Even before a flamboyant secret agent with a penchant for vodka
martinis "shaken, not stirred" appeared, Britain was not left undefended
against communist or other subversives, the nefarious designs of
megalomaniac criminal masterminds or terrorists.
Neither did it
lack ability to settle accounts with traitors, recover stolen documents
and otherwise protect the realm and its interests - in popular
literature at least.
But only the eclectic reader - a
fast-shrinking species - will recall many of these varied operatives,
though they were no less feted in their times.
Ian Fleming's
James Bond has become the best-known secret agent since his 1953 debut
with "Casino Royale" (and a successful foray into films). Fleming's
capacity to expertly serve fantasies created an archetype, putting into
shade other less flashier practitioners, though Len Deighton's 'Harry
Palmer', John Le Carre's George Smiley, and Peter O'Donnell's Modesty
Blaise (who's no less flamboyant) manage to hold their own.
But well before Bond, the British government could draw on the services of many others - right from Sherlock Holmes.
The
master detective serves his government four times, though in "The
Adventure of the Naval Treaty" (1893) - one of the espionage genre's
earliest examples - it is on the plea of an acquaintance of Dr. Watson,
not an official request. In "The Adventure of the Second Stain" (1904),
it is however the prime minister who himself seeks his services.
Turning
more active in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" (1908)
where Brother Mycroft suddenly drops in and urges him to abandon his
"usual petty puzzles of the police court" for a "vital international
problem", he not only secures return of stolen documents but also
entraps the spy. This is reprised in "His Last Bow" (1917), set just
before the outbreak of World War I, where the stakes are much higher.
Though
Baroness Emma Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel" (play 1903, novel 1905) can
be considered an unofficial operative, Britain's deep-cover spy in
Revolutionary and Napoleonic France was the prolific Dennis Wheatley's
Roger Brook. Operating well before the Revolution till the downfall of
Napoleon (whose aide-de-camp he becomes), his activities are not
confined to Europe but also more exotic locations including the
Caribbean, Qajar Iran, and Portuguese Brazil in a dozen books from "The
Launching of Roger Brook" (1947) to "Desperate Measures" (1974).
Even
George MacDonald Fraser's arch-cad Sir Harry Flashman is dragooned into
various missions - intelligence-gathering in post-Ranjit Singh Punjab
inching towards war with the Raj ("Flashman and the Mountain of Light",
1990), investigating signs of what would become the 1857 Revolt in
"Flashman in the Great Game" (1975) and more.
The espionage novel
itself dates to the 20th century's start, with an early and influential
example being Erskine Childers' "The Riddle of the Sands" (1903), where
Carruthers, a minor Foreign Office bureaucrat, and his acquaintance,
Davies, uncover a secret German plan to invade Britain - while on a
sailing holiday in the North Sea.
Drawn on his own experiences of
intelligence work, W. Somerset Maugham's enigmatic agent has various
adventures in neutral Switzerland during World War I and then in
Revolutionary Russia in "Ashenden: Or the British Agent" (1928), while
'Capt.' W.E. Johns' popular Biggles has an eventful career, from the
First World War to well into the Cold War, not only as a flying ace but
also an intelligence agent in over 100 books.
There is
British-American Leslie Charteris Simon Templar alias Saint, who in his
long series of adventures (1928-63) moves from a Robin Hood-type figure
to secret agent (he also made transition to film and TV - played in the
latter by Roger Moore), the little-known Donald Campbell's Leslie Vane,
who anticipated Bond in being an ace shot, fencer and pilot and able to
reach any point of the globe in hours, Agatha Christie's Tommy and
Tupence, and Herman Cyril MacNeile 'Sapper's Bulldog Drummond and his
band of vigilantes.
But two key inspirations for 007 were John
Buchan's Richard Hannay and Wheatley's (again) Gregory Sallust. Debuting
in "The 39 Steps" (1915), Hannay also laid quite a few tropes for the
genre - the framed hero, the man on the run, and ingenious escapes from
villains. He stars in four other books, though only the next two
("Greenmantle", 1916 and "Mr. Standfast", 1919) are on espionage.
Beginning
with combating smugglers in "Contraband" (1936), Sallust takes on the
Nazis in Germany in seven-odd adventures from "The Scarlet Impostor"
(1940) to "They Used Dark Forces" (1964), where he facilitates Adolf
Hitler's suicide! His nonchalance in dealing with villains on their
ground, and ability to win over their lady friends would be familiar to
Bond fans.
Rarely popping up anew, literary characters often
evolve out of existing ones. These series, though often politically
incorrect, offer a good insight in the process - they also make for some
enjoyable reading!
(07.06.2015. Vikas Datta is an Associate
Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at
[email protected])
