SIR Fitzroy Maclean, reputed model for James Bond, has died aged 85. He became a friend of Ian Fleming before the second World War and his dashing lifestyle led many to believe he was the inspiration for the suave, licensed to kill agent 007.
A politician, writer and epic traveller, Sir Fitzroy was remembered yesterday for exploits including parachuting into Nazi occupied Yugoslavia as Churchill's personal envoy. An early member of the SAS, he travelled widely and sometimes secretively, raising suspicions, particularly in the Soviet Union, that he was a spy.
"To some people my life might seem one long adventure holiday blowing up forts in the desert clandestinely parachuting into guerrilla wars, penetrating forbidden cities deep behind closed frontiers," he said last year.
"I enjoy the excitement and the achievement of going to remote places, such as getting into Samarkand and Bokhara at the height of Stalin's horrific regime, when no foreigner, let alone a diplomat, was allowed into central Asia," he said.
In war time Yugoslavia, he was believed to have been instrumental in securing British backing for the partisan leader, Tito.
His started as a diplomat in Paris in 1933 but became fascinated with the Soviet Union asked to be posted to Moscow. He resigned from the diplomatic service in 1939 and joined the SAS.
He was elected a Conservative MP in 1941 while still on active war service and was Under Secretary for War from 1954 to 1957. He remained an MP until 1974.
He wrote about his early life in 1949 in Eastern Approaches and went on to write a succession of novels and historical books.