Ah, Mr Bond, meet the REAL Blofeld... and Scaramanga
HOW SCHOOLBOY BLOFELD – LATER A JUDGE – INSPIRED 007 VILLAIN... ...AS SCARAMANGA – LATER A CONMAN – BULLIED IAN FLEMING’S NEPHEW
POSING in these harmless school photos, there’s nothing to suggest these lads would go on to attain global infamy as criminal masterminds.
And yet that’s exactly what happened to the two innocent-looking 12-year-olds, who unwittingly inspired the James Bond villains Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Francisco ‘Pistols’ Scaramanga.
The boys, Peter Scaramanga and John Blofeld, were at Sunningdale Preparatory School with the nephew of Bond author Ian Fleming, Nichol Fleming. When Fleming heard tales from his nephew of the pair apparently bullying other pupils, he took revenge by naming 007’s deadliest rivals after them.
Ernst Stavro Blofeld, whose organisation SPECTRE features in the latest Bond film of the same name, features in three of Fleming’s spy novels, while Francisco ‘Pistols’ Scaramanga was Bond’s foe in The Man With The Golden Gun.
It had previously been thought that Fleming took the names from his own schooldays at Eton. But Tom Dawson, Sunningdale’s current headmaster, said: ‘What I have always been told is that Scaramanga and Blofeld were not terribly nice to Fleming so Ian Fleming used them as the baddies in the books.’
Nichol Fleming, the son of Ian Fleming’s brother Peter, was six years younger than the real-life Blofeld and Scaramanga when he attended the boarding school in Berkshire. After Sunningdale, the three boys lives went in very different directions. Nichol Fleming enjoyed a career as a writer like his famous uncle. He died in 1996.
John Blofeld, brother of the esteemed cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, became a High Court judge while Peter Scaramanga followed a path closest to a Bond villain. After being expelled from Harrow School, Scaramanga, who was reputed to have played cards with Lord Lucan, was arrested in 1959 at a suspected illegal gambling den playing baccarat – one of 007’s favourite pursuits.
In the early 1960s he had a conviction for smashing up a well-known Chelsea restaurant quashed, but was to appear in court again in 1971
‘Two prefects were making his life a misery’
when he pleaded guilty to fraud charges at the Old Bailey.
Sir John Blofeld, meanwhile, sat as a High Court judge from 1991 to 2001 and was knighted for his services. Asked about the theory that he inspired Fleming’s character, he told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Whether I was at school with a boy called Fleming, or whether I was nasty to a boy called Fleming, I have absolutely no idea.’
His son, Tom Blofeld, is certain his father and Scaramanga inspired the Bond baddies and has said that he has imagined Fleming being told by his nephew that school was ‘ghastly because two prefects, Blofeld and Scaramanga, were making his life a misery’.
He added: ‘Fleming, who had been looking for names for his bad guys, promptly noted down these foreignsounding appendages.’