10 Real-Life Spies More Badass Than James Bond
6. Wilfred Dunderdale Ran His Own Spy Network
Another real-life figure said to have inspired Fleming's creation of James Bond, Commander Wilfred Albert 'Biffy' Dunderdale was a British spy and intelligence officer, the history of whom was mostly a secret until old MI5 files were uncovered following his death in 1990.
Born in Odessa, the son of a shipping magnate, Dunderdale worked his way up through the ranks of the SOE and MI5 until he became first a liaison with French intelligence and then Polish during both World Wars. An incorrigible raconteur who had a weakness for the same fast cars and faster women as 007, Biffy didn't quite have the matinee idol good looks of the movie spy but could handle himself in a fight - that nickname a hold-over from his time as a boxer in the Royal Navy at the end of the First World War.
He claimed to recognise some of his stories in the Bond books, too. He spoke fluent Russian and was so sent to work on special intelligence duties in the port of Sevastopol in 1919, and was head of the Secret Intelligence Service Paris station in the 1930s. He got information out of informants and prisoners alike, ran several networks of spies bringing him more, as well as overseeing operations that helped spring captured agents through Spain and Gibraltar.
The man did a lot of work. He probably earned a drink every now and then.