"Historian reveals the Second World War hero who inspired the creation of James Bond"

Volante

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/jamesbond/9560403/Historian-reveals-the-Second-World-War-hero-who-inspired-the-creation-of-James-Bond.html

"A new biography of Wing Commander Forest “Tommy” Yeo-Thomas, one of Britain’s greatest secret agents of the war, claims the writer based the character of 007 on the spy and recreated many of his real life experiences in his novels."

From the article I gather that this is not fact, it's more of an assumption on the part of the author.

Gerard

There has been a lot of real-life Bonds during World War II. A better candidate for being 007's inspiration would be Dusko Popov, AKA Tricycle. Eddie Chapman comes to mind as well.

doubleonothing

It's certainly possible that he could have been an inspiration for Bond, at least in part. However, I think it more likely that Bond was a amalgam of many different people whom Fleming would have known about in his position. Bond is probably also a projection of who Fleming wanted to be, so based not on a sole individual, but traits he saw and admired in others and wished to have himself.
Fleming was highly imaginative, so it seems a little ridiculous to suggest that a man as creative as he was couldn't simply create Bond from his own imagination, but instead needed to appropriate the traits of a single individual.

Samuel001

It's another interesting read, of someone who might have been one of many to inspire the creation of Bond. Thanks.

SirHenryLeeChaChing

Thus far, Dusko Popov is the strongest case I've heard as the template for Bond. But I'm inclined to agree that there were several characters on duty in WW2 who as doubleonothing says created an amalgam from which Fleming could draw. The heavy smoking and drinking aspects though sound just like an extension of Fleming himself.

mdo007

I thought this chap was the real inspiration for James Bond:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stephenson

Ian Fleming said Bond was a romanticized version of William Stephenson. I wonder why Fleming never mention Yeo-Thomas in any interview or in his biography. But this is a nice find. Thanks for the share.

mdo007

Also I was looking at CNN and it looks like another allied spy had a similar adventure to Ian Fleming's superspy. Is anybody familiar with Robert De La Rochefoucauld. don't know if Ian Fleming was aware of this guy,or even met this person in real life. Think of him like Bond except he's French, not british although just like other UK best spies of WW2, he worked for SOE. Here's a video from CNN talking about this French-born 007 and his exploits:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2012/07/13/exp-amanpour-james-bond.cnn

JWESTBROOK

Rochefoucauld, Robert De La Rochefoucauld.

Has a familiar ring to it. Haha

Jones_The_Bond

There are so many candidates to be the 'inspiration' for Bond, that I find myself far more intrigued by the models for 'M'. At least we have some consensus on these: that Fleming's 'M' was a combination of Admiral Godfrey and the fascinating Maxwell Knight.

Knight used to sign his memos at MI5 'M' and was a great eccentric. He once wrote a book called 'How To Keep A Gorilla' the follow up to his well-received tome 'How To Keep An Elephant'.

JRR

If you have missed the film Triple Cross, then it worth the effort watch it; This film is loosely based on the real life story of Eddie Chapman, who escaped to Jersey and then in a dangerous deal with the Nazis, ended up masquerading as a spy in Great Britain whilst he worked as an MI5 double agent under the code-name "Zigzag". It shares some of the magic of the 1960's era, like the original Sean Connery James Bond films and should not disappoint.

Goldeneye95

Very intereting article. We all know James Bond is Ian Fleming's alter ego. Fleming's personally he put into the James Bond character. But Fleming's James Bond was based on people he knew like Yeo-Thomas.