64 • BOND, JAMES
Another of several possible candidates for Bond wasConrad
O’Brien-Ffrench, a dashing figure who undertook clandestine mis-
sions abroad for SIS when he was not skiing in the Austrian Alps
with the Fleming brothers.
Fleming drew on many of his own experiences for Bond, and
many clues are to be found in his thrillers, with ‘‘M’’ being so close
to the real ‘‘C,’’ even down to his trusted secretary Miss Moneypenny
whose surname sounds so like that of C’s real secretary, Miss Petti-
grew. Over lunch with thedirector of naval intelligence(DNI), Ad-
miralJohn Godfrey, in May 1939 at the grill in the Carlton Hotel,
Fleming was offered a post as his assistant in the Admiralty. Godfrey
was to be Fleming’s model for ‘‘M,’’ Bond’s gruff chief, whom
Fleming described inOn Her Majesty’s Secret Serviceas having
served on HMSRepulse, ‘‘M’s final sea-going appointment.’’ In fact,
Godfrey had commanded the battle cruiser in the Mediterranean be-
fore being posted to the Admiralty as DNI.
The similarities between Fleming’s own personal experiences and
his fictional character did not end there. In many cases, the author
drew on the name of friends for some of the personalities who ap-
peared in the books. Bond used the name Bryce, his lifelong friend
Ivar Bryce’s surname, inDr. NoandLive and Let Die. David and
Caroline Somerset (now the Duke of Beaufort) appear inFrom Rus-
sia with Love. Fleming’s New York lawyer pal Ernie Cuneo is trans-
formed into a well-informed Los Angeles taxi driver inDiamonds
Are Forever, and the names Scaramanga and Blofeld came from
Fleming’s prep school chums. As for the name James Bond, the orig-
inal was a distinguished ornithologist who had published a study
Fleming knew well,Birds of the West Indies.
Much of what is revealed about Bond himself in the first novel
coincides with Fleming. He had been on a mission to Monte Carlo
before the war, had killed a Japanese cipher expert in New York dur-
ing the war (where Fleming went twice in wartime), and had ended
the war in Hong Kong (at a time when Fleming was on an official
tour of the Far East). Fleming’s mother was eventually to take up
residence in Monaco, and it was no coincidence that the Japanese
Consulate in New York was a few floors below the headquarters of
British Security Coordination(BSC), located on the 38th floor of
the Rockefeller Center on Fifth Avenue. The murder, of course, was