James Bond 24: What is Spectre and who is Blofeld? - Telegraph James Bond James Bond 24: What is Spectre and who is Blofeld? Bond 24's title has been revealed as Spectre, but what's the story behind the name? And will its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, appear in the new film? Follow So the wait is over: it’s been announced that the 24th James Bond film will be called Spectre. Which means a return to the screen for the fictional terrorist organisation that featured in both the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, and the films adapted from them. What does Spectre stand for? Spectre is an acronym for SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. The organisation made its first appearance in Fleming's 1961 novel Thunderball, and on screen in the first Bond film, Dr No (1962). Who are the members of Spectre? A heady mix of nasties, beginning with suave, metal-handed scientist Dr Julius No (Joseph Wiseman), followed by the eyepatch-wearing Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) in Thunderball.

Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), famous for her bladed shoes in From Russia With Love, was Number 3 in the organisation (having defected from Smersh), and the sinister Mr Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr Kidd (Putter Smith), who tried to cremate Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, were also henchmen of the gang. But most famous of all is Spectre's Number 1: Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Related Articles 12 Feb 2015 Who is Blofeld? The ultimate super-villain, his heart set on world domination, Blofeld appeared in three Bond novels (Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice) and seven Bond films (From Russia with Love, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, For Your Eyes Only and Never Say Never Again). With his Nehru-collared suit and white Turkish angora cat, he is one of the most recognisable of the Bond characters, and has been parodied in everything from Danger Mouse to Austin Powers, where he was the main inspiration for Mike Myers's Dr Evil.

His name was inspired by a boy Ian Fleming was at Eton with, Thomas Blofeld – father of the cricket commentator Henry "Blowers" Blofeld. What does Blofeld look like? Blofeld is a man of many guises. In From Russia With Love and Thunderball his face was never seen. In those films his body (only glimpsed below the neck) was that of Anthony Dawson (who also appeared in Dial M For Murder, and later popped up in 1967 Italian Bond spoof OK Connery) and his voice was supplied by the Viennese actor Eric Pohlmann. In the Bond books, Fleming had Blofeld undergo plastic surgery to maintain his anonymity.

This helps to make sense of the fact that Blofeld has been played by a series of different actors: Donald Pleasence (You Only Live Twice; bald, with a scar across his eye); Telly Savalas (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; bald, no earlobes); Charles Gray (Diamonds Are Forever; grey-haired, earlobes restored); John Hollis (For Your Eyes Only; wheelchair-bound and never referred to by name because of copyright disputes over Thunderball); and Max von Sydow (grey-haired, bearded) in 1983’s Never Say Never Again. Will Blofeld make an appearance in the new film? Ostensibly, the answer is no; the role was not mentioned at the Bond 24 press conference. But remember that Blofeld is a master of disguise, and consider the character to be played by Christoph Waltz. The two-time Oscar-winner will play Franz Oberhauser, son of Hannes Oberhauser, the Austrian climbing and skiing instructor who taught Bond when 007 was a boy. Rumour has it that Franz will turn into Blofeld – and thus Waltz will become the fifth (credited) actor to play the villain.

Spectre is released on October 23 2015 in the UK and November 6 2015 in the US Spectre unveiling: new James Bond film cast revealed Start your free 30 day Amazon Prime trial» James Bond villain Scaramanga lives on - Telegraph James Bond villain Scaramanga lives on Christopher Lee made the baddie his own By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent 12:30PM BST 08 Aug 2007 A hired assassin who charged $1 million a kill, he was one of James Bond’s most calculating and ruthless enemies. And it has emerged that there was a real-life model for Ian Fleming’s "Pistols" Scaramanga, one of the author’s most realistic villains and the three nippled anti-hero in The Man with the Golden Gun - a quiet and unassuming country vicar to whom Fleming had taken a dislike. Fleming and George Scaramanga, the scion of a wealthy landowning family from Sussex, were fellow pupils at Eton in the 1920s but fell out, Dave Scaramana, the latter’s grandson, who runs a taxi firm in Bath revealed.

To gain revenge on his grandfather, Fleming stole his name and set in stone forever as one of the great hate figures of popular fiction. "My grandfather died 14 or 15 years ago so I never really had time to ask him why he and Fleming hated each other," said Dave Scaramanga. "We have always talked about it in the family and my father would always watch the Bond films. It’s still pretty cool to share a name with a Bond villain, whatever the reason behind it." Fleming frequently plundered his own life for names for his characters. The cricket commentator Henry Blofeld has claimed that his father, Thomas R C Blofeld, another Eton contemporaryof Fleming, was the inspiration for Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of SPECTRE and the arch-villain in several Bond stories, including You Only Live Twice and Diamonds are Forever. Mr Scaramanga, 28, who says that he was not close to his grandfather because of a family rift, said that he had no idea what caused the difficulties between the two Etonians. "As the James Bond books became famous, my grandfather started to say that he had been at school with Fleming but that they didn’t get on.

"I would say that Fleming’s Scaramanga had none of the characteristics of my grandfather or anybody in the family. My grandfather was quite a meek, mild gentleman and by the time I knew him, he had had the wind knocked out of him by his marriage to a rather terrible woman who caused all our family problems." The Scaramangas were wealthy Greek shipping merchants from the island of Chios who settled in England in the 19th century, fleeing from the Greek-Turkish wars. After Eton, George Scaramanga served in the British army and was a gentleman farmer before suddenly becoming an Anglican priest in his fifties, serving as a vicar in Sussex and ending his vocation as rector of St Mary’s, Abbotts Ann, near Andover, Hants, until 1975. Andrew Lycett, biographer of Fleming, said that he had heard the story of the inspiration for the assassin’s name though he had not included it in his biography. He confirmed that Fleming overlapped with both George and his brother, Theodore Scaramanga at Eton but said that he had not discovered any feud. "Scaramanga is a good name and perhaps Fleming just liked it," he said.

One person who Fleming didn’t like was the modernist architect Erno Goldfinger - not a school friend - and he stole his name for another of 007’s enemies. Mr Lycett said: "He liked neither him nor his architecture, though it is not clear if Fleming himself knew him personally. When Goldfinger tried to sue Fleming for using his name, Fleming went on the offensive, threatening to put an erratum slip in the book, changing the name to Goldprick, and giving the reason why." Why cricket's Henry Blofeld believes in 'squeezing the orange' to the very last drop | Public Radio International Why cricket's Henry Blofeld believes in 'squeezing the orange' to the very last drop Henry Blofeld performs at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on August 16, 2013, in Scotland. Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images Henry Blofeld is a BBC cricket commentator. Should you not be familiar with the glories of his program, Test Match Special , understand that his is a style of commentary quite unlike that of his professional colleagues in soccer or (American) football.

Player utilities PRI.org <iframe frameborder="0" src="" height="75" width="100%"></iframe> 'Blowers', as he's known, will happily talk about pigeons on the field of play, or about last night's dinner, or about that time he met so-and-so. In a game that can take its time, Blofeld's commentary is a marvel of gentle bonhomie, a voice from a bygone age. Now Blofeld has published an autobiography, " Squeezing the Orange ." At school in England, Blofeld was himself a talented cricketer, perhaps set for greatness. That is, until June 1957, when, after a match, he was run over by a bus. Blofeld lay unconscious for almost a month. "That rather messed my cricket up," he says. "Blood was gushing out of my mouth. I had something like 18 major brain operations; they always tell me that I was lucky to live, but I was particularly lucky not to become a cabbage. Although of course there are some of my charming friends who say otherwise." Blofeld is now 74.

For cricket fans, he's a larger-than-life character — like he’s jumped out of a novel by P.G. Wodehouse. For a start, Blofeld was born with an enormous silver spoon in his mouth. "There were masses of staff — servants, as they were called in those days. I mean, nannies, nursery maids, I practically never had meals with my parents until I was 14." Blofeld grew into an eminently social man — always with an anecdote to share. There’s the time he met Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe: Blofeld says "he would have won a gold medal for spitting, over the medium and long range. I was forever ducking." Then there’s the time he met James Bond author Ian Fleming. Blofeld, along with his father and brother, belonged to a gentleman’s club in London, called Boodles ; Fleming was a member too. Fleming recalled trying to come up with a name for the villain in his Bond novel, Thunderball. "And he said 'I went to bed scratching my head and woke up more or less similarly afflicted and couldn't think of it in the morning and got a taxi to Boodles in St.

James' Street and sank gratefully into a leather armchair, reached for the membership list and started to go through it alphabetically, looking for the name of a baddie." And when he got to the Bs he was gobsmacked by a phalanx of three Blofelds, and in his own words, he said, "I slammed the book shut, gave a yelp of delight, ordered a pint of champagne and never looked back." The villain, of course, was Ernst Stavro Blofeld — in the movies he’s the bald guy with a white cat. But Blofeld's favorite adventure came in 1976. He was scheduled to go to India to watch cricket, and decided to drive there: from London to Bombay, overland. "We collected five people and one of them owned a 1921 Silver Ghost Rolls Royce , the most perfect claret-colored machine," he recalls. So off they went, in the Rolls Royce, through Europe and beyond — on to Afghanistan, Iran and then Pakistan.

"After we got through the Khyber Pass we got down to Peshawar and stayed, I remember, at Dean's Hotel , which is one of those famous old hotels that the English had a habit of leaving behind them," he says. From there it was a hop, skip, and a jump over the border into India and on to Bombay. "It took us 46 days and nights. We always we said we'd get there on the 22nd November in time for lunch, and we sat down to lunch at a quarter to two, which wasn't bad," he says. A monumental effort culminating in lunch: That gets to the heart of Blofeld’s appeal, I think. He represents an idealized version of the upper class Englishman of yesteryear, a mixture of adventure and refinement, of understatement and jolly good fun. "I regard each day as an orange that has to have as much juice squeezed out it as possible," says Blofeld. "And when I finish squeezing one day's orange I go to bed and wait for the next day's orange. I'm all for getting the maximum of fun out of life and having as much laughter as I can.

I mean, none of us laugh enough — we live in a gloomy age. And when you do laugh, you feel better." Links Henry Blofeld: Nephew of an England captain? - Cricket Country Henry Blofeld: Nephew of an England captain? Henry Blofeld celebrated his 75th birthday recently. | Updated : November 28, 2014 8:53 AM IST Henry Blofeld is renowned cricket commentator in England © Getty Images A commonly quoted ‘fact’ about the much-loved Test Match Special commentator Henry Blofeld is that he is the nephew of Freddie Calthorpe, the amateur all-rounder who captained England in a four Test series in West Indies in 1930. As “Blowers” celebrates his 75th birthday, Michael Jones delves into the archives to investigate whether this is actually true.

As the much-loved Test Match Special commentator Henry Blofeld — “Blowers” to colleagues and listeners alike — celebrates his 75th birthday, it is worth re-examining a commonly quoted ‘fact’ about him: that he is the nephew of Freddie Calthorpe , the amateur all-rounder who captained Warwickshire in the 1920s and, thanks more to his social status than his cricketing ability, England in a four Test series in West Indies in 1930 (while another England team was simultaneously involved in a series in New Zealand). Records list the other as a relative, and both their Wikipedia articles state the relationship as fact — but is it? It is easy to see how such a supposition may have arisen: Blowers’s Eton and Cambridge education, along with his bow ties and general jolly-good-show demeanour, mark him out as the sort of “dear old thing” who might well be related to a player who bore the style “Honourable” — and, most tellingly, his middle name is Calthorpe.

Until the early 20th century it remained common practice in England to keep a woman’s maiden name in the family by giving it as either a first or middle name to children of subsequent generations. Freddie Calthorpe himself is an example of this: his second forename of Somerset was the first forename of both his father and grandfather, who in turn inherited the name from Calthorpe’s great-grandmother, Lady Charlotte Sophia Somerset. Blofeld’s middle name, then, suggests that he is related to the Calthorpe family in some way, but it may not be such a close relationship as uncle and nephew: in the example of Somerset, the connection is three generations earlier. Given the number of records kept in the UK pertaining to births, deaths and familial connections from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, and their ready accessibility, it is not usually difficult to establish whether or not two individuals are closely related. In Blofeld’s case, it is easy to find his entry in the national register of births, and from that, his parents’ marriage.

His father — who, incidentally, was a schoolmate of Ian Fleming, and is believed to have been the inspiration for the name of the Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld — was Thomas Robert Calthorpe Blofeld; his use of Calthorpe as a forename suggests that the connection between the two families lies further back in time. Blofeld’s mother was Grizel Blanche Turner — no connection to the Calthorpe family there. This already casts doubt on the possibility that Blofeld might be Calthorpe’s nephew, but the hypothesis can be demolished even more quickly by working in the opposite direction. A person’s nephew is the son of that person’s brother or sister, so in order to have a nephew it is necessary first to have a brother or sister.

As a member of a noble family, Freddie Calthorpe’s lineage is more thoroughly documented than most: he was the son of Somerset Frederick Gough-Calthorpe, the eighth Baron Calthorpe, and Mary Burrows — and what is more, he was their only child (Calthorpe himself never succeeded to the baronetcy as he died before his father — so the title passed to his elder son Ronald as the ninth Baron, and became extinct in 1997 when both he and Freddie’s younger son Peter, the tenth Baron, died childless). He had no brothers or sisters, and hence no nephews or nieces — at least not by blood. His wife, Dorothy Vernon-Harcourt, had one brother, William; through him, Calthorpe had one nephew and one niece by marriage. His only nephew is Anthony Vernon-Harcourt — not Henry Blofeld. If Blofeld is not Calthorpe’s nephew, the question remains: how are they related, if at all? Blofeld’s middle name suggests that he is descended from someone with the surname Calthorpe — not necessarily that he is related to anyone with that surname.

To assess the likelihood that they are part of the same family, some knowledge of the various different origins of British surnames is helpful. Some were originally patronymics — that is, they were derived from the name of the person’s father; examples of these are those ending with the suffix -son (although there are also other names whose origin as a patronymic is less obvious). Two people with the surname Johnson, for instance, were probably so called because one of their ancestors had a father named John; it is very unlikely that the fathers were the same John, and thus unlikely that the two are related. Other surnames originate from geographical features: two people with the surname Hill probably received that name because one of their ancestors lived on a hill. It is similarly unlikely that it was the same hill, and thus again unlikely that the two are related. A third group of surnames are toponyms: they took their name from the town where they lived. This is the category which includes Calthorpe — the name of a small village in Norfolk (incidentally, it also includes Blofeld and its variant spelling Blofield — a village near Norwich, around twenty miles from Calthorpe).

Two people with the surname Calthorpe probably both had ancestors who lived in that village — in which case it’s likely that they are related. If Henry Blofeld is related to someone with the surname Calthorpe, he is probably related to anyone with that surname; however, it’s possible that the connection may be several centuries earlier. Since, as a rule of thumb, the number of records available for researching British genealogy decreases the further back in time one progresses, even if Blofeld and Calthorpe are related, it may not be possible to prove it. Tracing the Blofeld line further back, the 1911 England census shows Thomas Robert Calthorpe Blofeld, aged seven, living with his parents John Calthorpe Blofeld and Isabel Clare (nee Burroughs). Henry Blofeld’s grandparents were married in 1902 — the same year Victor Trumper scored a century before lunch in a Test, Fred Tate dropped one, and Gilbert Jessop’s whirlwind fourth innings century won one — and in the church of St Marylebone, a stone’s throw away from Lord’s.

John appears on earlier censuses with his parents Thomas Calthorpe Blofeld and Fanny Elizabeth (nee Partridge); Thomas was a local magistrate, a profession which was to reappear in the family three generations later: Blowers’s brother is Sir John Blofeld, a former High Court judge whose career included overturning on appeal the convictions of three men who had already served a decade in jail for murder. John Calthorpe Blofeld was born in 1875, when WG Grace was at the height of his powers and the first Test had yet to be played. The use of Calthorpe as a middle name in four consecutive generations suggests that the connection to that family was a strong one, whose memory the Blofelds wished to preserve — but also that the connection may be even further back in time. Freddie Calthorpe’s lineage over the same period is as ermine-ridden as they come: barons married daughters of dukes or army officers, to avoid any commoners tarnishing the noble bloodline.

Although he used Calthorpe as his surname for cricketing purposes — possibly to show some mercy to scorers — the family name was officially Gough-Calthorpe, created when Sir Henry Gough married Barbara Calthorpe in 1741. Barbara’s two brothers both died childless, so the Calthorpe estates passed to her son, who became Sir Henry Gough-Calthorpe and in 1796 was given the title of “Baron Calthorpe of Calthorpe in the County of Norfolk”. The father and son Sir Henrys, and a third generation in Frederick Gough-Calthorpe (the fourth Baron, who inherited the title after his two elder brothers died childless), all served as Members of Parliament — in an age when doing so relied on owning land in the relevant borough, rather than any tiresome business of having to canvass votes.

The family made significant contribution to cricket: before being raised to the higher title, the younger Sir Henry had been the second Baronet of Edgbaston in the County of Warwick (his father was the first); after inheriting the Calthorpe estate, the family retained that at Edgbaston, and over the following century they developed the area into one of the more prosperous suburbs of Birmingham. In the 1880s, Freddie’s grandfather Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe held the baronetcy when the newly formed Warwickshire club (still some years away from attaining First-Class status) was seeking to build a permanent ground. Locations in Rugby and Leamington Spa had been considered, but the club secretary William Ansell felt that Birmingham, as the major population centre of the county, would be preferable (without his intervention, the county’s T20 team could have ended up being called Leamington Lions or Rugby Rhinos instead). The Calthorpes decided that a cricket ground would add to the attraction of the area, and offered the club 12 acres of land next to the river Rea on a lease of £60 per year.

The ground was completed in 1885, and hosted its first Test less than twenty years later; William Ansell’s role in its founding was later commemorated with the naming of a stand after him (although this has since been demolished). The Calthorpe family’s connection with the area lives on in the name of Calthorpe Park, a short walk from the ground. In 1841, Grace was not yet born and the idea of a County Championship was still decades away, but there were First-Class matches played between the few existing county sides (Sussex, Kent and Nottinghamshire), as well as the MCC, Cambridge University and the annual Gentlemen vs Players match. Other matches involved many of the same players, but with the teams divided along different lines for a little variety: that year there were two matches between the Fast Bowlers and Slow Bowlers (ending in one win apiece). It was also the year of the first census in England to record names: previous ones had merely counted the number of people in each town.

Those recorded included three generations of Henry Blofeld’s ancestors, all with the same first name: his great-grandfather Thomas Calthorpe Blofeld was four years old at the time of the census, living at Hoveton, Norfolk, with his father Thomas John Blofeld — the vicar of the village — and his grandfather, also named Thomas Calthorpe Blofeld, who prior to his retirement had been the previous vicar. The elder man to carry the middle name of Calthorpe (Henry Blofeld’s three times great-grandfather) was born in 1778 — when the Hambledon club was at its peak — implying that the connection is even earlier than that. When trying to trace a person’s ancestors in England, it is often around the late eighteenth century that the trail dries up, since this is the point at which the two most comprehensive sets of records — the national registers of births, marriages and deaths, and the census returns — cease to be of any use. Earlier records are incomplete, and it is largely a matter of luck whether the documents recording that person’s family still exist (or even if they were recorded at all).

In the case of Henry Blofeld, fortune smiles on the researcher, in the form of a visitation. In its genealogical context, this was the practice, dating to the sixteenth century, of one of the king’s (or queen’s) officials visiting a county to record information about the most prominent families living there; its main purpose was to check that people were who they claimed to be — catching anyone who happened to be using a title or coat of arms which had not been officially granted to them. Each family was required to submit information regarding its lineage, which was documented in the official record of the visitation. The first visitation of Norfolk was undertaken by William Harvey, an official of Queen Elizabeth I; the information he collected was updated in further visitations in 1589 and 1613. In the 1860s George Henry Dashwood, a Norfolk historian, undertook to publish a new edition of the visitation, with as many of the pedigrees as possible updated to his own day. Dashwood died with only the first volume of the work complete, but Edward Bulwer-Lytton completed and published the second volume.

It is Dashwood and Bulwer-Lytton’s The Visitation of Norfolk in the year 1563, taken by William Harvey, Clarenceux King of Arms — and the helping hand given by Google Books in uploading a copy of it for the benefit of researchers in the twenty-first century — which finally proves the family connection between Freddie Calthorpe and Henry Blofeld: only a relatively small number of families in each county were recorded, but the Calthorpes’ status among the largest landowners in Norfolk ensured that they merited William Harvey’s attention. A significant caveat here is that the compilers of the visitations had no way of checking the lineages presented to them, but had to rely on the honesty of the families submitting them. Bulwer-Lytton notes, in the section of his updated Visitation covering the Calthorpe family, that there had been some confusion concerning the early part of that family’s lineage which had baffled noted genealogists at the time the Visitation was first compiled, but that “the late Rev. James Lee Warner, in his interesting and valuable account of this family, published in Vol.

IX of Norfolk Archaeology, has cleared away many of these difficulties”, and that he was indebted to the present representative of the family, Thomas Calthorpe Blofeld (Henry Blofeld’s great-grandfather), “for much information”. Whether the Rev. Warner had indeed “cleared away” the difficulties, or merely glossed over them in order to come up with a result which made some sort of sense, is anyone’s guess; however, at this distance in time from the events recorded in the Visitation, it is likely that for many, no other records still exist which could verify them, so in order to establish the exact connection between the two families we must rely on his honesty, and on that of Thomas Calthorpe Blofeld.

The information submitted to the compilers of the Visitation leads further back through the generations, and extends the Blofeld family’s association with the legal profession: Rev Thomas Calthorpe Blofeld’s father was Thomas Blofeld, a barrister in the Inner Temple, and his own father John Blofeld — seven generations removed from Henry — served in a similar capacity, save for a break during the Seven Years’ War when he was appointed a captain in the Norfolk Militia, preparing to defend the county against the French invasion which seemed imminent (but never actually happened). John Blofeld married his first cousin, Sarah Blofeld; their respective fathers, John and Thomas, were brothers. One generation further back, and the link between the two surnames is at last established: the parents of John and Thomas were Thomas Blofeld and Catherine Calthorpe.

As a former Mayor of Norwich and subsequently Member of Parliament (MP) for the same city, Thomas Blofeld was evidently considered to be of a suitable status to marry into one of the most prominent families in the county, thus uniting the names of Calthorpe and Blofeld — at around the time the earliest known newspaper reports of cricket were starting to appear, which revealed matches being played between village teams, with enormous sums of money at stake. We are still far from the end of the story, though, since Freddie Calthorpe is not a direct descendant of Catherine, or even closely related to her. Instead, on an entirely different branch of the family tree, the Visitation records the marriage of Sir Henry Calthorpe, the Queen’s Solicitor-General in the 1630s, to Dorothy Humphrey, along with a note that from them “descends the present noble representative of the family”. Presumably Bulwer-Lytton, when preparing his updated edition of the Visitation, thought that the exact details of the descent would be so well known that he needn’t bother stating them.

The 21st century researcher, to whom the connection might not be quite so obvious, must pick up the thread from Barbara Calthorpe, wife of Sir Henry Gough. She was the third child and only daughter of Reynolds Calthorpe, by his second wife Barbara Yelverton. Her half-brother, Reynolds Calthorpe the Younger, died in 1714, at the age of only 25; her brother, Sir Henry Calthorpe, lived to 71 (despite having been declared a lunatic several decades earlier, after being seen walking down Pall Mall with a ribbon in his hair, explaining that he was off to see the king), but never married, leaving Barbara, as the last surviving child, to inherit the estate. Reynolds Calthorpe was yet another of the family to enter Parliament by virtue of holding land — in his case the manor of Hindon, which he rented from the Bishop of Winchester, enabled him to sit as MP for that borough.

Taking up his seat in the closing years of the 17th century, he initially held it in parliaments of England, then after the Act of Union, in those of Great Britain — at the same time as Thomas Blofeld, who had married a distant relative of his, was representing Norwich; Parliamentary records of the time show that he voted against the government on almost every debate. As the son of Dorothy Reynolds, he was also another example of the practice of giving a mother’s maiden name as a forename. His second wife Barbara Yelverton was a descendant of Anne of York, the eldest sister of Richard III; through her, Freddie Calthorpe is also distantly related to the current royal family. Reynolds’s father was Sir James Calthorpe, who fought on the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War, and was rewarded for his loyalty by Oliver Cromwell with a knighthood. Sir James’s cricketing descendants may have looked askance on his support of Cromwell, a notoriously joyless man who, during his tenure as Lord Protector, attempted to clamp down on sports, drinking, gambling, music, theatre and any other activity from which his subjects might conceivably have derived entertainment.

In 1654, shortly after Cromwell took office, three men in Eltham, Kent, were fined two shillings each for playing cricket on a Sunday. Their crime (officially) was breaking the Sabbath, rather than the sport in itself, but since labourers were unlikely to have any free time during the rest of the week, a ban on playing cricket on Sunday was effectively a ban on playing it at all. Sir James was the son of Sir Henry Calthorpe and Dorothy Humphrey — establishing the link between the Calthorpe barons and the family line recorded in the Visitation. Both branches of the Calthorpe family stretch back through further generations, with the connection between them not yet in sight; various lords, lawyers and public officials are found on both sides. Sir Henry Calthorpe earned himself an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography; in contrast to his son’s republican leanings, he rose through the ranks of the legal profession to become Solicitor-General to Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, after whom he named one of his daughters.

In 1627 Sir Henry defended five gentlemen who had been imprisoned for refusing to grant a loan, and it was recorded that he “pleaded at Westminster with wonderful applause, even of shouting and clapping of hands, which is unusual in that place”. He was later made Recorder of London (the most senior judge in the city), then an attorney of the Court of Wards and Liveries (responsible for collecting taxes), although he served only briefly before dying in office. Sir Henry’s father, another Sir James Calthorpe, served as High Sheriff of Norfolk in 1613, and his grandfather Christopher Calthorpe was another lawyer during the reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I. During the same period, Henry Blofeld’s ancestors in the Calthorpe line held the manor at Hickling in Norfolk. Catherine Calthorpe’s grandfather John died when her father — also John — was only six years old, compelling him to hold his first court at the manor under the guidance of his mother Katherine.

John senior’s father Martin Calthorpe became a barrister at Grey’s Inn shortly after the accession of James I, and his grandfather, Sir Martin Calthorpe, was appointed Lord Mayor of London in 1588, and died during his term of office. References to cricket in the era are few and far between: a poem of 1533 by John Skelton describes Flemish immigrants in southern England playing ‘creckettes’, and in an account of court proceedings in Guildford in 1598, the then 59 year old coroner John Derrick testified that he and his fellow pupils had played ‘creckette’ on a parcel of land in the town during their schooldays half a century earlier. Further back still — before the earliest known definitive reference to cricket — and the connection between the two lines of Calthorpes is finally reached: Christopher Calthorpe’s grandfather, also named Christopher, and Sir Martin Calthorpe’s father Richard, were brothers.

A full five centuries separate “Blowers” from John Calthorpe (1431-1503) and Alice Astley (1440-1475), the most recent ancestors which he shares with the man commonly claimed to be his “uncle”. Freddie Calthorpe numbers among the thirteenth generation of their descendants and Henry Blofeld the sixteenth, meaning that — provided we can trust the word of Rev. James Lee Warner and Thomas Calthorpe Blofeld on the matter — the England captain and the commentator, far from being uncle and nephew, are in fact twelfth cousins three times removed. Ian Fleming’s Spectre in Retrospect – The James Bond International Fan Club Previous Next Ian Fleming’s Spectre in Retrospect When James Bond author Ian Fleming first introduced the criminal network SPECTRE to his many readers in the novel Thunderball in 1961, he inadvertently created an organisation which has arguably become one of the most famous fictional crime syndicates in popular literature.

It also became, of course, a major part of the James Bond legend on the big screen, with the EON franchise even ‘re-imagining’ the concept for the most recent and 24th James Bond movie Spectre, directed by Sam Mendes and released in 2015. Much of the drive to re-introduce SPECTRE to the series was down to both John Logan and Sam Mendes. With the confirmation from Mendes at the recent Hay Festival that he will not now be helming Bond movie no. 25, the JBIFC takes the opportunity to offer a brief retrospective on the SPECTRE organisation – its creation, its role, its dramatic return (or rebirth), and a few points on the way about how its boss, the archetypal Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, has been interpreted over the years. And, one suspects, like all the memorable Bond baddies we love to hate, we have probably not seen the last of one of our favourite villains or his insidious organisation.

SPECTRE begins Ernst Stavro Blofeld was first introduced to the world in Ian Fleming’s 007 novel Thunderball in 1961, where he was head of SP.E.C.T.R.E. (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), a global criminal network with its secret headquarters in Paris. It operated under the guise of the ‘International Brotherhood of Resistance Against Oppression’, a kind of cross between a charity and a human rights organisation. As Fleming described it, SPECTRE had been in operation since 1956. As a former Naval Intelligence officer, and then working as Foreign Manager for the Sunday Times (where he was responsible for the newspaper’s overseas coverage and for appointing its correspondents in the field), the Bond author had built up extensive knowledge about war criminals, ex-Gestapo members, spies, terrorists, smugglers and other rogue operators in the murky world of the post-war ‘Cold War’, and some of this detail helped him give SPECTRE some plausible background. The SPECTRE network was thus utterly ruthless and primarily concerned to generate profit for Blofeld and its executive board, no matter how this was done!

To this end, among other things, SPECTRE had been responsible for recovering the late Nazi Heinrich Himmler’s jewels from the Modsee, selling Russian secrets from East Berlin to the CIA, selling heroin supplies to a gang in Los Angeles, selling Czech germ-warfare phials to the UK’s MI6, the blackmail of a top former Nazi official, the assassination of a defector to the Russians, and the kidnapping of the daughter of a ‘Detroit Purple Gang’ contact. As originally described by Fleming, Blofeld was a physically large man, very tall and weighing over twenty stone. Born in Imperial Germany in 1908, his father was Polish and his mother Greek (‘Stavro’ is a Greek name). His eyes were dark, rather like Benito Mussolini’s, and his face was topped with black crew-cut hair; he did not smoke or drink, and he regularly chewed violet-scented mints. By On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963), however, Blofeld had changed locations to Switzerland and radically altered his appearance: he had lost weight, now had long, silver-coloured hair, no ear-lobes, and wore dark green-tinted contact lenses.

He also desperately sought recognition of the aristocratic title of the Count de Bleuville. In You Only Live Twice (1964), Blofeld had again altered his appearance and was now living in Japan, operating under the alias of Dr. Guntram Shatterhand. In many ways, SPECTRE had now become a much smaller organisation, very much under the direct personal control of Blofeld and his evil assistant Irma Bunt. There has been some interest on the part of Fleming experts in the Bond author’s evident fascination with certain words, or variations of the same word, in his 007 novels, including with the word ‘spectre’. In Fleming’s fourth 007 novel, Diamonds Are Forever (1956), at one stage Bond’s cover as a diamond smuggler is blown and he is kidnapped by Serraffimo Spang, of the ‘Spangled Mob’, and is locked up in ‘Spectreville’, a ghost town outside Las Vegas. And, in a variation on the word, in Fleming’s 007 adventure From Russia With Love (1957), Tatiana Romanova offers to defect with the coveted ‘Spektor’ coding machine.

SPECTRE on screen In the EON movies, SPECTRE was first name-checked in Dr. No (1962), and Blofeld himself was first glimpsed (in profile only) in From Russia With Love (1963), where cinema audiences were also introduced to the now famous ‘Octopus’ symbol, used in secret communications or on rings worn by members. Blofeld went on to become a much-loved feature of the James Bond film series, appearing in five further films prior to the Mendes-directed Spectre. Some commentators in the past have compared Ernst Stavro Blofeld to the infamous arch-villain Moriarty, the devious and super-intelligent adversary to the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. There is certainly something beguiling about the head of SPECTRE, and one of the pleasures of the early James Bond films for cinemagoers was discovering what Blofeld’s latest mad scheme entailed.

Prior to Spectre in 2015, the SPECTRE chief had last been glimpsed in the official series in the pre-credits to For Your Eyes Only in 1981, and then appeared in Kevin McClory’s ‘unofficial’ Bond movie Never Say Never Again in 1983 (played by Max von Sydow). Interestingly, the official EON series had come very close to re-introducing Blofeld and SPECTRE back into the franchise in 1976-77 for Roger Moore’s 007 adventure The Spy Who Loved Me (an early draft had featured Blofeld and the SPECTRE organisation), but ongoing legal action by Kevin McClory, claiming ownership of ‘Blofeld’ and ‘SPECTRE’ as creative concepts, encouraged producer Cubby Broccoli to drop Blofeld from the screenplay (he was replaced with ‘Karl Stromberg’). One suggestion as to why the (un-named) Blofeld was seen in FYEO in 1981 is that Cubby Broccoli was still keen to show his rejection of McClory’s claims.

Blofeld on the screen, of course, has seen a number of actors give him life, most notably Donald Pleasence, Telly Savalas, Charles Gray, and (unofficially) by Max von Sydow. He has also been portrayed (in an uncredited way) by Anthony Dawson, and we have also heard his voice via Eric Pohlmann and Robert Rietty. And now we have the Christoph Waltz interpretation to add to the list. Waltz, determined to protect the character during the production of Spectre, had a lot of fun with the ‘Is he Blofeld or not?’ question, and successfully teased journalists for many months over the issue. And rightly so! Moreover, perhaps in a nod to both his own fondness for the Donald Pleasence interpretation of Blofeld and the wider cultural impact of the Bond villains on cinema history, director Sam Mendes was keen for the Waltz version to have a damaged eye.

Indeed, as the recent February, 2016, issue of Cinefex noted, the final visual ‘look’ of Blofeld in the climax to the Spectre storyline was especially important: Mendes wanted Blofeld’s appearance to reference the version seen in the film You Only Live Twice, and a number of versions of Blofeld’s damaged eye were apparently tried out before the final one was settled on. Live Another Day Unsurprisingly, there was tremendous interest generated when major rumours emerged in 2014 that Blofeld and SPECTRE were about to return to the EON series. Although the news had at that point not been officially confirmed by EON, the UK’s Mail On Sunday newspaper (November 23, 2014) more-or-less threw out a huge spoiler when it carried a showbiz news story entitled ‘You weren’t expecting this, Mr. Bond.

But… BLOFELD’S BACK!’ Written by Chris Hastings in London and Caroline Graham in Los Angeles, the Mail story claimed that Christoph Waltz was tipped to play the evil genius, and that Waltz’s involvement in the new 007 movie (Daniel Craig’s fourth adventure as Britain’s most famous fictional spy), would be confirmed at the official press conference held to launch the new film, which was due to take place in the first week of December. Moreover, the Mail article claimed that the press conference would announce that Waltz was playing an unknown character named Franz Oberhauser, son of the late Hans Oberhauser, a ski instructor who acted as a father figure to Bond. In the Ian Fleming books, the Bond author made James Bond an orphan, as his parents – Monique Delacroix, from Switzerland, and Andrew Bond, from Scotland – were killed in a tragic climbing accident in the Alps. According to the sketchy timeline set out by Fleming in his books, the young Bond was taught to ski by Hannes Oberhauser, of Kitzbuhel, shortly after he attended the University of Geneva.

In a spoiler act worthy of SPECTRE itself, the Mail revealed that ‘senior sources’ (un-named, of course) believed that the casting of Waltz as Franz Oberhauser was a double bluff, and that Waltz was actually playing Blofeld. The Mail report cited one Hollywood source as saying: ‘Christoph Waltz is playing Blofeld in the next Bond film. The tone of the 007 films has changed significantly in recent years and the producers have changed the character to fit in with the new-look 007’. The article also pointed out that Blofeld’s return was now possible because of the settlement of the long-running legal dispute that took place between EON and the estate of the late Kevin McClory who, for many years (as noted earlier), had claimed he held the rights to both Blofeld and SPECTRE, and also various other elements of the James Bond creative concept. As many Bond fans know, Kevin McClory died in 2006 and, in 2013, McClory’s estate sold their remaining claims to Bond and Blofeld to Danjaq, the official maker of the 007 franchise via its subsidiary EON, and distributor MGM.

The settlement meant that the character Blofeld and his organisation SPECTRE were once more ripe for inclusion in any future 007 movies. This immediately led to intense speculation about whether EON would one day make use again of the iconic villain. SPECTRE and Logan It is perhaps worth remembering that occasional speculation about the possible return of Blofeld and SPECTRE had been a fairly regular pattern for some years prior to all this, but had been given a big fillip in the run-up to Bond 23 (Skyfall), when scriptwriter John Logan had made a teasing remark that he thought Blofeld was a worthy adversary to Bond. Speaking at a special BAFTA Screenwriter’s Q & As event, when asked whether he still held to a comment on this topic that he had made some years previously, Logan repeated (with a wry smile) the same comment: ‘Bond should always fight Blofeld’. Such comments led to a flurry of further speculation and views. A good example came in November, 2013, when writer Scott Meslow penned an article making the case for the return of Blofeld (see the JBIFC’s news report of 15/12/2013).

Meslow argued that Blofeld remains 007’s most memorable adversary in both the books and the movies. But, argued Meslow, Blofeld’s return should not necessarily be as the bald, scarred, cat-stroking version seen in the early EON films, and so warmly lampooned in the Austin Powers movies. A brand new interpretation could be offered that would fit in with the ‘more grounded’ style of the Daniel Craig 007 movies. As Meslow pointed out, the Blofeld of the books in particular ‘is a more evasive figure, and one that would translate far more neatly to the modern 007 movies. In each of Blofeld’s literary appearances, James Bond isn’t entirely sure that he’s targeted the right man; every time Blofeld evades justice, he undergoes extensive plastic surgery on his face, or loses or gains a significant amount of weight, and flees to a well-stocked hideout, which makes him all but impossible to track with any kind of certainty’. Meslow continued: ‘In many ways, Blofeld has become a more poignant villain than ever.

In a modern political context that has shifted from enemy states to scattered, elusive enemies, the idea of a villain with the intelligence and resources to reinvent himself is a frightening one’. In Meslow’s view, therefore, Blofeld’s ‘chameleonic qualities make him a uniquely strong candidate for reinterpretation’. Meslow’s comments certainly gave many Bond fans food for thought, especially when they contemplated possible plot scenarios for Bond 24. It would appear that John Logan may have been coincidentally thinking the same way, and so it came to pass: Logan arguably realised his big ambition with Craig’s fourth 007 adventure Spectre. An interesting question now arises. If Logan returns to the series for Bond no.25, will he pick up and pursue the Blofeld storyline further? (Blofeld’s fate was left rather open-ended at the end of Spectre). At the time of the production of Spectre, there were reports that Logan had been contracted to pen the stories for both Bond 24 and 25, something that appreared to be confirmed by EON. Whether this remains the case is difficult to ascertain.

In an interview with the film magazine Total Film recently, Logan hinted that he had no plans for the next Bond movie. On the other hand, he did not completely rule himself out. Time will tell. Did You Know? Some of Ian Fleming’s biographers have argued that the James Bond author ‘borrowed’ the name ‘Blofeld’ from Tom Blofeld, a Norfolk farmer who was chairman of the Country Gentleman’s Association and also a fellow club member of Boodle’s, the London club where Fleming often went to eat regularly. He had also been a contemporary of Fleming’s at Eton school. Incidentally, Tom Blofeld’s son is the famous cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, something which the cricket-loving Sam Mendes is no doubt well aware of! Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Literary) | James Bond Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Literary) May 28, 1908, Gdynia, Poland Died October 8, 1962, Shatterhand Estate , Japan Hair color and the archenemy of the British Secret Service agent James Bond .

The character was created by writers Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory and first appeared in the 1961-64 James Bond novels Thunderball , On Her Majesty's Secret Service , and You Only Live Twice . The character was subsequently adapted for the EON Productions James Bond film series, beginning in 1963 with From Russia with Love , as well as several other portrayals. Contents [ show ] Novel biography In the novel series by Ian Fleming , Blofeld makes three appearances in what is considered the 'Blofeld Trilogy'. In John Griswold's 'Ian Fleming's James Bond', George Almond provided illustrations depicting Blofeld in each novel, based on Fleming's own descriptions of the character. Before SPECTRE Fleming details Blofeld's background in the novel Thunderball; none of his background is ever revealed in the Bond films. Ernst Stavro Blofeld was born on May 28, 1908 to a Polish father and a Greek mother in Gdynia. Blofeld attended the University of Warsaw where he studied economics and political history. He later went to the Warsaw Technical Institute to study engineering and radionics.

He then took a communication position with the Polish government, at the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. He began to use his position for insider trading, buying and selling stocks at the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Foreseeing World War II, Blofeld made copies of top-secret wires and sold them to Nazi Germany. Before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he destroyed all records of his existence, then moved to Turkey , where he worked for Turkish radio and set up an intelligence organization. During the war, he sold information to both sides. After the defeat of Erwin Rommel , he decided to back the Allied war effort; ironically, he was awarded numerous medals by the Allied powers after the war's end. After the war, Blofeld temporarily moved to South America before founding SPECTRE. Despite his willingness to murder millions to get what he wants, Blofeld has a few professional scruples. For instance, in the novel Thunderball he learned that during a standard fundraising kidnapping mission of a young girl, the responsible agent had sexual relations with her.

Although Blofeld says that the relations may have been "voluntary or involuntary on the girl's part," he had the agent killed as punishment and returned the girl and half the ransom to her father as compensation. His reasons had nothing to do with morality, but rather with the importance of SPECTRE being known for keeping their word to those they did their "business" with. Blofeld ruled by fear mixed with respect from his subordinates. When a SPECTRE agent fell out of line he was publicly made an example of with various methods of death. Thunderball Blofeld during Thunderball, depiction by artist George Almond. Blofeld first appears in a minor role as the leader of SPECTRE in the 1961 novel Thunderball . The plot that he formulates is carried out by his second-in-command Emilio Largo . Blofeld is described physically as a massive man, weighing roughly 20 stone (280 lb; 130 kg), has black crew-cut hair, black eyes (similar to those of Benito Mussolini's), heavy eyelashes, a thin mouth and long pointed hands and feet. He has violet-scented breath from chewing flavoured cachous (breath mints).

Blofeld's lifestyle is described in one chapter in Thunderball: "For the rest, he didn't smoke or drink and he had never been known to sleep with a member of either sex. He didn't even eat very much." Blofeld finishes looking over his cohorts in crime, noting the one member of SPECTRE who evades his glance. He takes a violet-scented breath freshener, as is his custom before saying something disagreeable. Blofeld reviews SPECTRE's crimes of the last few years, including drugs, espionage, and blackmail, netting a healthy profit to the criminal organization. The current undertaking is Plan Omega, a much more profitable venture. Blofeld moves on to discuss the last undertaking, a kidnapping. He has No. 7, one of the French mafia men, stand. Blofeld recounts how the kidnapped girl was molested during the kidnapping. Perhaps it was consensual, perhaps not, but it violated SPECTRE's promise to return the girl untouched. As a result, Blofeld has returned half of the million-dollar ransom. The standing man, No. 7, knows he is innocent and No. 12 is guilty, but he trusts Blofeld and remains standing. Blofeld then promptly kills No.

12 and acknowledges that he was merely using No. 7 to throw No. 12 off guard. On Her Majesty's Secret Service Blofeld during On Her Majesty's, depiction by artist George Almond. Blofeld is absent from the next book, The Spy Who Loved Me, though its events take place while Bond is battling SPECTRE in North America. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963) Bond learns that Blofeld has radically altered his appearance—he is now tall and thin; has reduced his weight to 12 stone (170 lb; 76 kg); sports long silver hair, a syphilitic gumma on his nose, and no earlobes; and wears dark green tinted contact lenses. He is hiding in Switzerland in the guise of the Comte Balthazar de Bleuville, and Bond defeats his plans to destroy Britain's agricultural economy. In the final sequence of the novel, Blofeld gets revenge by murdering Bond's new wife, Tracy . You Only Live Twice Blofeld during You Only Live Twice, depiction by artist George Almond.

In You Only Live Twice published in 1964, Blofeld returns and is found by Bond to be in hiding in Japan under the alias Dr. Guntram Shatterhand. In this appearance rather than being just thin has gained some muscles, has a gold-capped tooth, a fully healed nose, and a drooping grey mustache. Bond describes Blofeld on their confrontation as being "a big man, perhaps six foot three (190 cm), and powerfully built". Bond strangles him to death at the end of the novel. In both On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice, he is aided in his schemes by Irma Bunt , who is clearly his lover in the latter and posing as Shatterhand's wife. Bond incapacitates her in their Japanese castle base before it blows up, killing Bunt. The final mention of Blofeld is in the beginning of the next book, The Man with the Golden Gun , published in 1965. Trivia Blofeld's birthdate, May 28, 1908, is Ian Fleming's birthdate. The name Blofeld was inspired by the father of English cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, with whom Fleming went to school.

Christoph Waltz tipped to play Ernst Blofeld in new James Bond 007 movie | Daily Mail Online comments It’s been more than 30 years since James Bond faced evil Ernst Stavro Blofeld, his most feared adversary. But now the intimidating baddie – famous for his trademark white cat and for gruesomely disposing of his failing underlings – is back. Django Unchained star Christoph Waltz is tipped to play the evil genius in a new 007 movie which is due to begin shooting next month. The 58-year-old double Oscar-winner will join an elite band of stars who have previously played the role. Donald Pleasence starred as Bond’s nemesis in You Only Live Twice in 1967, followed by Kojak star Telly Savalas in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The smooth-voiced British actor Charles Gray took the part in Diamonds Are Forever in 1971.

Scroll down for video Infamous baddie Ernst Stavro Blofeld will return - pre-production work on ‘Bond 24’ has already started Blofeld had previously featured in From Russia With Love in 1963, and in 1965’s Thunderball – but the character’s face was not shown and only his lower body was visible as he stroked his white Angora cat. The villain made his last appearance in an ‘official’ Bond film in 1981 when he featured in For Your Eyes Only. In a nail-biting opening scene Blofeld is hanging from an helicopter which is being piloted by Roger Moore’s James Bond. The scene ends with Blofeld being dropped down a huge brick industrial chimney close to the River Thames in London. Christoph Waltz is tipped to play the evil genius in a new 007 movie due to begin shooting next month Waltz’s involvement in the new film – which has the working title ‘Bond 24’ – will be confirmed at a press conference to be held in the first week of December.

Eon productions, which owns the James Bond film franchise, will announce the star is playing an unknown character called Franz Oberhauser, son of the late Hans Oberhauser, a ski instructor who acted as a father figure to Bond. But senior sources believe the casting is a double bluff worthy of 007 himself and that Waltz is actually playing Blofeld. One Hollywood source, who asked not to be named, said: ‘Christoph Waltz is playing Blofeld in the next Bond film. The tone of the 007 films has changed significantly in recent years and the producers have changed the character to fit in with the new-look 007.’ Blofeld’s return is now possible because of the settlement of a long-running legal dispute involving Eon Productions and the estate of the late Kevin McClory – a film producer and former friend of 007 author Ian Fleming – over who owns the right to the character and his evil empire SPECTRE.

Blofeld remains one of the most popular villains in cinema history and his influence is obvious in the Austin Powers films which spoof the Bond franchise Blofeld, who was also known as No 1, quickly established himself as the archetypal Bond villain when he made his big-screen debut in From Russia With Love. His sinister one-liners and increasingly ingenious methods of dispensing of his underlings made him an instant hit. But Bond villains have an almost superhuman capacity to cheat death, and there was no close-up shot of Blofeld’s body when he was dropped down the chimney in For Your Eyes Only. In any case, the character reappeared alive and well in the ‘unofficial’ Bond film Never Say Never Again when Max von Sydow played Blofeld. The name of the villain was inspired by Thomas Blofeld, a schoolmate of Fleming at Eton. His son is Henry Blofeld, the cricket radio commentator. Sources say the new Blofeld will be just as sinister as earlier incarnations but will be more sophisticated and less ‘campy’. Blofeld remains one of the most popular villains in cinema history and his influence is obvious in the Austin Powers films which spoof the Bond franchise.

Powers’s secret agent has to do battle with the bald headed Dr Evil and his cat Mr Bigglesworth. Pre-production work on ‘Bond 24’ has already started in Austria, and Waltz’s co-stars will be Naomie Harris as Moneypenny, Ralph Fiennes as spymaster M and Ben Whishaw as Q. Michael G Wilson, who co-produces the Bond films with his half-sister Barbara Broccoli, last night declined to comment on the return of Blofeld. A spokeswoman for EON productions also declined to comment. Balls Galore: Cricket in the James Bond canon - Cricket Country › Balls Galore: Cricket in the James Bond canon James Bond, with the fascinating portrayals on silver screen by a host of excellent actors, has kindled the imagination the world over. By Arunabha Sengupta | Updated : August 30, 2016 5:38 PM IST He had a different way of scoring, but James Bond did his bit for cricket in his own way © Getty Images Ian Fleming, born May 28, 1908, created the most famous secret agent in fiction.

James Bond, with the fascinating portrayals on silver screen by a host of excellent actors, has kindled the imagination the world over. Arunabha Sengupta takes a look at the references to the noble game made in the collection of Bond novels and short stories. When M asks about the Second World War hero and millionaire Hugo Drax, the top British agent pauses and looks out of the window to marshal his thoughts. Finally James Bond replies, “Well sir, for one thing the man’s a national hero. The public have taken to him. I suppose he’s in much the same class as Jack Hobbs .” That is not the only mention of cricket in Moonraker . The Blades Club is said to have some of the most sought after amenities, and that includes finest tents and boxes at Lord’s , Henley and Wimbledon. 007 may not really look great on the scorecard. Three batsmen falling for those single digit scores one after the other would leave the batting side both shaken and stirred. However with James Bond being the ideal British spy, the noble game does occasionally grace the books.

Of course not as much as baccarat, or even tennis or golf — the American market for the screen adaptations limits cricketing references to a minimum. But the original books, as can be expected, contain quite a few mentions of the English game. The creator was linked to cricket. Although Ian Fleming’s own forays onto the pitch have been limited, his nephew Matthew Fleming was a useful all-rounder who played 11 ODIs for England in 1997 and 1998. A regular of the Kent side, he turned out for the county 219 times in First-Class cricket, leading them for a few seasons. Interestingly, in the Bond mode, his first two scoring strokes in First-Class cricket were sixes. Matthew Fleming’s great-grandfather, Charles Leslie, played 4 Tests for England in the 1880s. There was, incidentally, a cricketer Ian Fleming, a namesake of Bond’s creator, born in the same year just three months after the writer. This gentleman, born in Georgetown, British Guiana, played 5 times for Kent in the summers of 1934 and 1935.

Not surprisingly, the Kent County Cricket Ground is referred in The Spy Who Loved Me. There happens to be a cricketer by the name James Bond as well, but he has not made it to the top league yet. His claim to fame has been limited to a couple of matches for the Malden Wanderers. There are other ways in which cricketing connections enters the canon. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, super-villain and head of the SPECTRE, who appears in Thunderball, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and You Only Live Twice, gets his last name from Thomas Robert Calthorpe Blofeld, Managing Director of Country Gentlemen’s Association. His son, popular commentator Henry Blofeld , described his father as ‘six foot six with a moustache and an eyeglass’. When Bond is skiing away from Blofeld in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he refers to the distance between him and the arch villain as ‘a cricket pitch away.’ Cricket is often used in similar ways as reference for distance and size. In Octopussy, a scorpion fish takes off vertically and whirrs under Major Dexter Smythe’s belly, stinging him before catching the end of the villain’s spear.

As a result, under his tan, Smythe notices a patch of skin of the size of a cricket ball turning white. In the story The Portrait of a Lady, it is a cricket ball of polished emerald that glows with a supernatural green fire. And in Dr No, Bond, Quarrell and Honey are each given a cricket ball of bread. The only character to actually play the game in a Bond novel is Derek Mallaby in The Spy Who Loved Me. One of the men with whom Vivienne has a relationship, Mallaby is in the cricket eleven at Oxford and also plays a lot of tennis. To get other cricketers, we have to move on to the movies. In the film version of Octopussy, the character played by Vijay Amritraj mentions that Kamal Khan plays cricket. The game is not viewed in flattering light on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The communists often equate it with the trivial pastime of decadent Englishmen. In From Russia with Love, General Vozdvishensky, the head of RUMID, observes that the British are not interested in heroes unless they are footballers, cricketers or jockeys.

However, the case for cricket is made in typical Bond-tinged logic in You Only Live Twice by 007 himself. And in doing so, Fleming skilfully underlines the superiority of cricket in relation to baseball. When Tiger Tanaka, head of Japanese secret intelligence service, shows Bond his ninjutsu training school, the British agent is aghast at the slashes to the groin that are absorbed by the combatants. He asks Tanaka about the gruesome blows and is told of the sumo wrestlers who invented the trick of making the testicles re-enter the body up the inguinal canal. Baffled by the esoteric explanation, Bond introduces his Japanese friend to the cricketer’s box. The dialogue that follows is priceless. Tanaka asks, “What is a box?” “It is what our cricketers wear to protect those parts when they go out to bat. It is a light padded shield of aluminium.” “I regret that we have nothing of that nature. We do not play cricket in Japan. Only baseball.” “Lucky for you, you weren’t occupied by the British,” Bond says.

“Cricket is a much more difficult and skilful game.” “The Americans say otherwise.” Notebook | Global | The Guardian The Guardian Close Does anyone get a kick out of Matt? Sports stars are now popular choices on Strictly Come Dancing. Darren Gough won the last series, edging out Colin Jackson, and before that Denise Lewis very nearly waltzed off with the crown. So it is no surprise that there are three in this season's line-up. The inclusion of the elegant cricketer Mark Ramprakash was understandable. That of Peter Schmeichel less so, though clearly the producers are hoping for the same metamorphosis from maladroit giant to graceful swan that Gough underwent. But why Matt Dawson? After all, it's not as if there are people complaining that there is too little of the former rugby player on TV. Only a few weeks before, he was appearing on, and winning, Celebrity Masterchef . Then there is A Question of Sport, where his exchanges with Sue Barker are as embarrassing as one of your friends trying to flirt with your mum.

A couple of years ago, Clive Woodward expressed a concern that many of England's World Cup winners would, in retirement, take the easy option of media work ahead of putting something back into the game through coaching. Wonder who he had in mind? Remarkably, Dawson's Masterchef victory prompted one journalist to wonder whether he might be a contender to be BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Has 2006 really been that bad? Why does Shivnarine Chanderpaul have stickers under his eyes? On closer inspection, the markings visible on either cheek through the grill of his helmet turn out to be nothing more than anti-glare strips of the kind worn by American footballers. But here's the difference: Chanderpaul's strips are sponsored, most recently by the digital cellphone company Digicel. It surely won't be long before our own Prince Charming, Kevin Pietersen, follows suit. Is there a more unlikely trendsetter in world cricket than Shivnarine Chanderpaul , the diminutive West Indies batsman with an Indian heritage?

Not only does the Guyanese have perhaps the most unorthodox technique in the Test game - hunched and shuffling, he resembles nothing so much as a startled crab at the crease - but he wears face paint whenever he goes out to bat in one-day internationals. How many hats can one man wear? Never content with being just the vice-chairman of Arsenal, David Dein was once nicknamed the 'kingmaker' for his role, as FA vice-chairman, in selecting Sven as England boss, and arguing his way on to the committee to choose Sven's successor. Dein was ousted from the FA board in June, but has now been appointed president of the G-14 group, which represents 18 of Europe's biggest clubs. While demanding that the FA compensate Newcastle for Michael Owen's World Cup injury, Dein remains a member of the FA Council and represents the Premier League on UEFA's committee for club competitions. Did someone say 'conflict of interests'? You only live twice Mr Bond A correspondent to Private Eye recently suggested that Ian Fleming had named Blofeld, the evil mastermind in his James Bond novels, after the father of BBC cricket commentator Henry Blofeld.

We went straight to the fruity TMS commentator for confirmation ... 'My dear thing, it's quite true. My Papa and Ian had known each other at Eton. When Ian was working on the novel that would become Thunderball in the early Sixties, he wrote to Papa telling him that he had come up with a new villain, that he wanted to name him Blofeld and would he mind. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark! Papa thought it mildly amusing and wasn't in the least bit worried. Mind you, that was before any of the films had been made, so he had no idea how notorious Blofeld would become.' Blofeld Snr wasn't the only old Etonian to appear as Bond's nemesis. Scaramanga, the three-nippled psychotic played by Christopher Lee in The Man With the Golden Gun, was named after a school chum and golfing partner of the author. He and Fleming are said to have enjoyed several rounds at Royal Ashdown Forest, a sedate club in deepest Sussex. The Bond villain perished after a hall-of-mirrors shootout, but on the club's honours board the name lives on. Good month for ...

charity Shane Warne Raises cash for needy kids by appearing on Neighbours and playing poker with Hugh Grant. Who says do-gooding is dull? Madejski Wags Launch a campaign for women and children with the slogan: 'We're not spending money, we're raising it.' Nice one. Peter Gregory Quits job as the England cricket team's doctor to work with the poor. In Romania. Bad month for ... music Henry Olonga Treated viewers of C5's All Star Talent Show to Nessun Dorma but still without a producer for his debut album, Aurelia. Joe Worsley The rugby player is 'making interesting electronic noises' on his computer. They'll call these his early years. Cristiano Ronaldo Writing lyrics for his sister's new single. 'The public adore me for myself, not because of my brother,' says modest Katie - aka Ronalda. Sporting lexicon Hooked v. Vogue word used to describe a footballer being substituted, adapted from a TV talent show in which a hook pulled failing acts off stage. Viz. a report in the Sun: 'A furious Arjen Robben, hooked after 67 minutes ...'

Question: Which name links that of a cricket commentator with a Bond villain?
Answer: BLOFELD