Real name Graf Hugo Von der Drache, English war hero and entrepreneur who has everyone fooled

Born to an English mother, Drax is educated in Britain until the age of twelve, when he can ‘stand this filthy country no longer’, and moves to Berlin. During WWII, Drax works in SS intelligence, focussing on terrorism and sabotage.

While bombing American and British liaison headquarters, and disguised as a British soldier, he is seriously injured, losing half his face and suffering total amnesia for a year. It is during this period that Drache is identified as Hugo Drax, an orphan who has previously worked on the Liverpool docks. After his discharge, Drax builds his fortune by trading metals, specifically Columbite, in Tangier through his company Drax Metals Ltd. Upon returning to the UK, he writes a letter to the Queen offering his entire Columbite stock to finance Moonraker, a super atomic rocket designed to protect the nation from its Cold War enemies. For this he is given a knighthood. However, it seems that Drax has other intentions for Moonraker – soon it will be aimed and armed to hit London, ready to fulfil his Fuhrer’s legacy.

DID YOU KNOW?

Drax is named after Ian Fleming’s acquaintance Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernie-Erle-Drax.

Paymaster of the Soviet counter-intelligence agency, SMERSH

Le Chiffre is one of SMERSH’s chief agents in France and the undercover Paymaster of the Syndicat des Ouvriers d’Alsace, a communist-controlled trade union. His origin is unknown. He is was first encountered as an inmate of Dachau DP camp in June 1945. Claiming total memory loss, he adopts the name ‘Le Chiffre’ as he is ‘only a number on a passport’. Having lost funds investing in brothels with money belonging to SMERSH, Le Chiffre goes to Casino Royale with hopes to recover his fifty million franc deficit. However, the entrance of Bond and Leiter to the game could cause his plan to fail.

DID YOU KNOW?

Fittingly for a banker involved with investing and hiding criminal proceeds, Le Chiffre’s name means ‘the number’, ‘the figure’, ‘the code’… and sounds like ‘the cipher’.

Head of Otydel II, the execution department of SMERSH

Making her name fighting for the socialists in the Spanish Civil War, Klebb, a muscular, severe woman, rises through the Russian intelligence ranks by avoiding Stalin’s purges. By 1953, she is head of Operations and Executions (Otydel II) at SMERSH, where she takes an unusually hands-on approach to the torture of prisoners. After the deaths of SMERSH operatives Mr Big and Le Chiffre, Klebb is assigned Bond as her next target. She enlists Tatiana Romanova to distract Bond while her agents neutralise him. When this plan falls through, she attempts to assassinate him herself, with the help of poison-coated knitting needles and a venom-tipped blade hidden in her shoe.

DID YOU KNOW?

Rosa’s name is a pun on the popular Soviet phrase for women’s rights, хлеб и розы (Khleb i rozy), which means ‘bread and roses’.

Nuclear scientist and SMERSH agent

Dr. Julius No: an isolated, strangely tall scientist with metal claws for hands. Will his sadistic desire to experiment on Bond lead to his downfall?

Born in Peking, the illegitimate son of a German Methodist missionary, the young Julius No becomes involved in crime syndicate, the Tongs, and is eventually smuggled to New York, where he works for the syndicate’s foreign interests. During a mob war and police crack-down in the 1920s, he takes advantage of the chaos to embezzle a million dollars worth of gold from the gang. Eventually, the Tongs find him, cut off his hands, shoot him through the heart and leave him for dead – but are unable to find the gold.

Due to a rare physiological condition called Dextrocardia, No’s heart is located on the right side of his body, enabling him to survive the attack. He trades his gold for rare stamps, changes his appearance with plastic surgery, and uses exercises to make himself unusually tall and thin. He then enrols in medical school and changes his name to Julius No. The newly minted doctor fits himself with custom metal pincers for hands and eventually purchases the Carribean island of Crab Key. Here he runs a defunct guano business as a cover for his criminal operations. No one who enters the island is allowed to leave.

With aid from the USSR, Dr. No manages to divert and recover American missiles, and plans to control them using a powerful radio beam. However, Bond and Quarrel soon infiltrate Crab Key and uncover this plot.

DID YOU KNOW?

Dr. No began life as a screenplay for a proposed television show titled Commander Jamaica. Once he had decided to develop it into a novel, Fleming planned to name it, and it’s villain, The Wound Man.

SMERSH operative and head of the Black Widow Voodoo Cult

Buonaparte Ignace Gallia is a French-Haitian SMERSH operative.

While a member of the US military in WWII, Gallia defects to the USSR where he receives training in Moscow before being sent back to the US and tasked with seeding corruption within American society. There he uses the public alias Mr. Big to set up a number of businesses including The Boneyard nightclub in Harlem, and Ouroborous Inc, a tropical fish and sea shells business in St Petersburg, Florida. In reality, his operations are a criminal front, laundering 17th century gold coins for SMERSH.

Mr. Big also heads up the Black Widow Voodoo Cult and has cultivated the belief that he is a voodoo master called Baron Samedi. He has the beautiful mind-reader Solitaire in his control, who he sees as the future mother of his children. A man of 6’5″ and twenty stone (mostly of made up of muscle), it is not surprising that he inspires fear in the hearts of all of his disciples.

DID YOU KNOW?

Ian Fleming gave the character the name Buonaparte Ignace Gallia, initials which form the acronym B.I.G., aka Mr. Big.

Wife of James Bond

Tracy is the only child of a former English governess and Marc-Ange Draco, head of international crime syndicate, the Unione Corse. After her mother dies, she is sent to boarding school in Switzerland where she joins the cosmopolitan jet set and becomes involved in a number of scandals. She marries Giulio di Vincenzo, an Italian Count, and they have a daughter together. The Count absconds with some of her money – eventually dying in a car crash – and after their child dies from spinal meningitis, she becomes wild, suicidal and wracked with grief.

007 first encounters Tracy when she speeds past him on the road to the casino, and he later saves her from social ostracisation when she loses a card game without the funds to cover her debts. The next day, Bond interrupts her suicide attempt, and is then recruited by her father to give her a reason to live. Bond is initially skeptical, but is swayed by Marc-Ange’s promise to assist in tracking down Bond’s old enemy Blofeld.

DID YOU KNOW?

Tracy is the only woman James Bond officially marries in Fleming’s original series.

British Intelligence operative for Station S

Vesper Lynd is an intelligence operative for MI6’s Station S, assigned to assist 007 on his mission to bankrupt Le Chiffre, one of SMERSH’s chief agents in France. She poses as an assistant to René Mathis, who is undercover as a radio salesman, and as Bond’s companion to help him infiltrate the casino at Royale-les-Eaux, where Le Chiffre frequently gambles. After Le Chiffre is neutralised, 007 and Vesper grow close, and Bond plans to propose. However, over time, he discovers that Vesper is hiding a dark secret, and her loyalties are compromised…

DID YOU KNOW?

Meaning ‘evening’ in Latin, Vesper was so named by her parents as she was ‘born in the evening – on a very stormy evening according to my parents.’

Leader of the Cement Mixers, a gang of female cat burglars

Born into poverty in the American South, Pussy Galore becomes a circus trapeze artist. She founds her own team of female acrobats – Pussy Galore’s Trapeze Flyers – and retrains them as cat burglars when the business fails. Her troupe develop into a gang by the name of The Cement Mixers, known for their outstanding ruthlessness, based in Harlem, New York City. Galore and her group are enlisted by SMERSH treasurer Auric Goldfinger for ‘Operation Grand Slam’, as part of a plan to rob gold bullion from the depository at Fort Knox.

DID YOU KNOW?

Pussy is said to have been inspired by Fleming’s mistress Blanche ‘Birdie’ Blackwell, mother of Chris Blackwell who currently owns GoldenEye.

Undercover police operative

Galatea ‘Gala’ Brand is a policewoman in English Special Branch, working undercover as the personal secretary of Sir Hugo Drax. A former Wren, Gala is a skilled pickpocket, speaks fluent German and is assigned to provide undercover security for Drax’s atomic missile project, Moonraker. When 007 is brought in to investigate the death of a Ministry of Supply official working on the project, Gala becomes a key ally.

DID YOU KNOW?

Gala is Fleming’s only leading female to not appear in a James Bond film.