Commander Wilfred Albert "Biffy" Dunderdale, (24 December 1899 – 13 November 1990) was a British spy and intelligence officer.
[John Bruce Lockhart, "Dunderdale, Wilfred Albert (1899-1990)", rev., ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004] It has been suggested that Dunderdale was used by
Ian Fleming as a
basis for the character of
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
.
Life
Wilfred Dunderdale was born in
Odessa, son of Richard Albert Dunderdale, a shipping magnate.
Dunderdale served in the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...
during the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, despite his thick accent.
He worked for the British
Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) between 1921 and 1959.
His work involved liaison with French intelligence (1926–40) and Polish intelligence (1940–45).
Later moving to New York, he died there in November 1990.
According to notes compiled by
Stephen Dorril for his 1989 book, ''A Who's Who of the British State'', Dunderdale was a member of
Boodle's
Boodle's is a London gentlemen's club, founded in January 1762, at No. 50 Pall Mall, London, by Lord Shelburne, the future Marquess of Lansdowne and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
History
The club was originally based next door to Wi ...
.
Notes
Further reading
* Matthew M. Aid, "'Stella Polaris' and the Secret Code Battle in Postwar Europe", ''Intelligence and National Security'' 17(3), Autumn 2002, pp 17–86.
*
Gustave Bertrand
Gustave Bertrand (1896–1976) was a French military intelligence officer who made a vital contribution to the decryption, by Poland's Cipher Bureau, of German Enigma ciphers, beginning in December 1932. This achievement would in turn lead to ...
, ''Enigma ou la plus grande énigme de la guerre 1939–1945'' (Enigma: the Greatest Enigma of the War of 1939–1945), Paris, Librairie Plon, 1973.
* Brian Cathcart
"The name's Dunderdale, Biffy Dunderdale" The Independent (London), June 23, 1996
*
Kozaczuk, Władysław, ''Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two'', edited and translated by
Christopher Kasparek
Christopher Kasparek (born 1945) is a Scottish-born writer of Polish descent who has translated works by numerous authors, including Ignacy Krasicki, Bolesław Prus, Florian Znaniecki, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Marian Rejewski, and Władysław ...
, Frederick, MD, University Publications of America, 1984, .
* Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma: The Battle for the Code, 2000, .
* Jacek Tebinka, "Account of the former Chief of Polish intelligence on cracking the Enigma code of 31 V 1974", p. 214 (footnote 34) in Jan Stanislaw Ciechanowski, ed. Marian Rejewski 1905–1980, Living with the Enigma secret, 1st ed, Bydgoszcz City Council, 2005,
*
Winterbotham, F.W., ''The Ultra Secret'', New York, Dell, 1975.
External links
Asylum.com: "Real-Life James Bond's Friends Called Him Biffy, Was Still Cool", Sep 23rd 2010 By Dan Solomon
1899 births
1990 deaths
Military personnel from Odesa
Secret Intelligence Service personnel
World War II spies for the United Kingdom
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve personnel
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve personnel of World War II
Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George
Members of the Order of the British Empire
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