William Stephenson contributed in many ways to the war against Hitler. Not the least of his achievements was running an espionage camp in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, where he trained American, Canadian, and British operatives. Retiring in Bermuda, he was visited by Ian Fleming who listened to his stories with great interest. Ian admitted to using some of William's characteristics in the building of James Bond.
TIL James Bond was Canadian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stephenson#Honours
14 Comments
pwnicholson@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 1y
I think the more direct inspiration was Gus March-Phillips. The recent movie "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" is a fictionalized telling of the work that the team Ian Fleming was on, based of some of the recently declassified missions.
Either way, if you're interested in the topic it's a really fun movie.
masterspace@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 1y
James Bond was explicitly an amalgamation of different spies that Ian Fleming knew, however, given what he wrote about William Stephenson, if anything, mixing in characteristics of other people like Gus March-Phillips is what made James Bond flawed in comparison:
TheBat@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
mriswith@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1y
There are about twenty different people that are speculated to be inspirations.
masterspace@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 1y
This is rather dismissive when Ian Fleming explicitly credited William Stephenson for not only being one of the main inspirations, but being a far more effective spy than Bond:
Link to comment with the full quote
SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
Camp X was cool
Crankenstein@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 1y
Was it not obvious considering he canonically is an MI6 agent?
Edit: wow, I'm dumb. I completely misread the title. I knew MI6 is British. How did I fuck up that bad?
Greg@lemmy.ca · 14 pts · 1y
Why would that make him obviously Canadian?
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 1y
They are sneaky over there
HikingVet@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 1y
Yeah, because most people don't even know the name of our intelligence agencies.
Saffire@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1y
I know CSIS, do we have any more?
HikingVet@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 1y
CSEC
Saffire@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1y
Ahh right thanks I always forget CSEC for some reason.
HikingVet@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 1y
They're sneaky...
starlinguk@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1y
MI6 is British.