Fighting the tyrants

Abstract

Fleming's Bond novels, George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' also draws on its author's wartime experiences. The Ministry of Truth, for example, is based on the BBC's role during the Second World War. For Orwell, technology is an instrument of oppression: for example, the telescreens, which observe the populace. Fleming, in contrast, had an optimism over technology and gadgets. At the Imperial War Museum exhibition a range of gadgets is shown, such as a CIA tape recorder from the 1960s, and a KGB buttonhole camera. Subminature cameras were extensively used by real-life intelligence services during the Cold War. Also on display is 'Little Nellie', the autogyro used in the film 'You Only Live Twice' (1967). 'Little Nellie' was built and flown for the film's battle scenes by Wing Commander Ken Wallis. Autogyros were actually used in the war by the Royal Air Force, and by German and Japanese forces, to provide aerial reconnaissance. In the Bond novels and films, Bond is issued with his gadgets by 'Q'. Fleming based Q on Charles Fraser Smith, a real-life engineer of gadgets for secret agents, saboteurs and escaping servicemen. Fraser Smith supplied a wide range of items, such as hairbrushes, pipes and chessmen with secret compartments, and 'flash' paper impregnated with a magnesium compound. Fraser-Smith was critical of the golf balls used to conceal diamonds in the film Diamonds Are Forever, which could hardly have been struck very far down a fairway. The golf balls Fraser-Smith himself supplied concealed a compass or forger's ink, and could be used exactly like an everyday ball.