Writer given access to MI6 files fingers ‘real’ 007

A new history of MI6 by an academic given unprecedented access to the intelligence service's archives has revealed the true story of Commander Dunderdale, the man who may have inspired Ian Fleming's fictional secret agent, James Bond.

MI6: the History of the Secret Intelligence Service also tells a story thought to have inspired the famous scene in Goldfinger where Bond steps out of the ocean in scuba gear, and unzips his wetsuit to reveal perfectly dry evening dress underneath.

On November 23, 1940, a Dutch agent working for MI6, Pieter Tazelaar, swam ashore at 4.35am at Scheveningen in the Netherlands, near a seafront casino. He wore a specially designed rubber oversuit, and underneath an immaculate dinner jacket.

As he stripped off the oversuit, a colleague sprinkled a few drops of Hennessy XO brandy on him to complete the illusion. Tazelaar disappeared into the crowd of party goers.

Allowed access to all MI6 files from 1909 until 1949, author Prof Keith Jeffery has uncovered details of the work of Commander Wilfred 'Biffy' Dunderdale, one of the men thought to have been a model for Fleming's suave hero.

Fleming was an agent in the Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, and counted several spies among his friends. This has always lent his Bond books an air of authenticity which adds to their appeal.

One of those friends was Dunderdale, a former bureau chief in Paris, where he dined regularly at Maxim's, drove a Rolls Royce and sported Cartier cufflinks. Though the two men only became close later in life, after Bond had already been created, one of Fleming's first assignments with naval intelligence was to visit Paris. It is here where Dunderdale is said to have become Fleming's personal hero.

Dunderdale, a champion boxer, was "a man of great charm and savoir-fair" with a "penchant for pretty women and fast cars", says Prof Jeffery. The wealthy son of a British naval engineer, he was brought up in Odessa and was fluent in Russian.

Escaping from Paris when it fell to the Germans shortly after Fleming visited, Dunderdale spent the rest of the war in the UK, sending teams of spies into France.

While Jeffery's book tells several new stories about Dunderdale, this is far from the first time he has been fingered as Bond. In his 1995 book, Ian Fleming, biographer Andrew Lycett identified Bond as an amalgam of Dunderdale and two other agents Fleming knew: Michael Mason and Sandy Glen.

Neither had much interest in clothes or fast cars - but Mason once killed two German agents sent to assassinate him in a toilet on a moving train, breaking their necks and throwing their bodies out of the window. Now that sounds like Bond. ·