Merlin Minshall

Merlin Theodore Minshall (21 December 1906 – 3 September 1987) is often claimed to have been one of the inspirations behind James Bond, the fictional spy created by Ian Fleming. Minshall worked for Fleming during the Second World War, as a member of the Royal Navy's Naval Intelligence Division.

He wrote about his life in a book entitled Guilt-Edged (published 1975). Its content is summed up by Len Deighton in the foreword:

"His mother was a spy in World War I. Ian Fleming was his boss throughout the Second World War. Unwittingly sucked into the world of Nazi espionage during an innocent sailing trip, he was seduced by a lovely but lethal German agent and met Field Marshal Göring face to face. He was the first man to cross the Sahara on a motorcycle and while travelling through the Congo, he accidentally discovered a secret German army. But Romania set the scene for the height of espionage activity - when he single handedly pirated a ship from under Nazi eyes and blew up a vital link in German tanker communications. The man is Merlin Minshall and this is his unique story."

The book was translated into Dutch by Iet Grader and is renamed 'De Avonturier' Published in 1976.

Son of Colonel Thomas Herbert Minshall, DSO (1873-1872), a well known consultant electrical engineer and newspaper proprietor and Theodora Wigham-Richardson (1871-1932). He was educated at Charterhouse and Oxford University. Upon graduation Minshall trained as an architect at London University, before embarking on his boat the Hawke (now known as Sperwer and on display in the Netherlands in the indoor museum of the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen) on his quest to be the first Englishman to sail across Europe to the Black Sea. Minshall traded for the Hawke in Bosham, exchanging it for a sports car and an ice axe from Gerald Hulse in 1931. Hulse had only purchased the Hawke the year before from Dr. Marmaduke Fawkes who had owned the boat since 1926 having bought it over from the Netherlands. Minshall was accompanied by his first wife, Elizabeth, but they separated during this trip and were later divorced.

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