Cast of Characters
Some of the involved
Winston Churchill
"This one is dear to my heart"
Winston Churchill
Stephenson was made a 'knight bachelor' by King George VI in the 1945 New Year Honours for his war service.
According to James Bond author Ian Fleming when recommending Stephenson for the knighthood, Winston Churchill penned beside Stephenson's name: "This one is dear to my heart."
Ian Fleming later wrote, " It seems that other and far greater men than I also have their heroes."
Benjamin deForest (Pat) Bayly
Arguably the most secret person of World War Two:
"Bayly still refuses to talk about his work for BSC...'The Quiet Canadian', the sobriquet given to William Stephenson by Robert Sherwood, more applies to... Bayly"
David Stafford. Camp X
[Well, okay,- He talked to me...]
"We had now got to the point where we could break the coding of submarines, and Hitler had insisted the submarines give their position reports twice a day. So if you could break the code, you knew where the submarines were twice a day. I was given the job of giving submarine position reports to whatever navy could be near that particular place... And we were allowed a minute and a half from the time we got the information to get it to the crypt bureau of the army or navy or which country could then alert the navy to where the submarine was.
So that was one of our things... etc..."
Chapter 19,
'The True Intrepid'
Joan Bright Astley
Pat Bayly
"Everyone worked for him - don't you see? And even the people who didn't said they did."
Chapter 18 - The True Intrepid
Joan Bright Astley
Secretary for Winston Churchill's 'Inner Circle'
"And that was kind of an important job, where all these subs were."
Chapter 19 - The True Intrepid
Link:
Ian Fleming
"James Bond is a highly romanticized version of a true spy. The real thing is ...William Stephenson"
The Times of London,
October 21, 1962
In the same 'Sunday Times' 'story Fleming writes " he is a man who became one of the great secret agents of the last war, and it would be a foolish man who would argue his creditials; to which I would add, from my own experience, that he is a man of few words and has a magnetic personality and the quality of making anyone ready to follow him to the ends of the earth. (He also used to make the most powerful martinis in America and serve them in quart glasses)
Ian Flemming
Roald Dahl
"This man is a total enigma - and that's the interesting thing"
Chapter 17, 'The True Intrepid'
Roald Dahl
"Bill always affirmed that he had chaps in the next hotel room just before Pearl Harbor...(of the Special Envoy to Washington Saburo Kurusu )... they had tapes of them discussing the actual date of Pearl Harbor...And he swears, he did to me anyway, that he gave that transciption to FDR."
Chapter 17, 'The True Intrepid'