs during World War Two.
At only 18 he was engaged by British Naval Intelligence as an interpreter as he knew English, Russian, French, Polish and German.
Biffy’s resemblance to Bond’s brutal techniques in Ian’s book is mirrored by his admission his decades as a spy for Britain was “40 years of licensed thuggery”.
Historian Andrew Roberts said about the new Biffy book: “With trained assassins, aliases, rendezvous, booby-trapped safes, messenger pigeons, clandestine air-drops, brothels, and Gestapo raids at dawn, this book reads like a terrific movie script, but every word of it is true.”
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